These galleries consider the various buses bought by Rhondda Transport over the years. Due to a lack of suitable material the short-lived trolleybus fleet is not yet shown and pre-war vehicles are grouped together in one gallery for the same reason. This applies to a lesser extent to the wartime intake but after that most vehicles in the fleet are illustrated.
I have tried to group vehicles in a logical manner and in many cases each batch of vehicles has its own gallery. However, for some smaller batches it made more sense to group vehicles together. The fleet number range is shown in each gallery title as well as the chassis type. Fortunately in Rhondda Transport days at least there was no renumbering carried out, although they seemed to make up for that in Western Welsh days and for the few that survived that long, also in the National Welsh era.
Generally Rhondda had a very standardised fleet. Before the war, after the initial experience with a variety of vehicles they settled on AEC Regals and Regents. During the war they had no option but to take the Guys and Daimlers that were allocated to them, although even then two Guys were exchanged very quickly for two Daimlers from the Devon General fleet. Postwar double-deckers were AEC Regents in large numbers, with Rhondda going straight to the Regent III model. Towards the end they changed to the Leyland Atlantean but this may have been influenced as much as anything by AEC ceasing to produce the Regent chassis.
Initially they went for AEC Regals but after moving to underfloor-engined chassis with, at first, the Leyland Royal Tiger chassis they quickly moved to the lighter and more economical Leyland Tiger Cub. They became very enthusiastic purchasers of this chassis which seemed to stand up well to the rigours of Rhondda's arduous single-deck routes. Only right at the end did they move to the Leyland Leopard as the Tiger Cub went out of production.
The galleries look at the whole life of the vehicle subject to the availability of suitable photographs, starting at the manufacturer's works and going through its time in service with Rhondda Transport and successors, to dealers, for further service and even to its final fate in the scrap yard.
© David Beilby