It has been a very long time since a bus such as this has turned up on the 5B at Churchill Square in Brighton. Even the blue Leyland Atlantean on the opposite site of the road is now history. The green bus is a Northern counties bodied Leyland PD3/4. These buses were named Queen Marys on account of being some 8ft..ish wide (I should mention here for the purists among you that I am not a rivet counter and 8ft ish will do me!). Sadly no longer to be seen on bus routes in Brighton & Hove all year round.
The bus above is amazingly still going strong... in Philadelphia! I have recently been sent this photo of it (below) taken in 1998, many thanks to Alex Hall for sending the photo to Peter (the pipe) who then sent it to me.
As can be seen the bus is not in too bad a state ( I'm not sure what it is used for now though)
The Southdown PD3's were perhaps the most successful double deck buses that Southdown ever used and they could cope with just about every weather condition, hill, town road and driver that was thrown at them. The only exception to this were the PD3/5's which had semi automatic gearboxes and all to often would come to a grinding halt on a hill. They were tried in and around the Brighton area but soon found themselves transferred away to less hillier areas. Most of the Early batches and some of the Semi Automatics ended their days in Hong Kong.
The Southdown buses empire included quite a few seaside towns and a convertible variant of the standard Northern Counties body was applied to one of the batches for open top summer seaside work. These buses were perhaps the most versatile buses on the road and the fact that a good majority of this batch ( the last of which I believe were delivered in 1965) still exist in preservation is testimony to their usefulness. Unlike so many of the open top town tour buses that we see grinding around our streets showing off the treasures of the town. The PD3's when in service with Southdown could be put to normal work in the winter as they had removable roofs. There was always one time in the year (and indeed there still is) when the roofs came off just about every convertible PD3 and that was/is at Epsom for the Derby. Pictured below (By kind permission of Gerry Cork) are four preserved convertible PD3's showing exactly that destination!!
