A ludicrously bad idea. What do Lichfield, Burntwood and Tamworth have in common with, say, Leek 30 miles away?

So sorry for your loss, Amy. look after you and yours.

Juliet, congratulations on your PhD, You're great. Ignore the sad idiots.

It's now safely stored 'somewhere in the north west' and it comes out to play from time to time. /Ends

Finished! Well, so far as any restoration is finished. There are always niggles and little things to attend to. This photo was taken just outside Wilmslow (where it was based in its early days) for a photo shoot for a trade magazine. If you've got this far down the thread, well done...

2023: finishing touches, such as the lettering. There's more of it on a bus than you might think! Most of it was with original 'varnish fix' transfers - not a job for the unskilled.

Time for repaint, and over to a lovely gentleman, Les Bank, who'd been painting buses for 60 years. A master craftsman, it turned out to be the last bus he painted as he died suddenly in 2024.

2022: mobile, with an MOT but looking less than pristine.

I haven't even mentioned a myriad of smaller jobs - refurbished steering wheel for just small example.

New floor, refurbished seats back in, lot of new exterior work - looking a lot better.

2021: bodywork structure. Oh boy! 299 had looked okay when I bought it but I knew the body structure was poor. So it was off to the nice people at Reliance Bus Works at Newcastle under Lyme. It's fair to say that the entire rear was held on with paint and willpower...

Seats out for refurbishment, attack the interior, attention to the windscreen and driver's window - by now it was Covid lockdown and as I was WfH all the time, Dawn was glad to get rid of me to work on 299 once a week...

The interior needed a LOT of TLC. One of the problems was that the front dashboard had been painted in thick black paint to reduce reflections. Can't paint strip it (fibreglass), so a firm in Macclesfield soda blasted it - yep, ordinary baking soda. Worked a treat!

Next, electrics. Blown voltage regulator; and alternator not charging, despite the 'charge' light going out, along with oil light, on starting. Lightbulb moment: some sparks had wired the charge light in parallel with the oil light! Didn't fix the problem, but stopped drivers reporting it...

The first challenge was to understand the cooling issues. This led to a lot of work to rebuild the water pump; fix the hole in the (inaccessible) header tank; replace the blocked anti-airlock pipe; and completely rebuild the radiator. The cost is strictly classified!

I bought 299 in December 2017. It looked okayish, but I knew that the semi-shiny paintwork hid a multitude of sins. The interior was very tired; the body didn't feel 'tight'; the electrics were a joke; and it overheated constantly. It has a Gardner engine, they famously ran cool so clearly an issue.

I did! Download link shortly, let me know when you’ve got it so I can delete the link - just put a thumbs-up on it, that’ll do.

Hmm, not my best. Too busy waving! Let me know if you want a copy.

Are you still rostered for 4L56 tomorrow (Friday)? If so, look out for me and my camera at the far end of the Down platform at Rugeley.