Wigan Album

I have an admission to make. I don't believe this was one of Unsworth's coaches. It has a Lancashire county registration so it must be reasonably local. I'm going to feel the ruler across my knuckles for this one I'm afraid. It just seemed a pity that the one or two people on Wigan World with an interest in coaches could be denied the opportunity to see the interesting body on this beautiful vehicle. Even as I am writing this, I can hear Miss Nichol's footsteps echoing up the corridor with the inevitable instructions for me to report to the headmaster's study. I'd best insert my general not book down my trolleys. Schooldays have a lot to answer for, don't you agree?

[ erratum ] For Miss Nichol's, read Miss Nicholson. Not that it's of any consequence.

This is a very rare pic of a very rare product - a Beccols-bodied coach. It's a Leyland Royal Tiger, built in 1951 for Monks of Leigh - so I guess that the fact that it is not liveried points to it being after they sold it on.
Beccols was a local body builder at Chequerbent, Westhoughton. A pic of another of their products is at pic 3877 in the Album.
There's a pic of it in Monks' livery on the net - at Wembley: http://www.na3t.org/road/photo/HuA0488 - and one in this livery when it was in the ownership of Horlocks, a company in Gravesend, Kent.

There is a flickr photograph of this vehicle attributing it to Red Line Birchington, which is near Ramsgate, which is not an operator I am aware of. Unfortunately there is no further detail, or date so it is uncertain as to the order of these two subsequent owners. Regrettably the enthusiast community is much more focused on buses rather than coaches, and the fragmentary nature of coaching coupled with this means that records are generally sparse ( and often incorrect ).