Very nice! That one in Citybus livery brings back memories of my local Southampton Citybus Atlanteans.
One of the very first toys I remember is the Dinky Yellow Pages bus, which lost large amounts of its paint and is now long gone (but since replaced
). I also had a Superkings DMS, but Matchbox didn't make a very good job of that one. Having said that, I don't remember noticing the dubious modelling when playing with it in the sandpit. The small No.17 bus was a much nicer model, but too small to go with any of my other toys. Zylmex made a nice toy, spoilt only by the heavy front end, and the strange sliding door on later issues.
For a toy, the Dinky was very reasonable, even if the engine cover looks like a Daimler Fleetline, rather than a Leyland Atlantean, and they seem to have been popular with bus collectors in the 70s, no doubt due to the 1/76 scale. I recently bought one at a car boot sale, painted as an early 70s London Country AN class Atlantean. What impressed me was the fact that the staircase had been moved to match the real bus - quite a major job! The windscreen and front panels have also been altered to better match this particular bus. One problem with modelling buses is all those detail differences between different body builders and even different batches. Britbus make a very nice detailed model of the same bus, but I like the effort which has been put into this old Dinky (and it is unlikely to get metal fatigue, unlike a couple of my Britbus Atlanteans
).
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The overall advert bus is another conversion I bought, also with repositioned stairs. The front detailing is different on this one, as it represents one of a batch of 30 with MCW bodies which were diverted from Midland Red to London Country. A lot of the advert details are hand-painted, so someone spent a lot of time and care on this. I have some destination blinds to add to it, but I'm not sure what to do about those oversized boxes which have been painted on. Dinky did make this advert, but it's a very rare promotional so not likely to make its way to my collection!
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Here are a couple of original Dinkies for comparison. The staircase is half a window bay further forward. These were another lucky boot sale find, as they were specials commissioned by John Gay.
