No 16 Analysis

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Although Rex had produced his own version of a rear engine coach in his back-yard in 1952 with the conversion of No 3 as described earlier, No 16 (with twin No 17 to immediately follow) would be very historic because this would be the first ever brand new Australian designed rear engine touring coach to go into service in this country.
There had been imported rear engine American designs by way of the Flxible Clippers built here under license of course, and others such as imported American Reo chassis based buses, etc, but nothing quite like these very effective, very economical and very comfortable little 33 seater Bedford touring coaches.
The significance of this event was recorded by Truck and Bus Transportation magazine in their December
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The dropped and extended offside rear chassis rail can be seen behind.

These two coaches were a revelation in smoothness and quietness, and the attention to details such as the much longer springs, combined with the vehicles’ overall light weight, provided the passengers with a very comfortable ride that compared more than favourably with that of the then queens of the roads, the Ansair Flxible Clippers. It’s significant that this coach, No 16, had accumulated 20,000 miles at the time of the article, and there was nothing but positive commentary about its reliability and economy, not to mention its handling and very positive passenger appeal. And this was a vehicle costing a fraction of the then going price for a new Ansair Flxible Clipper....! Rex’s lateral thinking was beginning to show very fruitful results.

Chapter 5 The 1950’s ended with the Redline fleet count now including Nos 16 and 17, both of which would soon be converted to 330 Bedford diesel power. Much had happened and it is worth noting that during the previous five years Rex had placed orders for new chassis’ with three different manufacturers, and five different coach body
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Both of these individuals, by the names of Bratter and Denning had turned up the back-yard depot at Coorparoo on spec, firstly Mr Bratter in approximately 1956, followed by Alan Denning in 1959.
Bratter was a Swiss immigrant whose resume described his previous supervisory technical design role in a Swiss factory producing all-aluminium railway passenger carriages. He managed to convince Rex that he would be very capable of constructing a high quality light-weight all-aluminium bodied touring coach, resulting in the eventual fiasco I described earlier that devastated Rex at the time.
I can particularly remember the day Alan Denning called in to see Rex. I recall I was alone at home at the time, and the yard was virtually empty of vehicles. I noticed a grey coloured FJ Holden ute with a canopy pull into the yard and out stepped a gentleman who I firstly thought was a domestic tradesman of some