The Duchess

By Paula Anandasegar

Nine years ago, my husband Arun and I moved from England to Castle Rock, Colorado. After we had settled into a small town with a population of about 20,000, we were both trying to adapt to a completely new way of life, which was vastly different from London living, population 7.5 million. Colorado is an amazing place to live but we felt slightly homesick.

We ventured about getting to know the area around our new home. To our surprise and delight, we stumbled upon a slice of England tucked away in a storage lot behind a really great BBQ restaurant. There in all her faded glory sat a Double Decker Bus. Born in 1968, named Leyland Titan PD3, she’s 30ft long and 15ft tall. Not painted red, but blue and cream as she served as a costal bus in East Bourne, UK. We would periodically stop by and gaze at her, wondering what the owners were going to use her for, and excited at the prospect of seeing her around town or in Denver. Unfortunately she never moved and her condition deteriorated with every harsh season. We often said we should find out what the situation was and rescue her. But our busy lives kept us from the pursuit.

While in the UK, Arun purchased a 1980 Mini. It was the perfect car to help him adapt to the narrow roads, immense traffic and limited parking. This little car was responsible for introducing us to many friends. And since we can never get enough of a great thing, we found a Mini Moke and acquired that too!

Both cars joined our worldly goods in the shipping container bound for Colorado. It’s hard to be a stranger in a new town when you own Minis—especially when there’s a club in the area like Mini of the Rockies! When we found MOTR, we never looked back. They are a fantastic bunch. All at once we had invites to parties, organized weekend drives, and all new friends.

But the bus was still on our minds and a vision was blossoming. “The Duchess,” as we were already calling her, could be an amazing meeting place, like a British gastro pub, serving pints and Pimms! We could hold themed events that will share an insight into British life and celebrate events such as Wimbledon and Burn’s night. The Duchess would be (will be!) a unique venue for weddings, proms…celebrations of any kind, tailored to specific wishes with an emphasis on fun, high quality and having an unforgettable day.

It took a visit from a friend from the UK to inspire a push. I was taking him around showing him the sights, and we stopped to see the bus. We walked in and asked the storage lot owner what the story was. He said that the owner had it shipped in from Canada to use as advertising for a business but then promptly sold that venture and forgot about the bus. He had been paying to store it for seven years.

I called the owner, and the timing was right. The bus was #26 on his to-do list. After much negotiation and heaps of paperwork, Arun and I became proud owners of a Double Decker bus.

And then the hard work of bringing The Duchess back to life began.

The bus was in a bad way. Birds and animals had made it their home. It also appeared to be a hangout for others as there were a lot of empty food wrappers, drink cans and the name Tristan was spray painted on the upstairs on the aluminum. I would curse ‘bloody Tristan’ every time I saw it, and spat it with real meaning when I worked to remove it. A friend suggested we could create a drink called ‘The bloody Tristan.’ A bloody good idea!

Our initial cleanup was very dirty indeed. We enlisted the help of MOTR members who generously gave up a Sunday morning to come and assist in removing all the seats and battery boxes. Fueled with tea and doughnuts it was a productive day full of laughter.

We have limited funds so we are completing nearly all of the renovations by ourselves and with the help of awesome friends.

Our friends Steve and Deb Freeman who reside in a stunning setting on five acres generously allowed us to park The Duchess on their property so we could start the massive undertaking of making her beautiful again. Our first task was to remove all of the exterior paint. We started by sanding, then discovered there were at least four layers of paint, so we switched to aircraft paint remover which was pretty effective and quick—the downside being the fumes, and heaven help you if a tiny bit managed to get on your skin! Battling the elements while working outside added to the challenge and slowed progress.

Before winter really kicked in, we had the difficult task of removing the very well made linoleum, which was stuck hard and fast. In the beginning I started with a Dremel and heat gun. After two days of this monotony, we hired a heavy-duty machine—it wasn’t easy, but so much quicker. With the linoluem out, we discovered the floors were rotting away. This particular British Double Decker bus is constructed with a metal structure but with wooden beams to hold the exterior panels. Steve happens to have a fully loaded woodworking shop—in went new pressure treated plywood and beam reinforcement!

The flooring was finished and after heaps of hours spent applying primer to the bus we had a very good friend from MOTR, Darren Haines, who is experienced in restoring cars come and take at our progress. We were pleased as punch with our efforts thus far and thought we had done a fantastic job. After assessing the progress he turned and looked at our beaming smiles informed us that we had worked hard and there are some good points BUT most of it needed doing again. Crestfallen, we set back to work correcting all of our shoddy workmanship under the watch eye of Darren. We were now the Terrific Trio.

The most difficult, time consuming and down- right boring task was block sanding the primer. I still have a nervous tick at the mention of sanding.

There was also a great deal of meticulous trim work that needed to be done leading to the removal of all 36 windows and glass to accomplish the finish that Darren demanded. So we ordered 400ft of new window rubbers. We are now completely proficient in window replacement!

The amount of work required to repair and finish the paint was overwhelming as we had been given a deadline of 3 months, with fall weather rapidly approaching, this necessitated nonstop work by the 3 of us. We recruited friends and family to help whenever we could entice them with beer, burritos and banter!

Fast forward 3 months battling hot sweaty days, muscle fatigue, wind, rain, nesting birds, angry wasps, bugs, paint runs, dark primer spots showing through – to name but a few daily issues.

Some of the numerous items we got through:
10 Gallons of Primer
16 Gallons of red paint
2 Gallons of English White
95 Very fetching Blue Suits
20 boxes of Blue Gloves
Gallons of cleaning alcohol Prep – far too many to say
Reams and reams of sandpaper (there goes that nervous tick!)

Our biggest challenge was keeping up our motivation, waking up early every day knowing that the long day ahead would entail endless hours of some painstaking task. A non- existent social life, missing our friends, our prior lifestyle was a distant memory. We kept reminding ourselves of the bigger picture and chatted about our vision that kept us focused to finish her.

As we were nearing the completion of the paint project, Darren turned his attention to refreshing the mechanicals as she had not been started in 10 years. After flushing the old fluids out we were trying to convince the Leyland 600 diesel to fire back to life and she did!! Dumbfounded that she started so easily, happy that at least one thing was in our favor! With a running engine Darren focused working on the brake system which needed a very thorough going through. Four new tires were then installed and at this point the bus was able to move under its own power.

The last lick of paint applied, a running engine, working electrics, we planned her maiden journey to accommodate her height and to negotiate low hanging obstacles. So under the cover of darkness we set off at 4am to test her road-worthiness. It was the largest vehicle that Darren had driven. Despite the fact she hadn’t been driven in a very long time, she handled the drive with ease and grace, he felt comfortable with her sheer size. The steering was quite precise and turning the 30 inch steering wheel took a bit of getting used to. The two main challenges were remembering to double clutch because of the non-synchronized gears and maintaining control of all 9 tons of the newly beautified bus.

Elated, emotional and exhausted, we had finally completed the first phase of our project. We are now preparing for our new Events business venture to be launched. We still have oodles of work to do but are so excited to see our vision for The Duchess of Castle Rock to become a reality.