www.kellstransportmuseum.com - Irelands Operating Bus Museum

Welcome to the Kells Transport Museum Message Board. We welcome messages from everyone relating to the museum and its buses but anything to do with insults or personalities is banned. You must put your e-mail on any message you post or else it will be deleted.  This is stricty enforced.  No password is required. Your message is welcome.

        NO E-MAIL  NO POST

www.kellstransportmuseum.com - Irelands Operating Bus Museum
Start a New Topic 
Author
Comment
Were the sleeper buses the first coach or was CVH 1?

Very many interesting points were raised in the discussion on CVH 1 but people do not need to be nasty discussing it. As with many subjects there are different interpretations.

I would like - with the aid of readers - to set out the coach history and would appreciate readers contributions. Let me try first on what I remember and then perhaps readers can fill in the gaps.

First and foremost, what was a coach? Let us try and start to the definition of a standard bus with special seats.

My first memory of a coach would have been the sleeper buses that operated from Cork to Dublin.

I then have a gap until the P class coach came which were full fronted. However, these, if I remember correctly had standard seating. Is that correct?

I do not remember any C class coach but I do remember M class and again going from memory these had improved seating but by no stretch of the imagination "coach" seating. I think CIE interpretation of "coach" was change the paint!

I had definitely overlooked the CIE WVH class and does anyone remember what seating they had? Equally my memory is that the original bodies fell off these - or was it that the original bodies were too wide legally to go to Northern Ireland and that they all got new bodies. But did they keep the same seats? My personal memory is black leather seats.

At the same time what about the PL class? Were these not coaches always as I have a memory of PL 14 doing Cork to Bandon service and latterly schools still in coach livery.

Certainly, while it may or may not be technically correct the CVH class were the first "real" coaches operated by Bus Eireann and certainly they set new standards of comfort for that type of vehicle the fact that they are still working 25 years later is a tribute to their design.

As for CVH 1 it is our intention to put her back in her original delivered livery - when we find that out - and to keep her in operating condition, now that we have found out there is nothing wrong with her. We may take her to Mogeely show.

So can we have readers views on the coach history of CIE/Bus Eireann and predecessors and successors. I would like then to do an article on coaches but it is a minefield as not alone does memory play strange tricks but there are so many views, all different, yet many can be correct depending on the point in the life of the vehicle. The WVH is the classic case.

By the way I think there is still at least one other CVH or EVH in service. Anyone know?

Michael Grimes

Re: Were the sleeper buses the first coach or was CVH 1?

CVH 1 was delivered new in CIE Tours International livery along with the other 34 CVH's.
As for the defination of a coach , I would imagine it would be a bus intended for long distance or touring work.
I will put up a post about CIE coaches , however this will take some time and I have a few facts to check first.