Destination boxes

A recent project here has been destination boxes.  

We have a lot of Routemaster buses in our fleet. This is in the most part an indulgence but the vehicles themselves have a role similar to that of coaches, and we undertake a lot of private hire work with the buses across an area spanning the length of the M5 from Bristol down to Exeter.  We're the only ones offering such vehicles in the model world for this sort of work. 

Not quite all of the fleet, but 98% of them. 

Some of our Routemaster fleet are Oxford or Seerol castings. These differ from the EFE and most recent 1/76th entry - by Corgi OOC in the late 2000s. Despite being much hyped on it's introduction the model comes with a number of issues. 

The two OOCs in our fleet. The East Midland one has personal connections, with a Mansfield destination.
I saw a lot of Mansfield learning to drive a bus and on the day I finally passed my PCV.

We have two in the fleet here. Of all the castings of the RM bus, the EFE is the most accurate looking of them all. 

The first iterations from the mid 1990s had tooled destination boxes set into the casting.  Later ones from the late 1990s - and the RMC/RML/RCL castings had their destinations tampo printed to the body and the all releases post 2006 had the same treatment. The 2006 retool did away with the inset glazing units and went for flush glazing, which doesn't look right! 

The EFE models are easy to dismantle too, remove the plastic plugs on the chassis and the pieces come apart. Several have come this way with damaged or fogged glazing sections and this isn't a problem for me, as I'll just replace the window units with clear acetate glued to the shell. None have 'moved' in the 4 years I've run them, though they've been here 6 having arrived for £3 each from the scrap bin at the second EFE open warehouse event. 

You'll remember EFE as the pioneers of 'OO' scale bus models who became part of Bachmann 6 years ago. They've done brilliantly since taking over with lots of new releases and new models to expand the model bus market. Collectors are postively brimming with excitement over the latest new releases from them. 

I'm of course being sarcastic as the takeover has been met with the same enthusiasm as someone farting in a crowded lift. Trouble with this medium is sarcasm is hard to pull off. 

Anyway, we return to the problem in hand. The EFE models I run in my fleet either have tooled set destinations or tampo printed ones onto the casting. The OOC buses have the front and rear set behind a plastic screen, the side box is tooled to the shell. The Oxford and Seerol examples in the fleet don't have anything of the sort and instead make use of transfers. These typically don't look right in proportion to the scale so if you want the buses looking right you need to improvise. 

That casting has it's origins as a Budgie model from the 60s. I have two of those - strangely in Southdown and East Kent liveries with a 'SOUTHERN' fleetname on the sides, similar to that of Southern Railway. These arrived in 2006 for £5 each but have never been near the workshops. Must get those out for a picture sometime. 

In the 1980s the casting was marketed as Seerol and a number of liveries were released. One of those releases was a plain white model, which I've managed to find two of for 'wedding' work. I have a third located on ebay for sub £5 which is in the project pile. In the 1990s the casting ended up with Oxford and is the one they release in 'OO' today. 

There've been a lot of liveries on the casting under Oxford and I have quite a few. Whilst it's not as detailed as the EFE/OOC one those liveries haven't been done by those two. So if you want to have every livery ever used on an RM bus, you need to have the Oxford ones in your collection.  They are also rather cheap on sites such as ebay. Several of my Seerol buses have cost between 99p and £5 - so for a small outlay I've got some buses done up and looking fresh when they were in a state on arrival. 

I have to be one of the few who were pleased with OOCs 2019 release schedule as on it was the Best Impressions London & Country livery as applied to RM 1183 after it's time in Southend. This was one I already had having found an Oxford model in the Ian Allan shop in Cardiff in 2007 having dropped off a tender at the Welsh Government building for TAS who I worked for at the time... 

I had very few of the Oxford/Seerol models when I was expanding the fleet. My first was an Oxford inherited from my late father some time before he passed away. During 2014/5 this entered service as RM191 but was originally a yellow 'Blackpool' unboxed example found at a York racecourse toyfair. 

This was where I improvised with the destination boxes. 

Version 1 of a destination box for these models in the fleet saw me use a stock of 120gsm card (Yellow Buses driver duty cards which had some issue and were headed for the bin - said stock of card is still with me and seems to have outlived the bus company) and I simply traced out the three screens by overlaying them on an EFE and using a pencil/pen. The black sections of the box (for the destinations) were coloured in using a Sharpie marker (other brands available) and the surrounds painted as required. Typically red, but not always. 

The first Oxford example, refinished as RM191 in May 2015. 

This method has served me well for a number of years until more recently where I wanted to replace the 'hand drawn' boxes with something looking a little more professional. 

The workshop facilities Southwestbus have include two printers and two moderately functional laptops so I can use a colour inkjet or a mono laser printer for most of my transfer needs. I would have a colour laser printer but the issue I have is not the purchase of said device but the financing £200 of toners against the more simpler cost of one black and white toner each time I need to replace.   

My inkjet printer can be fed with photo paper which is self adhesive - so that leads me onto to Version 2. 

This version means I have a front, side and rear destination box transfer drawn in Paint 3D and the background coloured as needed. A lot of my RMs are red, but some are green (fleet colours), or white or cream as the base colour. 

So those have been drawn too, and the resulting word file is now saved as a PDF.  Print one off and now there are lots of transfers available for front, side and rear on. 

RM191 is undergoing fitment of the 'new boxes' here. 

The finished result is seen on a 'Green Rover' Oxford casting here. 

Green Rover, as far as I'm aware only operated RMAs and not RMs so the Oxford model isn't quite right, but the livery is fairly accurate for the vehicle in all other respects.  I had one in the collection, bought the same day as the L&C model in 2007 but it's not one EFE/OOC did. An RMA in this livery would look very nice, and would have a personal connection as the very first RM I conducted was RMA11 in 2005 on the Western Greyhound running day.