As a website dedicated to Bristol RE/ECW Series 1 coaches, we’ve chosen to profile the loss of Jonathan Radley’s superb Bristol RE Red and White coach ‘OAX9F’, known to many as Ruby.

First though, we must all reflect upon the tragic loss of the two fire-fighters and a member of the public, who lost their lives in the very serious fire at Bicester Motion on 15th May 2025. As we understand the situation, two further fire-fighters are seriously injured in a nearby hospital. Our thoughts are with all of those people, their families and friends.

It goes without saying that loss of life should be treated with the sympathy and respect that it deserves, over and above loss of property. However, there will be others directly connected with Bicester Motion who will be massively impacted by last weeks tragic event.

Jonathan’s RE coach, Ruby, was the culmination of 12 years dedicated work to bring it to the superb condition he achieved with it. He travelled widely with Ruby to various shows and events. Those of you who saw it will know just how much he put into restoring, driving and displaying it. He was also an excellent ambassador for promoting the heritage of the vehicle, Red and White Services Limited and the wider preserved bus movement. The loss to him will be immense, but we hope he takes comfort from remembering what he achieved with her and the respect he commanded by those who benefitted from his dedicated efforts.

This site was originally created by Carl Berry, who sadly passed away in 2022. We (Nick Jackson and Nigel Frampton) have created this new version of the site, but the work of collecting and organising the data had already been performed by Carl, to whom we are most grateful. We are also very grateful to Adele Berry for her support and input for this project.

The site contains details about the original Eastern Coachworks (ECW) coach body on Bristol’s RELH chassis.

Built between 1963 and 1970 it was based on a design that ECW had supplied on the Bristol MW chassis for a number of years. After 1970 ECW only supplied its standard ‘bus shape’ body on the RELH until 1972 after which it offered a newer coach body design. Details of other Bristol REs, and other Bristol chassis can be found at Rob Sly’s Bristol Commercial Vehicles Enthusiasts and Gerry Tormey’s Bristol Vehicles websites.

Details of the range of companies, schools, groups and individuals that have owned these coaches have now been added to the Search for owners page, and similarly liveries carried are now detailed on the new List of liveries page.

Models of these coaches have been produced by EFE ( in 1:76 scale ) and Graham Farish ( 1:160 US N scale ) and details can be found on the Model Bus Zone website.