[Heritage] The sorry state of a vintage Leyland Atlantean bus at Limerick depot

OK, I've done a bit of googling, and I see where this "Alas Atlantean" misnaming comes from.

The Transport Museum in Howth used the title "Alas Atlantean" as the title of an article about these buses on its website. This has then been copied and only slightly reworded by the public library service for one of a series of articles about Irish transport, which captions the pictures of the buses as "Alas Atlanteans".

But "Alas Atlantean" in the original article title was not referring to the vehicle manufacturer - it was an ironic title, referring to these buses chronic unreliability in service (at first - they became more reliable when they were re-engined and better understood by CIE midlife).

As in "Alas poor Yoric . ."

When first introduced, the Ds had huge problems, the forced ventilation systems did not work leading to high internal temprature and passenger discomfort, and buses had to be retrofitted with opening windows.

The engines themselves were prone to overheating (the CIE body was heavier than the more sparse bodywork on UK examples) and mechanics used to the older front-engined buses found them difficult to work on.

The terrible state of Leyland in the 1970s didn't help either, and there were often shortages of vital parts keeping buses off the road.

From D410 onwards CIE switched from the 0600 to the bigger 0680 engine, and in later life many were re-engined with DAF units.

D603 onwards (the VanHools) were to the new AN68 chassis design, which was much improved.

All told, there were 840 Atlanteans put into service by CIE between 1966 and 1979. (the last one was produced in 1977, but was delayed entering service as it went to Germany for two years).

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Losty Dublin wrote: »

I always had a soft spot for the Leyland bodied Atlanteans, they have a wonderfully somber yet dignified look to them and a almost sleep inducing hum as they toddled around the city from A to B

the drivers looked something similar

There are GMs still in service here in Toronto - god help you if you're stuck on one between mid July and mid Sept. They were very well built frame wise though which led to rebuild after rebuild when newer buses were chopped. Their high floors make them non-accessible though so they are finally down to 33 1982 "New looks" and 2 1987 Classics.

The "whistling buses" were a small subset of the VanHool bodied AN68 Atlanteans, those ones from D764 upwards which had Voith two-speed fully automatic gearboxes. At the same time as the gearbox change, a small change in the engine air-intake had been made, and these buses made melodic sounds as the engine went through various speed ranges when under load.

The first route to get these (764 upwards - there were already 150 other VanHools on the road) was 7A / 8, followed then by 66/67 and 78/A/B so your memory of Glenageary Hill is indeed correct.

This was late 1975, there was even an article about it in the Evening Press, the buses very quickly received a mod to cure the "problem".

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Yes, there were two batches of 2-speed fully auto gearboxes:

D511-602 (standard CIE/Metsec bodied buses)
D764-840 (VanHools)

The CIE bodied ones were split between Phibsboro (the majority), Ringsend and Cork. (when new - they spread around more towards the end of their lives)

The VanHools with fully-auto boxes were new to Donnybrook and Conyngham Road only (likewise spread around to more depots in later life).

D838 has an experimental 3-speed fully-auto box, was new to Conyngham Road, but was transferred to Cork after a couple of weeks, where it was used mainly on provincial services.

The semi-auto buses (D1-510 and 603-763) were better on fuel and better on outer suburban routes, but required frequent replacement gearboxes because of the abuse by drivers. The correct way to drive these is to ease off on gas during gearchanges, but CIE drivers just whacked them from gear to gear at full revs, which, over time, would cause the unit to fail.

Now, ideally, the two-speed fully auto buses should have been kept for city routes, as they were dreadful on longer (faster) runs, but good old CIE logic saw them at Conyngham Road for the 66/67 while Summerhill had it's semi-autos on the 16/A . .

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