Customers for the RET vehicle with Roe-designed bodies included the trolleybus systems of Bloemfontein Corporation, the Shanghai Transport Company and Ramsbottom Urban District Council.

[3] In 1916, the RET Company was required under war regulations to turn over production to munitions and being unable to supply orders in hand for trolleybuses was closed down in 1917.

Always an innovator with a shrewd grasp of the value of intellectual property Roe applied for his first patent (relating to driving pulleys) on Armistice Day 11 November 1918.

Roe lived with his wife in the Cross Gates area of the city of Leeds and knew that a large shell-filling factory there had been vacated by the government.

Whilst the formation of the company and negotiations to buy the Cross Gates site commenced, coachbuilding continued at the Hunslet factory, bodies including Charabancs on Karrier and Lancia chassis.

An example of how complicated the whole complete vehicle contract thing could get concerns a Tilling-Stevens bi-mode petrol-electric/trolley bus (type PERC1) built-for and patented-by the Teesside Railless Traction Board's manager.

It was based on two Ford Model T chassis fitted with flanged steel tyres and coupled back-to-back, this rail minibus or petrol multiple unit seated 18 in each carriage and was driven from one end only, the rearward-facing car running in neutral gear with the engine switched off.

The CDR thus became the first railway in Ireland to use internal combustion engines and by the time of closure ran all passenger services and a number of freights using Gardner-powered diesel units.

In 1926 Straker-Squire finally folded and Roe stored uncompleted vehicles for Clough, Smith prior to a new arrangement which saw their electrical equipment fitted to Karrier chassis.

Another significant patent was jointly granted in 1930 to the company, Mr Roe and J.C. Whitely the general manager of Grimsby Corporation for a central entrance double decker with a distinctive design of staircase which rose transversely two steps to a wide landing and then branched into forward and rearward ascending longitudinal flights to the upper deck.

In 1935, encouraged by the chassis builder, a Commercial Motor Show exhibit was built on an AEC Regent I chassis for Leeds Corporation, this bus had a rakish streamlined outline and a full-width cab but more importantly had an all-new steel framework patented by the company, Roe and Bramham (who became a director that year) and a 'Safety Staircase' patented by the company, Roe, Bramham and William Vane Moreland, the general manager of Leeds City Transport.

In 1939 both the English Electric Company and Metro Cammell Weymann had approached Roe about amalgamation or takeover and in 1945 talks were opened with Mumford of Lydney in Gloucestershire.

It was mainly stock-built for coach dealers selling to small independents but major operators to use the type included West Riding Automobile Company and Black and White Motorways.

Other specialist work undertaken included two single deck trams for Leeds, a mobile chest X-ray unit for tuberculosis control and crew cab lorries on Ford Thames Trader for the Uganda police force.

Simultaneously Park Royal bowed to pressure from the British Electric Traction (BET) group of major regional bus operators and replaced their rather elegant mid-1950s aluminium-framed body with a steel-framed structure of very angular outline, this first appeared as the production version of the integral AEC Bridgemaster, but soon spread to all other steel-framed Park Royal and Roe double deckers.

At a time when only Jaguar and Ferrari road cars had front discs this was a technological adventure, like the AEC Routemaster and Midland Red's motorway coach it was shown with its Roe body in a cutaway-centre spread of boy's comic The Eagle where it took its place alongside V-Bombers, nuclear submarines and Deltic locomotives.

The Wulfrunian body was lower built as this chassis was designed as a low height bus with stepless entrance and centre gangways on both decks.

Other oddities at the dawn of the 1960s included single-deck buses on the double-deck AEC Regent V chassis, most of these were built for South Wales Transport for a route with a very low railway bridge in Llanelli under which underfloor engined single decks could not work but there were also one each for the Leeds Council Welfare department (with a rear ramp for wheelchair access) and for the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation.

[6] The original outline of the body for rear-engined double deckers was widely considered unsatisfactory and Sunderland Corporation took a heavily revised version on Daimler Fleetline from 1962 to 1966 featuring a prominent peak at the front dome and a reverse rake to the upper-deck rear in the style of the contemporary Ford Anglia saloon car.

Great Yarmouth Corporation instead specified double curvature windscreens of Alexander design on its Leyland Atlanteans (including a unique short-wheelbase batch in 1967) and on the last three Daimler Freeline single deckers.

Also in 1964 for that year's Commercial Motor show Roe built its first body to the 36 ft length permissible since 1961, it was an early Leyland Panther for the Kingston upon Hull Corporation Transport fleet.

In 1964 Leeds, the last provincial bastion of the rear-open platform double decker took a batch of Fleetlines to Great Yarmouth outline and the first of these was also shown at the 1964 show, Leeds continually revised this design over the next few years, in 1966 it was extended to 33 ft long rather than the previous 30 ft 10in, both decks had double curvature screens and side glazing became panoramic, with double-width window glasses.

In 1968 angled flat glass at the front and a glass-fibre dash was added and a centre exit was fitted whilst the rear dome reverted to a square outline.

The standard design was adopted by West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (successor to the Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield Halifax and Calderdale fleets) and many municipals and also (from 1972) on the AN68 Atlantean became the National Bus Company's second-choice double decker, being especially associated with 'Leyland' fleets such as Ribble Motor Services, Northern General and Southdown Motor Services but it also became the standard double decker with London Country who had over 300.

[8] In 1981, production peaked at Roe, with 182 bodies built, the highest total since 1966 (the year when double-decks were finally allowed to be operated without a conductor, the first bus to do so, on the day of the law change, being a Great Yarmouth Roe-bodied Atlantean).

Production got off to a slow start, not helped by overly centralised control from Leyland and a rigid set of body specifications, which did not initially provide all the features more demanding coach customers wanted.

In 1983, the year of launch, only 10 complete Royal Tiger Doyens entered service, a further 13 underframes being supplied to Van Hool and Plaxton to receive versions of their standard coachwork.

[9] Former workers and management pooled their redundancy money and in February 1985 returned to the Roe factory in Cross Gates with a new bus-building business under the new name of Optare.

In 2016, the Transport Yorkshire Preservation Group started a campaign to get some form of recognition for Mr Roe, after the Leeds Civic Trust had refused a request for a blue plaque on account of no original fabric remaining.

Pub developer Wetherspoons did however respond positively to lobbying and have agreed their forthcoming Cross Gates outlet, opened on 21 July 2020, would be named 'The Charles Henry Roe'.