The letter from AR Clevett (December 7) has caused me to research the bus to which he refers.

The film Brighton Rock was made between 1947 and 1948 and two local buses were used.

One was a Corporation bus whose number I cannot ascertain but which would have been from a batch introduced in 1939 as part of the tramway replacement.

These were AEC Regents with preselector gears with fleet numbers 60-80 and registration numbers FUF 60-80. For the film, this bus displayed the route number 40A (Old Steine to Brighton Station via North Road).

For the book, written in 1938, Greene describes the hordes arriving from Victoria as they "rocked down Queen's Road standing on the tops of the little local trams".

Winston Robinson, the general manager of Brighton Corporation Transport, must have felt obliged to provide a bus on a route which exactly covered the old tram route S.

The other bus, which is the one Mr Clevett refers to, was No 6235 registered in London by Thomas Tilling Ltd in 1931 as GP 6235 and, at the time of the filming, in the ownership of Brighton Hove and District Omnibus Co Ltd.

This, too, was an AEC Regent and would have been the bus Mr Clevett's father drove in the film. The bus displayed the destination, Fishersgate, which was the western terminus of route six at the time.

The bus registered as FNJ 107 and allocated fleet No 6425, entered service in 1951, so could not have been in the film.

This was a type Bristol KS5G and was distinctively different from the No 6235 used. I daresay Mr Clevett's father went on to drive this one.

-Peter Bailey, Brighton