Darting Around

Today, a guest post by Nathan Jenner on the continuing fleet changes being seen in West Yorkshire. As a man who has lived in the area a majority of his life, he is far more keyed up on the current movements than I am, so without further ado, its over to him! 

Well we all knew one day this would happen but within 12 days, Halifax and Huddersfield have seen over 12 vehicles withdrawn and 4 put in reserve. This has happened because of Olympic Vehicles from London coming to Leeds and replacing older Volvo B7’s to displace Darts. I have included a pic of 2 Darts withdrawn for scrap and will shortly be taken away by the scrap man.

The Marshall darts have only been here 2 years and were refurbished before they arrived with new floor, seats, duel door taken out and CCTV inside and it seems a shame to scrap them when other fleets down South have step entrance Darts still in every day front line service?? Why not send them down there? 

Halifax have got 1 Volvo Olympian 31808, 5 06 plate Volvo B7TL Geminis, 32692/32693/32694/32695/32696 the latter one went into service with LEEDS on the side in new livery but the other 4 are in older livery Halifax. Also received are 5 W Reg ALX400 Volvo B7’s 30855/30857/30859 and another 2 to arrive, we also got 4 Volvo B7RLE Eclipse 668707/66708/66710/66713. 

Huddersfield has fell of worse than us because they have withdrawn 10 buses 5 Darts and 5 Volvo Olympians  and having 15 ALX400 B7’s sent to them with more coming , they are W,Y,X,51 Reg  and are all on the last legs with no power to pull them up hills and un-comfy seats. Halifax will only have 3 Darts left by end of October 41281 T281 JLD/41282 T282 JLD/41283 T283 JLD they're only keeping these so they can go down Calder valley if needed to replace solos when there needed for inspection. 

Many thanks go to Nathan for supplying the story and accompanying photo!