British Municipal Buses in Portugal

From 1940 until the mid-1970s Britain supplied Portugal with many of its bus chassis. In the capital city of Lisbon, the local operator was CCFL, which was the first buyer of heavyweight British-built bus chassis. Between 1947 and 1949 some 141 single-deckers were placed in service. The first double-deckers were two Leyland Titan PD1As arriving in 1947, but from 1950 a large fleet of AEC Regent IIIs and Vs was purchased, with the last ones arriving in 1967.

The development of public transport in Oporto began when the municipal authorities wished to encourage mule-hauled trams. The criticism of the slow speed of tram travel began to pick up pace and between 1954 and 1957 batches of Daimler under-floor single-deckers were delivered to Oporto, followed by ten Leyland Worldmaster LERT1/1s in 1959 and then ten AEC Regent V D2LA double-deckers in July 1960.

British motorbuses were obtained in small numbers in Coimbra, with only twenty-three ever being purchased. In 1949, a pair of Daimler CVD6s was bought new while in February 1964 two AEC Regent Vs were purchased, becoming the only double-deckers to ever operate in that university city.

With a wonderful array of photographs, David Harvey tells the story of British buses in Lisbon, Oporto and Coimbra, among other locations in Portugal, documenting a period where the public transport of Portugal would have seemed familiar to any British tourist.