Oxford Diecast 76DB001 1/76 Duple Britannia Wallace Arnold

 

The Duple Britannia, manufactured in 1955, makes its entrance in the well-known livery of Wallace Arnold whose coach tours were particularly successful in the era before package holidays became affordable to the nation.

 

The history of Duple goes back to 1919 when the bus and coach bodybuilding company was funded by Herbert White in Hornsey, London. In the ensuing years, it survived two world wars, amalgamations with other companies and relocation to both Kegworth and Loughborough. The Duple Britannia belongs to the era following this decentralisation when the company became known as Duple Motor Buses (Midland) Limited, Manufactured between 1956 and 1962, It was based on its immediate predecessor the Elizabethan with underfloor engine chassis but with modified vertical pillars. Duple lasted exactly 70 years until 1989 when the Duple body designs were sold to the Carlyle Works of Birmingham.

 

The Wallace Arnold story goes back even further to 1912 when the company was named after two of its three founders, Wallace Cunningham and Arnold Crowe. The third founder, Robert Barr was to form the Barr & Wallace Arnold Trust in 1926. He also became Chairman. With its headquarters in Leeds, it was to become one of the industry’s foremost coach tour operators throughout the UK and in the 1970s even ventured into Europe under the Euroways banner. In 2005 the company merged with Shearings to become WA Shearings before the Wallace Arnold name was dropped in 2007.