Its been a while since we have had any Citybus fleet news here but there are a few changes occurring now and over the coming few weeks when the new timetables come into use. I will try and catch up over the next few days…
Volvo B7TLs
The end of an era as the last few are taken out of service
442 Y814TGH has now been withdrawn
433 is the last one in service and expected to come off this week (tomorrow could well be its last day!)
These have certainly been survivors and have been around a lot longer than many expected.
The ex Go North East Volvo B7TLs which arrived last year have not been used with most having already left for scrap, or will be shortly.
Other double deck news is that the current batch of London Enviros are expected to take fleet numbers 4001 upwards – details to be confirmed. These will be converted to single door before entering service. A few have yet to arrive from London.
The last few of the previous batch that are still dual doored buses 477 478 488 489 are now expected to become the training fleet instead of the Citaros.
More fleet news to come – not good news for Citaro or Dart fans…
There's a lot of buses at Milehouse in the scrap zone at the moment including the old Scanias 370-373. Mercs are providing difficult to source parts for and are expensive. Some E400s are also proving troublesome. Would expect to see more of the E200s back in Plymouth from Cornwall too
ReplyDeleteThe problem with PCB that they're a bunch of cheap skates, they buy cheap & tacky new buses that fall apart every 5 minutes, as for the second hand stuff, they only unwanted cast offs from other subsidiaries that are only suitable for the scrapyard, I'd say that 90% of the PCB fleet is due for a visit to the scrapyard, as for the rather exorbitant bus fares, that only goes to line the pockets of the fat cats on head office instead of being spent on top of the range buses that work properly & don't fall apart!
ReplyDeletePoor management unfortunately For a start taking over Cornwall was a massive mistake and resulted in a shortage of deckers in Cornwall.Yellow Flash was disbanded and 523-530 became TFC liveried. Plymouth was then left significantly short on deckers until the Brighton Deckers arrived. Now more E400s have arrived for the Cornwall fleet they will disband other deckers back to Plymouth which in turn will also withdraw remaining Darts and Citaros. Several buses are also off the road at the min 138/143 and 474 to name a few. One E400 from London is also broken with engine issues. Overall its very sad they arent doing very well but I do think a change of management is definately something to consider going forward
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PCB haven't really had a proper fleet strategy since the early 2000s when the idea was for an all Dart fleet running to a high frequency. They lost their way once the Darts were replaced with E200s and they brought in Citaros, second hand deckers to try and replace them with and since then the fleet has been a mess. Go Ahead have become desperate to take over more areas such as Cornwall when they didn't have the resources available to do so.
DeleteThey purchased E200s because the Dennis Dart stopped production. The Mercedes were purchased when still under City Council ownership = the last few years of which saw very few new buses of any description. The large batch of second hand Volvo East Lancs DDs were to replace the previous large batch of second-hand Volvo DDs and was the last investment made under council control.. Since Go Ahead took over they have purchase large numbers of double deckers and quite a few single deckers - the fleet as taken over from the council was in dire need of major investment.
ReplyDeleteI agree hence why I said since the Dart was replaced (superseded) by the E200 the fleet strategy became a right mess! Go Ahead have only really got their act together since about 2014/2015 before that we did have those lovely B7RLE's and quite a mixed fleet, it's only been since 2019 they've decided to go all ADL.
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