Created 21-Jun-19
Modified 8-Mar-24
The 1966 Leyland Tiger Cubs were 300-303 (HTG 300-303D) and looked almost identical to the 1964 batch but were bodied by Marshall instead of Willowbrook. The principal visual difference was a shallower destination aperture at the front.
These Tiger Cubs replaced earlier Tiger Cubs from 1953, 330-333.
The buses were in the standard red livery and then later received the NBC standard poppy red with a white band. They had 2000 added to their fleet numbers on absorption by Western Welsh as 2300-2303 and were further renumbered U39-4266 in 1974. In general they led an uneventful life and all worked exclusively from Porth depot except that U3966 spent some time working from Bridgend depot in National Welsh days.
303 seems to have been used as a prototype for the heating and ventilation system fitted to the 1968 Tiger Cubs and had a different frontal appearance as a result. There was also quite a lot of changes to the ventilator arrangement, some of which related to donating ventilators to those 1968 buses that were new with none.
The batch was withdrawn in 1980 with the exception of U4266 which was withdrawn in 1978 and used as a source of spares. All went for scrap.
© David Beilby
