I have just received an email (May 2007) from a gentleman owning a restoration company, Concours Motor Company, based in Solihull, West Midlands.  They have this vehicle available for sale!  Apparently it is currently in need of restoration.

So if there is someone out there with deep pockets who wants a truly unique vehicle...

King George VI's horsebox.  The building is believed to be WIndsor Castle.
	Photo from the September 1953 ACV gazette, kindly provided by Neil Fraser

Regstration number is HXA 167.  Body is by Vincent.

Does anyone know the fate of this bus?

We know from the Oxford half-cabs page of the Classic Buses Website that it started life as a Weyman-bodied half-cab Regal (B32F), chassis O6623560, in 1940.
	Peter Relf

Here it is full-front form, but as Peter Relf points out, it looks like a conversion rather than a rebodying, because the rear looks remarkably like the Weyman body, complete with roof-top luggage rack. So who did the conversion, and who was the operator? What happened to it?

Maurice Bateman comments "To me this has the appearance and stamp of Smiths of Reading all over it! Certainly Smiths had extensive facilities, both mechanical & bodyshops, and rebuilding it to this configueration would have been easy for them."

I know I could be accused of favouring the half-cab Regals on this site, but here for a change is a recent photo of a once-beautiful full-fronted 1953 Beadle-bodied Regal, ex-Northern General no.1483.  The vehicle was rescued from a scrapyard in West Sussex in 1982 by the North Eastern Bus Preservation Trust, and has been waiting restoration since then. 

The main problem is that the windows, complete with sliders, have been removed.  These slant backwards and are fitted into an aluminium frame which is proving impossible to replicate today.  The Trust managed to find a set of windows and sliders from  the Dover Transport Museum, but cannot find the aliminium inserts into which the window glass fits.   

Can anyone help with locating frames, or advise where the section can be bought?  Further details of the exaction sections required can be found on the Trust's website at www.nebpt.co.uk.  Please email Ian Findlay at ian.findlay@ nebt.co.uk (remove the space after the @)