The Alexander Ultra was a

low floor Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...

single-deck bus A single-decker bus or single-decker is a bus that has a single deck for passengers. Normally the use of the term ''single-decker'' refers to a standard two-axled rigid bus, in direct contrast to the use of the term double-decker bus, which i ...

body built on the

Volvo B10L The Volvo Group ( sv, Volvokoncernen; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distributio ...

chassis by

Walter Alexander Coachbuilders Walter Alexander CoachbuildersCompanies House extract company no SC0261 ...

from 1995 to 1998. It was the

right-hand drive Left-hand traffic (LHT) and right-hand traffic (RHT) are the practices, in bidirectional traffic, of keeping to the left side or to the right side of the road, respectively. They are fundamental to traffic flow, and are sometimes referred to ...

equivalent of the and was built on license from

Volvo Buses Volvo Buses (Volvo Bus Corporation / formal name: ''Volvo Bussar AB'') (stylized as VOLVO) is a subsidiary and a business area of the Swedish vehicle maker Volvo, which became an independent division in 1968. It is based in Gothenburg. It is on ...

Development

Developed in conjunction with Volvo Buses, the Alexander Ultra was developed on the B10L chassis with the aim to be the first low-floor Volvo bus to be sold in the United Kingdom. Alexander employed the use of Volvo subsidiary 'System 2000' frame, using a combination of

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

and

extrusion Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile by pushing material through a die of the desired cross-section. Its two main advantages over other manufacturing processes are its ability to create very complex c ...

s secured with positively

bolted joint A bolted joint is one of the most common elements in construction and machine design. It consists of a male threaded fastener (e. g., a bolt) that captures and joins other parts, secured with a matching female screw thread. There are two main t ...

s. The Säffle frame differs from other Alexander products of the time, such as the

Alexander PS type The Alexander PS-type was a step-floor single-decker bus body built by Walter Alexander Coachbuilders in Falkirk, Scotland and was produced from 1988 to the late 1990s predominantly on the Dennis Lance, Mercedes-Benz O405, Scania N113, Volvo ...

, with the low-floor B10L chassis requiring the body of the bus to be an integral part of the vehicle, in contrast to older chassis supporting

body-on-frame Body-on-frame, also known as ladder frame construction, is a common motor vehicle construction method, whereby a separate body or coach is mounted on a strong and relatively rigid vehicle frame or chassis that carries the powertrain (the engin ...

construction. Internally, the Ultra had a gangway between the front wheels and a flat floor throughout most of the bus, with seats in the passenger compartment suspended from the ceiling via the grab handles. Double-glazed windows were also offered. Four pre-production demonstrators were produced, the first of which was bodied by Säffle and delivered to

Mainline Buses South Yorkshire Transport (SYT) was a bus operator that provided services around South Yorkshire and outlying areas. The company was formed as an 'arms-length' successor of the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE) in 1986, whic ...

in April 1994. Subsequent Ultras were built on license to Alexander at their

Mallusk Grange of Mallusk (from Irish: ''Maigh Bhloisce'', meaning 'Bloisce's plain), or Mallusk, is a village and townland (of 933 acres) in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Mallusk is within the urban area of Newtownabbey, and it is also within the Antr ...

plant in

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, ) is one of six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population o ...

, Northern Ireland.

Operators

The Alexander Ultra ultimately did not sell well, however it received significant orders from a handful of operators in the UK and Ireland. The biggest customer of the Ultra were the

Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company The Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company (NITHCo) is a government-owned body which was established in 1967 to take over the railway and bus services of the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA), namely Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) and Ulsterbu ...

, who in what was the UK's biggest low floor bus order at the time, ordered 60 Ultras in July 1995, 50 of which were delivered to Citybus and the remaining 10 delivered to

Ulsterbus Ulsterbus is a public transport operator in Northern Ireland and operates bus services outside Belfast. It is part of Translink, the brand name for the subsidiary operating companies of the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company, which also ...

for services in

Derry Derry, officially Londonderry (), is the second-largest city in Northern Ireland and the fifth-largest city on the island of Ireland. The name ''Derry'' is an anglicisation of the Old Irish name (modern Irish: ) meaning 'oak grove'. The ...

. Two pre-production demonstrator examples were also acquired. Travel West Midlands 1509

Travel West Midlands National Express West Midlands (NXWM) is a bus operator in the West Midlands that operates services in Birmingham, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton, and Solihull, as well as limited routes outside of the general area of Birmingham, s ...

were the second biggest customer for the Ultra, taking delivery of 14 of the type in 1997 for use on route 529 serving

Walsall Walsall (, or ; locally ) is a market town and administrative centre in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands County, England. Historic counties of England, Historically part of Staffordshire, it is located north-west of Birmingham, east ...

and

Wolverhampton Wolverhampton () is a city, metropolitan borough and administrative centre in the West Midlands, England. The population size has increased by 5.7%, from around 249,500 in 2011 to 263,700 in 2021. People from the city are called "Wulfrunian ...

via

Willenhall Willenhall is a market town situated in the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, in the West Midlands, England, with a population taken at the 2011 census of 28,480. It is situated between Wolverhampton and Walsall, historically in the county of St ...

. These Ultras were fuelled by

compressed natural gas Compressed natural gas (CNG) is a fuel gas mainly composed of methane (CH4), compressed to less than 1% of the volume it occupies at standard atmospheric pressure. It is stored and distributed in hard containers at a pressure of , usually in cy ...

in a partnership supported by the

Energy Saving Trust Energy Saving Trust (EST) is a British organization devoted to promoting Efficient energy use, energy efficiency, energy conservation, and the sustainable energy, sustainable use of energy, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and helping to p ...

between TWM, Volvo Bus and

British Gas British Gas (trading as Scottish Gas in Scotland) is an energy and home services provider in the United Kingdom. It is the trading name of British Gas Services Limited and British Gas New Heating Limited, both subsidiaries of Centrica. Serving ...

, who constructed CNG refuelling points at TWM's Walsall garage for the buses. The other operators of the Alexander Ultra were

First Northampton First Northampton was a bus company in Northampton. It was a subsidiary of FirstGroup and part of the First Midlands division. It ceased operating on 14 September 2013. Timeline of

Wigan Wigan ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, on the River Douglas, Lancashire, River Douglas. The town is midway between the two cities of Manchester, to the south-east, and Liverpool, to the south-west. Bolton lies to the nor ...

, who purchased 6 Ultras with grant funding from Greater Manchester PTE, and

Dublin Bus Dublin Bus ( ga, Bus Átha Cliath) is a State-owned bus operator providing services in Dublin. By far the largest bus operator in the city, it carried 138 million passengers in 2019. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Córas Iompair Éireann. ...

, who took delivery of five diesel Ultras as well as one dual-door CNG Ultra, the latter of which was quickly disposed of by the operator. Production of the Ultra ceased in 1998, with Alexander moving on to develop the

Alexander ALX300 The Alexander ALX300 (later known as the TransBus ALX300 and the Alexander Dennis ALX300) was a low-floor bus body manufactured by Alexander and later Alexander Dennis in Falkirk, Scotland. It was launched in 1997 as a replacement for the Stri ...

body, which was available on the

Volvo B10BLE The Volvo B10BLE was a rear-engined low-entry single-decker bus chassis manufactured by Volvo in Sweden between 1993 and 2004. The first prototypes were built in 1992, but mass production started in 1993, only a year after the high-floor B10B. It ...

chassis.

References

External links

{{Walter Alexander bodies

Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...

Alexander Ultra The Alexander Ultra was a low floor single-deck bus body built on the Volvo B10L chassis by Walter Alexander Coachbuilders from 1995 to 1998. It was the right-hand drive equivalent of the and was built on license from Volvo Buses. Development ...

Single-deck buses Low-floor buses Vehicles introduced in 1994

Development

Operators

See also

References

External links