Baghdad Bus: The Crazy 1930s Off-Road Desert Bus with a Kitchen & Beds

It's 1934 and in the harsh, boiling

desert

s that lie between the ancient cities of Damascus and Baghdad, a huge shiny vehicle tears through the unforgiving landscape, 80 feet long and weighing 26 tons. The massive 18-wheeler is the largest bus ever made. -A vehicle designed to transport customers safely and comfortably on a 550 50M trip through the

desert

. Up to 40 passengers are spread across two levels of this custom-built desert bus, divided between first and second class compartments. The luxurious reclining first class seats are so much more. From most transportation options of the day and insulated from heat or cold, passengers are protected from the worst effects of the extreme environment outside as they settle in for their nearly 24-hour journey.

The onboard butler is on hand to serve fresh food and drinks from the trailer's built-in

kitchen

, a spacious galley that features a two-place stove and a refrigerator in the front, a massive four-wheel drive tractor, and the manned everything. for up to three drivers ensuring continuous operation day or night and who can sleep in the rotating cabins travels from a small bunk in the cabin itself, while it may look like something straight out of the world of Mad Max, this custom coach was actually one of several vehicles employed by the N Transport company during the 1920s,

1930s

and 1940s and served as magical passengers along millions of miles of remote desert routes over its lifetime in an era before widespread adoption Of air travel, N service was the most luxurious, reliable and fastest transportation, starting first with small, simple cars before evolving into large, modern, customized vehicles. buses and features numerous innovations, including the first air conditioning ever installed in moving vehicles, but how did this incredible unique service begin and what happened to the incredible desert buses before they started today?

I just wanted to say a big thank you to this video. sponsor who is ODU ODU is the most powerful intuitive and customizable management platform ever created and can completely transform the way you run your business and certainly transformed the way we run our business. This is actually our little gallery and coffee shop that my wife and I run here in the rasi hallway. ODU has a suite of apps that can cover all your business needs, whether it's a point of sale that sells coffees here in the store, eCommerce and accounting, behind-the-scenes inventory projects or time management, you name it. you need ODU can help now on top of all that, besides allowing us to keep track of the products we sell, the coffees we are making, we have also been using odu's amazing open source website builder to create a better new website for our store and gallery.

I think what I like most is the freedom it offers: you don't have to deal with and work around the limitations of other website builders, but you can focus more on creating the exact online experience you want. you want and all backed by the incredible suite of apps and integrations that ODU helps provide, so no matter the size of your business, whether it's a quiet cafe and gallery on a small Scottish island or a much more complex organization if you're a simple or specific ODU. It can be tailored exactly to what you need, try it for yourself The first app is free for life with unlimited hosting and support, better yet, why not create a hassle-free website with Odu's open source website builder ?

You can get free hosting for life and you will get a free custom domain name for the entire first year. Thanks again for ODU support and check out the link in the description below to see how ODU can help you. Now I'm going to leave my little Gallery coffee shop and go back to making my video about the NN transport company. In 1920, the Middle East was a thriving hotbed of new businesses. French nations and administrations changed rapidly and modernization was spreading throughout the region and, with it, arriving trucks and cars. The Middle East or the remnants of war had a problem;

However, there were little to no trained mechanics or drivers who could keep them running and few suitable

road

s for use by brothers Norman and Gerald NN, originally born and raised on the South Island of New York. Zeeland had been in the Middle East since his military service during World War I and had made a living, first sailing and repairing cars from Beirut before founding one of the region's first motorized transport routes that ran up the coast from Beirut. . While the route made the brothers a name as expert mechanics and businessmen, finances were constantly tight in 1922, facing stiff competition from an increasing number of transportation companies with deeper pockets and newer vehicles, the brothers were forced to close the route.

Mechanical experience and skills in motorized transport were well regarded and they were soon approached by the British Consul in Damascus to propose an ambitious expedition that would cross the Syrian desert in motorized vehicles in the hope of establishing a viable route through the stretch of desert between British and French administered Baghdad. Such an expedition to Damascus by automobile was a major and possibly dangerous undertaking, but they were encouraged by the support of an unusual group, one of the most powerful in the region. Mohammad Iban Bassam was interested in the idea that Bassam was well known for a gold smuggling operation between Damascus and Baghdad and was looking for ways to avoid the traditional slow camel routes that raiders and local French authorities prayed for, Bam promised the brothers that he could guarantee no harassment from the local tribes he had influence over in exchange for help establishing what could be a faster and more efficient transportation route across the Syrian desert.

The first convoy consisting of three cars, the old but reliable Buick NN, an old mobile and at least one Italian Lancia, left Damascus on the 2nd of 1923, loaded with sufficient luggage. supplies for 10 days and 1,000 miles of travel if necessary, as well as several firearms in case they encounter rival or hostile tribesmen 3 days after leaving and having managed to drive their cars through the depths of the syan desert, the group of Travelers, including shik Bassam himself arrived in Baghdad. The Nens could immediately see the potential of this new route. Norman's business acumen and Gerald's mechanical skills. The advantage over competitors was considerable airmail and airliners were in their infancy and were prohibitively expensive and unreliable.

The only option. For most cargo passengers or men leaving newly British-administered Baghdad for Europe it was first through the port of Basra, then to Karachi or Bombay and finally across the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, a journey that It would take more than 6 weeks on transportation desert route. The possibility of reducing this trip to just 10 days Norman NN soon promoted the new route and went a step further: a service from Baghdad to New York in just 15 days, promising not only mail but also a passenger service with security in the guaranteed route from shik. Iben Bassam himself, as newspapers of the time also noted, Norman was soon in the United States looking to acquire a small fleet of well-regarded General Motors Cadillacs.

These v63 type touring cars proved to be extremely capable despite being loaded to carry passengers and an additional 16g water tank. Fuel canisters and piles of luggage. The Cadillac's powerful 83 horsepower V8 engines were fast and efficient and reduced travel time by 2 hours compared to the existing #1 vehicles. Despite the challenges and dangers, the service grew rapidly in scale and revenue. What first began as a weekly two-car Convoy had soon become a regular service seating up to a dozen cars and traveling up to 70 million hours on some legs, often outperforming competing airlines flying similar routes. By 1926, the NN had begun using a variety of large Safeway buses that offered much more comfort and cargo space to travelers and soon became recognizable as the earlier Cadillacs that appeared in various company advertisements and brochures in In a radio interview recorded during the height of its operations, Norman NN recalled the challenges of his service and the gradual increase of vehicles on the

road

that ultimately culminates in his most impressive creation.

The heat in the summer rises to 110 in the shade and not there is shade sometimes it is necessary to use gloves to change a burst tire because it is very hot between a man and the rot, the cars had to cross a 40 m strip of lava. Boulders, there were no boulders less than 6 inches in diameter. In winter it is very cold and there are strong storms that turn the desert into a sea of ​​mud and frequently the buses remain stationary, however, each bus carries food for four days so that the passengers do not suffer unnecessarily. In 1926, the old Cadillac automobiles were exchanged for a six-wheeled luxury bus that carried 15 passengers in men's chairs.

They were very successful and continued until 1930, when The company experimented with a light semi-trailer towed with the Buick Roadster. It was so successful that it gave us the idea to build a very large semi-trailer that entered service in 1934. This coach is 8 feet long and carries 40 passengers. It has a buffet. on board with oil sanitary facilities, this is the largest bus in the world and weighs 26 tons. n's massive Maron headington was a revelation, it was the company's first attempt at creating a bespoke large vehicle, designed entirely for its uses and needs and unlike almost anything else in the world.

On the road at the time the Marman Headington all-wheel drive systems were well regarded and the Nens had seen great use of them by the Iraqi oil company, which had been using them in their efforts to build aircraft for oil pipelines across of the city and abandon it. It was powered by a new 188 horsepower Hercules diesel engine with a 12 forward and three reverse gearbox, should it ever get stuck the trailer could be quickly unhitched and the tractor repositioned to pull it out, a problem that had plagued the big, heavy Safeway. In buses, the main luggage compartment was located in a large compartment at the rear of the trailer and in a secondary compartment at the front, giving a total luggage capacity of almost 2.8 tons.

The interior featured comfortable airplane-style recliners in first class and storage compartments located in the ceiling. Providing an additional 900kg of storage one level higher at the rear of the coach was the second class compartment, which was slightly narrower to make room for the cargo area under the floor and had no overhead storage. The trailer also included a toilet, although it was not exactly clear where it was located, most likely between the first and second class compartments at the front of the trailer was the galley. Ed, a relatively spacious

kitchen

that contained the meal preparation area and snacks served during the trip.

The kitchen also contained the main telephone. connection that could be used by the driver or steward on the trailer to communicate with the drivers on the main tractor n The vehicles would always operate with at least two drivers to ensure continuous operation and especially to prevent drivers from falling asleep during long journeys night tours of the In the desert for the tractor, a small bunk bed was also located behind the driver's bench so that one could rest during the 24 of our trip. The trailer was completely custom built at Bender Body Company of Cleveland and the tractor was a modified design from one of the Marman Herrington 3's. -four-wheel drive trucks, so the world's largest bus caused quite a stir in the local media at the time.

If you check the records, you will find quite a bit of information about its commissioning and construction, especially on the premises. American newspapers about where it was built, but in terms of the sources that give us information about what this bus looked like and how it worked, there isn't a huge amount, there aren't many photos of it, in fact the best and some of the only photos of the interior, especially of this vehicle, come from this Popular Mechanics magazine. Actually, it's March 1934. Now I need to find the page. Funnily enough, I'm looking at this right now and there'san article here about airmail beacons and I made a video All about airmail beacons and I had no idea that I actually had a magazine that had a lot of information about them, but anyway you can watch that video about the eggs as well So here is the article and it is fantastic.

Simplified bus replaces camels in desert is the headline and then these are two of the only photos there. There are a couple of other photos showing the second class compartment a little further back, but these are two of the only photos I've found of the interior of this bus and most of them. The most important thing for me includes the galley. You can see here the details of the gallion and how it worked, and when it came time to make that amazing 3D model that Brendan put together and these were basically the only sources we had to continue with, now it says. here Travelers crossing the city and the desert from Baghdad to Damascus can now use a modern coach instead of a camel, of course, for the last decade they have been using Cadillac cars, but anyway, an American manufacturer recently delivered two Huge buses for this traffic. for Freight and the other almost as big as a Pullman car to carry passengers, so they mentioned two vehicles there, a freight car and a passenger car, and that's true, so it was £8,000 that the nens paid for the custom Poolman H-style coach, as they called it.

They had also delivered a more original conventional version of the Marman Herington all-wheel drive tractor um with a much more boxy cargo trailer because remember one of the most important elements of the NN transport company's kind of sales pitch was the fact that You have a lot of luggage with you, so not only can you travel comfortably, as you can see here, you have a lovely comfortable seat, you have a kitchen and a kitchen to serve. For food and cold drinks, there was actually a fridge on board. H, it was essentially an ice box that you could fill from the outside and you could put fruits and vegetables and things like that in it to keep it cold, but it also had several copper tubes running. through it and the onboard water tank would filter through this ice box and then coming out of this tank would be lovely cold water again, quite a luxury if you consider traveling through the desert, you know, the sweltering heat, this was a big part of NN's sales pitch to customers, especially as airplane competition became increasingly tighter, but the one thing NN always had about the airplane until the end was the fact that, I think, you had a lot more baggage at the beginning.

According to the old brochures you can look at, you would get 60 free baggage units included in your ticket and I think it was a shilling in the pound that you spent. Your luggage allows it now. I think that actually went up with the buses. I think it went up to £75 and again it is very significant when you consider that an aircraft of the time was unreliable or relatively unreliable, very dependent on good weather conditions and the like. It is not as comfortable as what the bus service could offer. the nearby transportation company and also had less luggage and would also have been more expensive now as the bus was used for about 10 years, racking up hundreds of thousands of miles and trips through the desert as it enters the World War.

II, the service they could offer was obviously disrupted by the conflict and at that time, around the same time Norman n probably did that interview in 1942, it was sold to the Royal Air Force and the bus was actually used to transport personnel to various air bases and surrounding areas and there's this incredible, I think iconic, photo of Buz, the only one I know of from that time period, um, in his Royal Air Force type of outfit and nothing looks more like Mad Max than that photo, I think you can see it. absolutely amazing it's kind of a top down photo you can see some people around now after the war the bus was sold again but the NN didn't buy it, it was actually bought by a competitor of the NS, a former employee bought it and mechanic who once worked for NN and ran it from Baghdad essentially as a competitor to the NN service which was still in operation at the time, but I think the lack of available parts and the attempt to maintain this huge, complex bus.

The service was too much and eventually sold out again. I have heard some reports that it lasted until the 1960s but I am not sure at that time the road was cool in the world's largest bus and the nens had only owned it for about 10 years, they had operated it until 1942 , then they sold it to the Royal Air Force, then they sold it to people and it disappeared, but by that time the names had already moved. because they had taken what they had learned from the world's original largest bus and used it to develop a new form of land transportation.

As early as 1934, the brothers, recognizing the success of their desert buses, began designing a new version that would take into account the lessons learned from the huge Marman Headington instead of the large passenger coach and Freight L; instead, it would be two custom-made twin coaches; These would be smaller than the previous Marman Headington, eliminating second class and instead carrying only 18 passengers, but with greater comfort and higher speeds, the buses would also reach average speeds of between 60 and 65 mph and reduce travel time. crossing only 15 hours away. The design would follow the successful tractor and trailer design with a more elegant, aerodynamic and revolutionary design for the time.

The stainless steel body built by the American engineering firm Bud, which had recently completed the famous stainless steel Pioneer Zephyr train that powered it all, would be a 150 horsepower Cumins Diesel with a specially designed radiator to cool the trucks during long drives through the desert. Perhaps most revolutionary, however, would be the air conditioning system. Norman was interested in working with the Americans again, as his experience in air conditioning systems was well known, but installing them in a coach or bus was almost unheard of. . The solution created by the carrier's engineering company was a 4-cylinder continental engine driving a compressor. that could keep the internal temperature of the bus at a comfortable 90°F.

It was a development that proved incredibly popular and the carrier would go on to use its newly developed product on a range of trains and buses, starting a trend of air conditioning in vehicles that would only gain more and more popularity as the decades passed, so it took me about two years to locate this magazine. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I ended up finding this in a small bookstore in Canada and the store owner was kind enough to send me this and this is Modern Mechanics, it's a competitor, it was a competitor to Popular Mechanics and this is the edition of October 1937 and the reason I've been looking for it for so long is because of this amazing article, so this beautiful article here is about the two buses, the final iteration, the ultimate expression of the NN transportation company's drive to to make the most luxurious land transportation possible, and in many ways, these two buses were like the final iteration in all the Lessons learned over the years, from the first Buicks and Cadillacs, to the Mar and Headington buses, you know the huge bus in the world at the time and eventually culminated in these slightly smaller and more Nimble Overland buses, but. built with a greater degree of luxury and comfort that again competed with the airlines of the time and also aimed at speed and efficiency.

Actually, it is mentioned in this article here that the new buses take 9 hours from the previous Crossing time and do the 600m Journey over traceless waste in 15 hours while the passengers balance comfortably on rubber cushions and these buses had a great success. I've always been a little bit more interested in the marman Herington because it's something huge and unique, but these buses were the real workhorses and they got to work, I think, but they said in one of these books that by 1956 these buses had accumulated about a million miles in the constant round trip through the desert and that is a testament not only to the buses but also the engineering and the workshops um and the teams of engineers that kept these buses running these buses also represented the Aon Transport company at its peak.

I would say the company's heyday was around 1939 because at that time they still had On the Marman Herington bus they still used their older Safeway buses and they had these two new Pullman buses, so there was a constant flow of traffic on all of these different routes that they had developed and I think that was really when they had peaked what the business was accomplishing, um and then of course there was a lot of disruption that came from the war once they sold their company and the NN company. Transport had disbanded, buses were still Marman's direction, we think. maybe they ran until the 1950s and 1960s, these buses, the final report I found, maybe one of these was still in operation around 1970.

That's pretty remarkable when you consider that by 1956 these buses had amassed about a million miles of travel through the desert and still lasted potentially into the 1970s, um again. A true testament to the engineering that went into these, so what happened to the N Trans transport company? In the end, can you still get on a Pullman bus, an air-conditioned coach and drive in style from Baghdad to Damascus or thereabouts. No, I'm sure you can get on a bus and I'm sure the road you drive on from Damascus to Baghdad follows a very similar route to that pioneered by the Nens. in 1922 1923 but it won't be a naron transportation bus the N Transportation Company was officially dissolved in 1956 but interestingly Norman and Gerald NN were not part of the company at the time Point um in 1946 Gerald wanted out, he wanted to retire, he wanted to come back to New Zealand, his homeland, and retire there, and Norman decided to stay a couple more years.

It was 1948 when he put the company's last affairs in order and then moved around the world. I think he got married three different times, but the company was worth a lot of money, it was valued at 80,000, a lot of money in those days, they had made a lot of money during the war, you know, moving personnel and offering transportation to the army. After the war there was still a massive demand for ground transportation, you know, airplanes hadn't yet eclipsed them in that way, but what they decided to do they had offers from the government of Iraq, you know, interests from various parties to buy the business. they actually sold it to their employees.

Company N had always paid their employees very well, they demanded a lot from them, they worked them very, very hard, but they had paid much higher rates and better wages than any other competition and that is what kept their drivers and mechanics very trained. they retained in the company so what they ended up doing was selling it to the employees, but unfortunately local conditions were becoming more difficult in the area in 1948, the British had moved out of Palestine, there were a lot of internal conflicts that began to bubble and troubles boiling up around the borders and, more than anything, the Suz crisis really started to exacerbate things and had to mean that many people who once worked for the company, who were British and English and New Zealand Landers and the L and The Americans ended up fleeing to avoid the conflict, the entire company ended up basically collapsing.

In reality, there was apparently a smuggling operation that had taken place between Damascus and Baghdad. It's quite interesting, remember those first ones. days with shik ibben bassan and his smuggling operation but with these vehicles that had now been used for smuggling were supposedly seized by the authorities there was not enough money to release them the shareholders did not have enough capital available and basically the company collapsed and obviously must It had been a pretty sad experience because N had built this company, handed it over to his employees and the people they had worked with over the years and then watched it all fall apart, a lot of his colleagues and you know, the people that they had worked with for years basically had to leave the Middle East with absolutely nothing as a result of this whole company basically falling apart, but you know a fascinating story: the fact that they managed to keep this business up and running throughout all those years, I think it's actually quite remarkable and the level of development goes from those tiny little Buick roadsters all the way up to these huge air-conditioned buses, something you don't even know about in the most luxurious trains of the time. anywhere in the world there would beappeared is actually quite remarkable.

Sometimes I think that maybe somewhere in the Middle East right now is the old discarded stainless steel wagon from one of these pans, maybe it's just there in a scrapyard, maybe it's been repurposed. like a garage, a shed, a workshop or something, it's surprising sometimes how many of these things pop up all of a sudden, so you never know, maybe one day some of the National Heritage Transport will eventually resurface, but of course anyway um awesome topic, I've been wanting to tell you about this for years because it was actually a friend of mine, Blair Bowman, who sent me this on Twitter and was like hey have you ever heard of this and it was a It was a 3D model that someone had made, I think for a truck simulator or that huge Mar and Herington.

I thought, wow, that's really weird, I looked it up and couldn't find anything about it and then I ended up ordering, uh. Where is the book? This book. NN bus to Baghdad uh from J Tullet. This is basically the if you want to know the history of the NN brothers. This is the one you should look at. This has a lot of fantastic photos that you already know. the story you could ever want to know and I started diving into it and became obsessed and that's when I contacted Brendan who had done the 3D model for Rescue Boy and also did the 3D model for the commune and I said.

Okay, I have one more thing. Can you take about eight photos? This is the only photo I have of all this. Can you make all this 3D model app? And he did it. I mean the 3D model is amazing. I need to make, I think I need to make some kind of highlight reel that just shows that 3D model because it's remarkable how much detail it's managed to include even though you know the fact that we literally have maybe a dozen good quality photos of what this really looked like. Really amazing anyway. Thanks so much for looking.

Thanks again to my clients for all your help and support. As always, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll scan it. as much as I can from all of these magazines and I'll post them on my Patreon page so you can see these things in more detail, but yeah, thank you so much for checking them out and I will. See you next time, bye.