Corgi 1/76 OM41913A Leyland PD3 Queen Mary Open Top, Southdown Motor Services, 197 Eastbourne via & Birling Gap

Leyland PD3 'Queen Mary' Open Top, Southdown Motor Services, 197 Eastbourne via & Birling Gap
Nearly sixty years ago, the first of what eventually turned out to be around three hundred very different buses took to the road. Seating sixty-nine on thirty feet of bus, the ‘Queen Mary’s’ were large machines, considerably larger than anything Sussex had seen before – contrasting the familiar red and cream buses of Brighton Corporation Transport and Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company. The last of these green and cream machines entered service in 1967 and were worthy successors to Southdown’s existing double deckers.