This is the first of a batch of photo features prepared some years ago. This particular version is based on an original feature published in a Maltese transport magazine in 2006. Like all features in this series, the narrative (reproduced below) is somewhat dated and may not have been absolutely accurate in the first instance. A lot of information has subsequently been published elsewhere about this particular bus. Here's what I wrote in 2008:
Possibly the most famous ‘Bedford’ of them all, FBY 781 has always been something of an enigma. Variously recorded as an OB or OL, we now know that it was not a Bedford at all - but a 1953 dockyards rebuild of a 1936 White. The 36-seat body was built by Barbara.
Initially registered 3359, it entered service in the white and blue Mellieha route livery shown in the first view (an approximate digital representation). It was later renumbered A-3359, Y-1482 and then Y-0781 as shown in the ‘green era’ view from 1993. At this time it was one of a large number of normal-control Bedfords and Bedford look-alikes. By the time of the first ‘yellow-era’ view from 1996, normal-control Bedfords (real or otherwise) were thin on the ground. Now registered FBY 781, it was already a minor celebrity.
In 1998 it gained the pre-war ‘WT’ style chrome radiator shell from an earlier generation bus, as seen below in March 2002. This was sadly to be its swansong. The end came twelve months later when (with its original pressed steel radiator shell re-instated) it was part-exchanged for a new BMC low-floor bus. It survives in the private collection of Leo Grech but its future is unclear.
See my complete set of Malta Bus Photo Features here:
www.flickr.com/photos/northernblue109/sets/72157631903411...
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