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My next project will be the Runaway Bus as seen (or rather not too well seen) in the film starring Frankie Howerd.

The real bus was the prototype Commer TS3 with Harrington Contender bodywork, built in 1953 and exhibited at the Earls Court Commercial Vehicle Show the same year. It appeared in the film less than a year later whilst still on trial.
The TH1953 plates displayed in this photo were just for show (TH1953 = Thomas Harrington 1953)

The registration it received was MYV 617 and was delivered new to BOAC at London Airport (now called Heathrow Airport). This photo is a screen grab from the film.

Another screen grab from the film showing a closer view of its unique mesh grille (for this fleet anyway as the grill was more commonly used on BOAC's Commer Avenger's).
Note the BOAC bluebird logos incorporated into the grille design.

All the later production batch of Commer / Harrington Contender's delivered to BOAC had a revised front grille with vertical slats but otherwise exactly the same bodywork.
(this is NXL 487)

A later BOAC livery on the production fleet showing the lantern windscreen to good effect.
(this is NLP 803)

The later front end style of this bus was modelled (rather badly) by Dinky Toys in 1956.
Catalogue no. 283 was available until 1963 and it can be seen that the model is very crude with no interior, thick window pillars and the lower part of the lantern windscreen is filled in.
The grille is also a poor representation with horizontal slats instead of vertical, giving it a sort of Ford 400E look. The destination blinds are also totally wrong.

The very last models available were shod with white rubber. This boxed example is about as good as it gets.

So, having picked up this rather tatty but otherwise untouched example, my first job is to drill and file out that bottom half of the lantern windscreen.

AJ, this sounds like is a great project and being a bit of a modeller myself, will follow this with interest.

Ghosthunter.