Midland Red D9

Until the end of the 1960‘s Midland Red designed and built many of its vehicles. This policy dated back to the 1920s when the chief engineer, L. Wyndham Shire, convinced the company that he could build better buses than the ones that they could buy.

L. Wyndham Shire was a talented engineer and produced many advanced vehicles not only for Midland Red but also some other companies in in the BET group to which the company belonged.

On his retirement in 1940 he was succeeded by D. M Sinclair who was also a gifted designer. Many of his designs, such as the immediate post-war S6 class of underfloor engined single deckers and the 1960 D10 underfloor engined double-deck prototypes, were quite literally years ahead of their time.

The D9 double deck design first saw the light of day in 1958. It was built to the 30‘ length that had been legalised in 1956 but was a very different animal to earlier double deckers that had been designed by the company. It was of integral construction, like the famous London Transport Routemaster, which gave a considerable weight saving. The short wheelbase gave a much smaller turning circle than would be expected on a bus this size, albeit at the expense of longer front and rear overhangs.

In true Midland Red style there were detail changes throughout the production of the design. Coupled with modifications during the vehicles' working lives it is debatable if any two were the same. The buses were worked hard on a wide variety of services from limited stop to local services right across the company‘s operating area.

345 D9s had been built by the time that production ended in 1966. Some passed to West Midlands PTE with the Birmingham area operations of Midland Red in 1973. Only a few passed to other operators upon withdrawal, the difficulty of obtaining spares being a major factor. Seven went to work as open top buses in London for a while and fortunately a number have survived into preservation.

In 1/76th scale there is a whitemetal kit produced by W & T ScaleLink and a die-cast model from OOC.