Birch Brothers

Birch Bros. was a bus, coach and taxi operator based at Kentish Town London.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_Brothers

Registration Number 92FXD Built in July 1963 (Body Nos. B49781-6); for Birch Brothers (Photographs Copyright © (2)).  

Registration Number MAU 1955 is a Park Royal "Royalist" coach body on a Maudslay chassis (Chassis Number MU3RV273, PRV Body Number B37252) that was in fact a "badge engineered" standard AEC Reliance chassis (Maudslay, being part of the ACV Group, regularly "badge engineered" AEC products; in this case they placed the letter M at the front of the chassis number).  In the AEC designation system, the chassis number MMU3RV273 is identified as (M=Maudslay; M=Medium weight; U=Underfloor; 3=five speed synchromesh gearbox; R=Right hand drive; & V=Vacuum brakes).

This coach was exhibited at the 1954 Motor Show and the pseudo registration number is just advertising for MAUdslay (the "1955" registration being next season salesmanship).  GULliver 4433 was the phone number of Birch Brothers of Kentish Town with whom, after the show, it entered service registered as PLA 830.

Birch Brothers also operated a London-wide taxi service. They provided their own Diesel conversion service for other fleets and also experimented with a completely  new taxi, based on a Standard Vanguard chassis, that was coach-built at Park Royal and designed by my father Alfred Hill. 

 The Birch diesel taxi, from my father's archive (see the Birch Taxi page).

Birch FX3 Diesel Conversion
The advert for the Birch diesel conversion of the FX3		This is the only known photograph of the Ferguson four  cylinder diesel engine mounted in the Birch converted FX3
Click Here for the full advertisement text of page 2		(Images from my father's archive).

These links are via the INTERNET ARCHIVE that preserves notable sites that have been deleted from the Internet.  Though the sites are no longer operational they do contain useful information but please appreciate that they are out-of-date.