RSD973R – Seddon Pennine 7

The Pennine VII was born from the Scottish Bus Group’s desire to have a rugged mid engined single decker for general bus and coach use in the mid ‘70s. Whilst the SBG were already taking a large number of Leyland Leopard buses they wished to incorporate the trusted Gardner engine so favoured by the SBG at the time. Leyland Motors declined the request to fit Gardner engines to the Leopard so the SBG looked elsewhere. Seddon Motors were to build the 11m Pennine VII; a rugged no nonsense chassis around the Gardner 6HLXB engine, ZF 4 speed manual gearbox and Eaton axles. Over 500 chassis were built with all but handful going to the Scottish Bus Group. Six of these were 12m examples delivered with 6-speed ZF gearboxes and Alexander M Type bodies for the Edinburgh- London service. The remainder were 11m examples the later ones with semi automatic gearboxes and all bodied by Plaxton or with Alexander Y and T-types.

Delivered new to Western SMT in June 1977 and allocated fleet number NS2670, the bus entered service from Ardrossan Garage in the traditional black and white coach livery. It operated on a variety of local and long distance services including regular turns on the Lancashire Coast Express services as well as some Private Hire. In October 1981 when Ardrossan Garage closed it was transferred to Kilmarnock becoming KS2670.

In October 1982 it was repainted into Western’s red and cream bus livery. It continued in service at Kilmarnock and was again repainted, this time into the black and white with two tone grey stripes livery in 1986.

S2670 was withdrawn from service in November 1987. In March 1988 it was sold to SBG Engineering and became number D15 in their Hire Fleet. Later this fleet was to be renamed Bus and Coach Rental and it remained there until August 2001 when it was purchased for preservation. Stored for about 18 months work is now progressing. Eventually it will be returned to the original Western black and white livery.