[BITList] Red in tooth and claw

[John Feltham]

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Sinclair,  Donald McIntyre  (1901-1971), passenger transport engineer and manager, was born at 10 Carlton Terrace, Maryhill, Glasgow, on 18 December 1901, the third son in the family of at least four sons and two daughters of John Sinclair, mercantile cashier, and his wife, Nicholas, nee Wylie. After schooling at Milngavie and at Bearsden Academy, he was a student at the Royal Technical College, Glasgow (a forerunner of the University of Strathclyde), from where his parents hoped that he would enter the shipbuilding industry. Instead, he became an apprentice automobile engineer with Albion Motor Car Company of Scotstoun, Glasgow, after which he drove and maintained buses in Perthshire. He married, at Killin, Perthshire, on 8 January 1924, Catherine Ann Thomson, daughter of James McGregor, ground officer. They had three daughters.

In 1924 Sinclair moved south as a branch engineer with British Petroleum at Bedford, Croydon, and then Bristol. He joined the passenger transport industry in 1931 as assistant to the chief engineer of the Northern General Transport Company at Gateshead, where he was involved in development work and the design and manufacture of side-engine single-decker buses.

In April 1940 Sinclair moved to Birmingham as chief engineer to the Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company (BMMO), known universally as Midland Red on account of the fleet's livery. In October 1943, on the death of the company's traffic manager, he became acting general manager, which combined the engineering and traffic roles, and was formally appointed to that position in the summer of 1944. At Midland Red he made his mark as an engineering innovator and passenger transport manager.

From its early days the BMMO was led by engineers who saw the future in designing and building their own buses. Between the wars the company employed talented engineers and established factories in Birmingham where under the banner of BMMO they manufactured many of the buses which operated under the Midland Red name. Although a chief engineer, S. C. Vince, was appointed in 1947, Sinclair retained an active role in the manufacture and design of the company's vehicles.

During the Second World War Sinclair began developing improvements in bus design, and after the war he led the expansion of the company's engineering division at its three main sites (Digbeth, Bearwood, and Carlyle Road, Edgbaston), where some 3000 employees built, modified, and serviced the fleet of buses. His ambition was to see the majority of the company's transport needs fulfilled by vehicles constructed in its own works. Many component parts, including engines, gearboxes, chassis, and bodies, were made and assembled there.

Sinclair and his small management team created buses which were in the forefront of engineering innovation. Underfloor engines which lowered the centre of gravity and freed up more space for passengers were introduced on Midland Red vehicles before other operators adopted them. Novel bodywork features included streamlining and wraparound windscreens to reduce drag and improve fuel consumption, while radiators were sited behind slotted covers. Fibreglass body panels were used to reduce weight and maintenance, and rubber suspension units (and later air suspension) improved passenger comfort and achieved weight saving. Disc brakes and fluorescent lighting were introduced. Thirty-foot long buses were brought into service on the first day that they were permitted on Britain's roads, following a relaxation in the official regulations in 1950.

During Sinclair's period of office Midland Red became the largest bus company in the country outside London, both in the size of its fleet, peaking at around 2000 buses, and in the area of its operations, some 12,000 square miles stretching from Nottingham down to Oxfordshire, and from the Welsh borders to Rutland. Passenger numbers rose from 327 million in 1944 to a peak of 484 million in 1956. Despite the later employment of a traffic manager, Sinclair had ultimate responsibility for keeping the vast network of routes on the road. He coined the slogan 'The Friendly Midland Red'.

In November 1959, when the M1 motorway opened, Midland Red launched Britain's first motorway coach service, from Digbeth coach station to London. While the motorway was being built, Sinclair and his team of engineers had designed and built upgraded coaches (complete with toilets) with supercharged engines capable of speeds of up to 100 m.p.h. He personally tested one at the Motor Industry Research Association's proving ground at Lindley, at speeds of up to 85 m.p.h. In the event those engines were governed to a speed of 80 m.p.h., which was well in excess of the top speed of most cars. Motorists on the M1 became accustomed to being overtaken by Midland Red coaches, which reduced the scheduled coach journey time from Birmingham to London from 5 hours 20 minutes to 3 hours 25 minutes and subsequently 2 hours 55 minutes. To cope with demand, thirty new fast coaches were built and motorway services from Coventry to London (1960) and Birmingham to Worcester (1962) were introduced.

Sinclair oversaw the construction of a central bus station which opened under the new Bull Ring development in Birmingham in November 1963, but it suffered a series of problems and failed to arrest a decline in bus usage. By the early 1960s most of Midland Red's routes were losing money. Car ownership reduced passenger numbers, which fell to 276 million in 1966. Staff shortages, as workers were attracted to better paying jobs in car manufacturing, affected reliability, while in-house bus making was proving uneconomic. By the time of Sinclair's retirement, in 1966, the BMMO was facing nationalization.

Sinclair was a hands-on engineer, never happier than when he could don a heavy overcoat and drive around Birmingham city centre with his chief engineer to test an experimental chassis. His innovations were widely copied, and his advice on fibreglass body panels was even sought by a British motor racing manufacturer. For Sinclair, the construction of fibreglass body panels had a labour management dimension, as he had not enjoyed good relations with the sheet metal workers in the company's works, and was able to dispense with many of them when 'plastic' body panels became the norm. As a manager he was a disciplinarian and aloof. A mechanic could be summarily dismissed for leaning a wheel against the bodywork of the bus while changing a wheel (and at least one was). Bus conductors were admonished for calling passengers 'ma' or 'mum'. During the national bus strike of 1957, he caused offence to many Midland Red personnel by statements he made to the press.

Sinclair was a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and of the Institute of Transport. He was made CBE in January 1950. In 1953 he was president of the Omnibus Society. He held directorships in several midlands coach firms and was a member of the Institute of Directors. He lived to see Midland Red taken over by the National Bus Company (1968), the ending of new vehicle construction, the fragmentation of the network, and even some of the buses painted white.

Sinclair's physical appearance was dapper, with short 'brylcreemed' hair with a clear parting, and a trim moustache. He sported a grand roman nose. Despite his long period in England, he never lost his Glaswegian accent. In retirement he was resident in Viceroy Close, Edgbaston. He died at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Edgbaston, following a heart attack, on 17 June 1971.

Peter Vince 

Sources  T. Gadsby, 'Donald Sinclair', Characters of the bus industry, ed. G. Booth (2004), 54-7 + Birmingham Post (19 June 1971) + M. Greenwood, Midland Red (1998) + M. Keeley, Midland Red days (2001) + R. C. Anderson, A history of the Midland Red (1984) + census returns, 1911 + personal knowledge (2013) + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Likenesses  D. Hess, photographs, 1959, Rex Features, London [see illus.] · photograph, repro. in Birmingham Post (19 June 1971) · photograph, repro. in Booth, ed., Characters (2004), 54 · photograph, repro. in Gadsby, 'Donald Sinclair'
Wealth at death  £26,238: probate, 2 Sept 1971, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

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