Snap on Sunday

Well what better for a Snap on Sunday than a photo from Monday's visit to Blackburn of an increasingly rare breed. As many of you will know, the ECW bodied Leyland Olympian is a type I'm very fond of after my first proper encounter with the type, after 4 example of Eastern National's C-HJN batch of Leyland Olympians were transferred to Torpoint. Therefore, to find so many still operating in Blackburn was thrilling, as sad as it may sound, I've never been to a place with so many of the type operating at once! Being too young to remember these in their prime, this is the closest I've managed to them really getting out and earning their keep, with a very healthy number of TL11, Gardner 6LXB, and Cummins L10 engined examples working hard in regular service. The photo I've chosen for the SoS this week is of Ex Lothian TL11 engined C792 SFS, still wearing the full 'school' livery, and looking all the better for it! The Leyland Olympian badges on the front are also a bonus! 

Snap on Sunday

This week's Snap on Sunday comes from the town of Todmorden, with what is quite a rare beast these days pictured amongst the flowers. This smart looking Mk1 MCW Metrobus (but with a modified grill!) is B162 WUL, one of a large batch new to London Buses Ltd, some 27 years ago! Remarkably though, Halifax Joint Committee have looked after her very well, and she is actually very original internally, including the middle door which is still in full working order; somewhat rare considering that B162 is now generally confined to school work, after HJC pulled out of all of its service bus work. All service work that is, apart from one small chance to still be able to ride their quality fleet of buses! Only a local spotter would ever know of this, and indeed on a visit to Halifax in the past, this completely passed me by, but HJC do still offer the chance to get on one of their buses, when the C7 school journey, runs back in service as a 392! The usual allocation for this service is B162 WUL, but it is also possible to find other members of the fleet working this journey from time to time. Certainly worth it though, what a fantastic bus! Indeed the first Metrobus I've been on since National Express West Midlands retired the final MCW Metrobus' from their Birmingham fleet some 3 years ago now. Certainly a very rare opportunity to be able to ride on in 2012, through peaceful Yorkshire countryside. 

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! 

Lemons from Leeds

Well, that's one way to describe them! As with any smaller and more insignificant depots, Huddersfield is a place for castoffs, and the latest batch of misery to be dumped in Huddersfield is some of the YJ51 Rxx batch of Volvo B7TLs. Having already experienced various W reg examples already based in Huddersfield, I wasn't filled with hope when YJ51 RRZ pulled up at the stand on their first morning of operation, and indeed, my expectations were met, if not surpassed, they're awful! Horrible droning sounds coming from an under powered engine, rock hard seats, and rattles galore; give me an Olympian any day! Unfortunately though, Olympians will soon be becoming even more few and far between, as more B7TLs arrive, which have been displaced by various Ex First Games Transport Enviro 400s and B9TLs. The B7s have really appear to struggle with the heavy loads carried on my 'regular' route, the 398/9 to Storthes Hall, i.e. the infamous University run! The speed at which they climb hills is slow enough to put a snail to shame. With the Olympians, its quite a different story, although, they are prone to some overheating, despite getting there much quicker! 

Snap on Sunday

Despite operating a very modern fleet of Coaches, Stotts choose to operate quite a few of their public bus services using Mercedes 709Ds, and I can't say I blame them for doing so! Of course from an enthusiast's point of view, the 709D is far superior to the alternative Solo, but even from the operators point of view the 709D has clear benefits. For one, it uses a noticeable amount less fuel, all the more important with the reduction in BSOG. The 709D has always been renowned for how robust and dependable they are, and indeed in times gone by, operators have switched back to 709Ds after trying the Vario, a testament to their design. When things do go wrong, 'cheap' parts from scrapyards are readily available  and the mechanics of the 709D are far simpler than the computer controlled whatnot found on the Solo. They're also often able to fit in places you couldn't even get a Solo through, particularly helpful down some of the very narrow roads in Yorkshire! And despite N266 JUG's 16 year vintage, she looks very tidy and presentable! And she's certainly lasted longer than the what the South West's readers will remember of the N-JUG registration, the Dennis Lances, the last of which were retired from service 4 if not 5 years ago now!

Limping at Linburg

Another promised post was an overview of the 'Linburg Liaison' enthusiasts tour, organised by Chris Martin from the Leyland Olympian Yahoo! Group, and indeed, its certainly worth a mention  What a brilliant day out, 9 hours absolutely crammed full of Leyland Olympian action, on buses that from day to day, you simply aren't even able to spot (due to them only operating on school contracts - the risk is too great!), let alone ride on! The masterful Mr Martin drafted up a fantastic itinerary  making sure all of Linburg's finest took priority to be able to ride on.

Right from the off you could tell this was going to be a great day, as Gardner engined Ex-Cambus Olympian, F513 NJE rolled up at Derby Rail Station, to whisk us off to the Linburg depot within the city. Lingburg operate a fantastic collection of extremely well presented vehicles on their school routes, mainly comprising of Leyland Olympians, and for smaller capacity routes, the Leyland Tiger; not a low floor vehicle in sight - bliss!

Then came the chance for a vehicle batch slightly more familiar to me, this being H130 FLX, in which several examples from the batch can still be seen at work in daily service from First's Weymouth depot. A quick blast out to Brailsford on this for a photo stop reminded me very much of the batch of buses I'm missing from home, the very similar, Cummins L10 engined K-LAEs.

It was then back to the depot once again, to change over to the 'highlight' vehicle of the day, this being something the Devonians readers may well recognise! Underneath its gleaming white paint, this is Ex-Stagecoach Devon BIW 4977, which at one time operated on both the X38 until the type were found to be unsuitable  and laterly X46 from Exeter to Paignton. The other claim to fame this is Hong Kong Olympian has is that this bus was part of the very first batch of buses brought over to start the now very successful, Megabus coach services.  Unfortunately IIG 7842 as she is now known, seems to have lost a bit of her 'omph', appearing to have been locked out of top gear, reducing its time speed quite noticeably  Nevertheless she performed admirably on the run all the way up to Sheffield, and made some very satisfying noises while doing so, and hence I have included a video to demonstrate the fact. 

On arrival at Linburg's Darnell depot, we were greeted with the the real stars of the fleet, the ECW bodied Leyland Olympians - the type that everyone was really there to see! Indeed, the vehicle to follow is quite possibly the best sounding Olympian I've ever been on. Plain white OUI 8977 was originally A158 OFR, a batch that again may strike a cord with some of the Devonian readers - quite literally. Devonian in Paignton operated A146 OFR, the sister to A158 when new to Ribble. Thankfully though, our driver of A158 was brave enough to tackle her using the semi automatic gearbox, and despite only driving the more modern coaches from day to day, did a very admirable job of handling the beast! Again I have included a video so you can hear for yourself what a glorious noise this one made, no modern 'hoover' sounding noises here! 

The next vehicle out was another ECW bodied Olympian, this one being C669 GET, new to Yorkshire Traction. C669 sounded somewhat more 'on her last legs' than A158 did, but the 6LXB soundtrack still didn't fail to disappoint.

After this is was a ride on an even better example from the F- NJE batch, this one being F517. A short ride on this certainly showed off how well these vehicles are still able to perform, they just don't build them like they used to!

To finish off it was another blast right down the motorway aboard IIG for the drop off at Derby, after a practically faultless day. The opportunity for some really high quality photography in perfect conditions was also a big bonus, with the vehicle being positioned as and where the majority wanted, so to gain the best photos possibly, despite being somewhat unrealistic! As you'll note, A158 OFR is pictured heading the wrong way, half way across a junction, fitted with a Leyland badge it doesn't actually belong to!

For anyone interested in coming along to some of the other events that Chris offers, please do visit his blog detailing all the planned visits at www.leylandolympians.blogspot.com. One I'm certainly hoping to attend in a couple of months time is an event at renowned Redfern Travel, one of an ever decreasing amount of operators who do still use Bristol VRs!

Snap on Sunday

For this week's Snap on Sunday, a photo of something I've been itching to have a ride aboard for years! Ever since the final Valenta engined Class 43s at FGW were withdrawn I've been wanting to get my fix of them again. Unfortunately no Class 43s are currently fitted with the original Paxman Valenta, but thankfully, East Midlands Trains decided to refit their HSTs with VP185s, rather than the infamous MTU which all other TOCs opted to go for. The distinctive scream as we headed out of Leeds was fantastic, and the noise from the departure from Chesterfield was certainly godlike, and hence a video has been posted below of the departure! The MTU is just so soulless when compared to the whale of a VP185, if only more TOCs had gone down the same route (pardon the pun!)! The photo shows 43054 and 43046 on a stock move out of Derby's Etches Park Depot preparing to work a service back down to London St Pancras. I'll certainly be back for more.