The Anonymous Widower

The Connection Between The First Tanks And The Classic Routemaster Bus

At first glance, it would appear that there would be little connection between Little Willie, which was one of the prototypes leading to the first tanks of the Great War and the classic Routemaster bus of the 1950s.

But I’ve just read this article on the BBC’s web site about how the tanks were developed in Lincoln. The article talks about the two designers.

The work needed more than technical experience, it needed two very particular men – William Tritton and Lieutenant Walter Wilson.

“Tritton was a brilliant engineer,” says Mr Pullen. “And he was a brilliant leader. He got things done.

“He turned Foster’s around with new ideas and new markets.

“Couple him with Walter Wilson, who was also a good engineer but a genius with things like gearboxes, and they made a brilliant partnership.”

It goes on to describe how they locked themselves in a hotel room and scribbled designs on envelopes and fag packets.

And the rest as they say is history!

Walter Wilson went on to form a company called Self-Changing Gears, that developed pre-selector gearboxes. I never drove a vehicle with one of these gearboxes, but I’ve sat just behind the driver on many a London Transport RT-bus and watched the driver select the gear and then hit the gear change pedal to engage it. The use of this type of transmission, was to make the effort of the constant stopping and starting easier on the driver.

Routemasters , it would appear had a fully-automatic version of the transmission, linking them back to the original tanks.

February 24, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel, World | Buses, Engineering, First World War, London