It isn’t commercially viable inside London (or Manchester) so definitely won’t be anywhere else. Those places currently enjoy huge subsidies not seen in most other places, which as you say, is the real issue. Until that changes, who owns, manages or controls the bus service is largely irrelevant.
Could be why a scruffy 14 year old double decker was allocated on one of the X17s this morning, a Sunday when Stonegravels depot has loads of buses spare.
My understanding is that it isn't so much the speed, it's the effect on following traffic of a bus appearing to brake suddenly when not even going as fast as a typical HGV.
Presumably the transfer was arranged before the issue became apparent. Maybe we are lucky they've been able to hold on to the 64 plates.
When an operator receives many new buses, others come out of the fleet to upgrade other areas. In this case, it appears the nice X17 deckers are the ones selected.
Looking at the fleet lists, Cumbria have a lot of MMCs of similar vintage, so I'd imagine these will slot in nicely to the fleet.
Also when will the repainted vehicles be fully vinyled since most have just been painted blue with the fleetnames on and that's it
I would be most interested in learning about this. I'm a huge fan of the Gold brand.
We’re working through some warranty issues with Alexander Dennis at the moment with around two-thirds of the fleet now in service. There are some software updates coming for the buses in the next four weeks. The E400EV’s are basically “first edition” vehicles with unit production still in the low hundreds at this stage so Alexander Dennis are refining the product based on real world experience.
When the vinyl supplier has caught up with orders and we have time to pull the vehicles back in to fit. The only missing vinyl in most cases is the roundel.
Don’t expect the memoirs to be published before 2045
Thanks for the response, just seemed that other places have managed to add the roundel and writing above the windows but yorkshire haven't added any apart from 11716
Will the classic E400 acquired from Devon be paint in to the Peak Sightseer livery
Yes, as will the ALX Tridents, but they may go out in their current livery first before being recalled for repaint.
They've not been mentioned on here, but are the Scania E400s still part of the plans for the Sightseer?
Has the height of the bridge sunk recently…..!
Darned good question! Quite how a bridge can go from a 14'3 warning and being regularly used by Wright buses plated at 14'5, to being a mandatory 14' I don't know.
Maybe the road has been resurfaced.
This issue arose fairly recently when single deckers were exclusively used for a time, possibly due to remeasuring of clearances following road relaying. As I understood it the matter had been resolved and double deckers were permitted to run again.
There has been discussion on another forum about this. It appears First are (mainly) using shorter Streetlites on the service currently, and this is causing some capacity issues at busy times. It does appear that 272s which run off the 772 college service can still run deckers though which is odd. The reason the longer Streetlites aren't being used is that unfamiliar drivers are having issues with them in Bradwell.
Yes, they’re undergoing road tests at the moment to blow away the cobwebs.
I’m pretty sure the height restriction is more than 4m, 14ft quoted elsewhere. All our open tops except 18467 are low height under 14ft so are ok to pass under the bridge. 18467 is prohibited from Blue route hence it will have its own regular working on Red route for the peak timetable.
Quite a number of railway bridges in Surrey seem to have had their limits reduced over the last year or so. Could this perhaps be an initiative by either Network Rail and/or some councils to try and reduce bridge strike incidents by limiting even further what vehicles can use certain roads?
It's currently 4.3m but - at least according to people who seem to know these things on another forum - there has been a change to the way it has been measured and a new mandatory limit of 4m has been / is going to be introduced. It's causing First headaches I believe.
I'd never come across a ferry lift before, interesting idea! Would such a thing allow it to cross the hump back bridge at Chatsworth and run to Rowsley?
