Home»All Photographs»South Wales»Rhondda's Buses»Rhondda Buses Limited vehicles»Mercedes-Benz 700-series (150/152-171)

After the large-scale purchase of minibuses in the 1980s, National Welsh having been particularly enthusiastic in this regard, it became clear that they were not suitable for the work they were being asked to do. They were generally not sufficiently robust but even more, their small size meant that they were unsuitable for handling the peaks in traffic that occur. The advantages that minibuses brought of manoeuvrability along with using a well-developed chassis for which spares were readily and cheaply available were recognised whilst moving up in size and the Mercedes-Benz chassis has been particularly successful in this market.

150 (M866 LNY) was bought new in June 1995 and proved to be the precursor of many more. It was a Mercedes-Benz 711D chassis and had a Plaxton Beaver B27F body. 152-160 (N152-160 MTG) were on the same chassis but fitted with UVG (Universal Vehicles Group, formerly Wadham Stringer) Citi-Star B27F bodies and were new in November 1995. In August 1996 two further buses entered service which were 161/162 (P161/162 TDW). These were on the less-powerful 709D chassis and reverted to the Plaxton Beaver B27F body. The final batch were once more on the 711D chassis with Plaxton Beaver B27F body and were 163-171 (P163-171 VNY) new in October 1996 (163-165), December 1996 (166-168) or January 1997 (169-171).

These vehicles operated from both Bedwas and Porth depots and seem to have remained at the same depot in their time with Rhondda Buses. Vehicles at Bedwas were 156-162 and 169-171 whilst Porth's allocation was 150, 152-155 and 163-168.

All retained their original fleet number on Stagecoach takeover and on introduction of the National numbering scheme had 41000 added to their numbers. Disposals were very varied and too complex to list here. Notable was the use of several as staff buses at various locations with 166 ending up in that role with Stagecoach Manchester.

Finally a special mention needs to be made of 164. This was generously donated by Stagecoach to the Cardiff Transport Preservation Group in Barry in 2010 and repainted in original Rhondda colours, again by Stagecoach, in 2016.