Incoming Target Travel

Nick Rice captured a 'new' Dennis Dart now operating for Target Travel:
For a long time now Target have operated their 53 service with a Marshall Dart and step Dart the latter one of the last remaining chances to ride a step Pointer here in Plymouth. Looks like that will be a rarity now as Target have acquired this ex Quantock Pointer 2 Dart which was new to Lothian. It looks the part and sounds excellent!

© Nick Rice (cc)

Presumably it will soon receive Target Travel green logos

 

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Council check: West Sussex Each Sunday, we take a look at how one of our local authorities is doing in its promotion of bus travel in its area. This week: West Sussex County Council.

Final concrete ring cast for Crossrail tunnels Crossrail has cast the last of the 250,000 concrete segments that are being used to line the tunnels under London. The final piece was cast at a dedicated Crossrail factory in Chatham, Kent, where 110,000 tunnel segments to line Crossrail’s 12km long eastern twin tunnels, from east London to Farringdon were produced.

‘ Scene’ in Nottingham, Heanor and Ripley today This week has seen the launch of the new ‘trentbarton’ ‘rainbow1 and ‘rapid 1’ Optare Versa buses to the public (see my yesterday’s blog). Today saw them launched into service. ‘ Scene’ in Derby One day about a year ago, I watched a young woman with a double buggy, two small children and several bags of shopping make three journeys up the steps to put the children and the shopping onto a ‘tb’ coach and then to fold her buggy and put it in the luggage locker. At the next bay stood an almost empty ‘yb’ Citaro onto which she could have just walked without breaking stride.

Two Cardiff city bus station sites examined Council leader Phil Bale said the new bus station would allow the council to "redesign our welcome to the world". Local people will be consulted on the location, design and the temporary bus stop arrangements in the autumn.

There's a New Kid In Town: Part 2 Epsom Buses also had something else happening in their fleet. Whilst Metrocities are coming in, double decker flagship routes 406 and 418 got a frequency and PVR increase. To cover the PVR increase, new buses were ordered. Read on to find out more.

A Cunning Plan : Failure and Success There has to be a big question, however. How can it be that with vastly clever signalling technology, updated at a cost of zillions of pounds, a simple thunderstorm paralyses vast tracts of a busy commuter railway? Surely there should be some surge protection plugs somewhere in the electronic wizardry?

Hartlepool & Teeside The second half of tour day one was a little more low-key than the variety of liveries found further north and interest was certainly far less than in previous visits to see REs in Hartlepool and Cleveland Transit and United on Teesside so this report will be on the short side. Hopefully the views will still be interesting.

Swooped 22

Plymouth Citybus continue their refurbishment program on the earlier Dennis Darts. Richard Smith caught a very smart 22 on camera last week. With the Pointer 2 design having remained pretty much unchanged for so long, most passengers wont notice how old these buses are, helped by the excellent paint jobs that Citybus have always managed.

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Fruit in Pots [2] Maybe it's something to do with optimising the site for tablets. The designers should take some and consider the majority of us who still use those steam powered laptops that are so derided by the modern youff. Fruit in Pots [3] This is where the cunning plan of the Cherry line becomes interesting, clever from a scheduling point of view, but potentially baffling for the general public. Fruit in Pots [4] Even a non-expert in public transport operation might conclude that, as cherry 3s become cherry 4As so the old, outdated and unfruity 20A became an equally unfruity 34A. 90 : Should Have Been 100 So it was that yesterday, precisely 90 years after that first run, fbb was in Leicester to enjoy yet another Heritage bus "launch" from First. A substantial collection of elderly gentlemen assembled in Leicester's Town Hall Square Another Sad Farewell : Weeping in Wiltshire It all began innocently enough, apparently. This headline in a local paper did not arouse too much concern; simply a bus company that was facing up to the inevitable challenges of the frailty of the business world.

Backwards posters to appear on the Underground As part of the WW1 commemorations, a new art work is to go on display across the London Underground — a backwards poster. A weekly round-up of London’s rail transport news… Campaigners are calling on Kensington and Chelsea Council to officially rule out a proposal to build a Crossrail 2 station on their estate Get West London Open Day Tours of the Eurotunnel terminal On Saturday 13 September 2014, visitors will be taken on a guided tour of the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone (Kent). Each guided coach tour lasts 90 minutes and offers an opportunity to find out more about the Eurotunnel transport system and its unique Shuttles. The tour starts with a presentation illustrating “20 years of the Channel Tunnel”. Start preparing for the Heritage Open Days The annual Heritage Open Days returns in September, that version of London Open House that takes place outside London for those of you brave enough to venture outside Greater London. Like its London namesake, a lot of buildings are opened up to just wander in, and some more special places need prebooking. My personal tip is to find a few choice places that are close to each other that need booking, then fill in the gaps with the churches and small stuff that happen to be open.

South Yorkshire lands £4.8m for transport to support businesses he Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded to South Yorkshire Partners £4.8 million of funding from its Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) in a move that will help help people get to jobs, help businesses become more efficient and austainable whilst helping the environment. DRS Open Day, Crewe Ken Jones braved the wet weather to attend the DRS open day in Crewe and sent us these pictures including some of the new class 68 locomotives. Go North East Sends Buses to Commonwealth Games Go North East, have provided a fleet of twenty vehicles together with a team of forty drivers to provide extra transport links across the city of Glasgow. First unveil artist's impression of new £20m bus depot and HQ The new facility at Gushetfaulds, in Glasgow’s south side, which is scheduled to be fully operational from November 2014, will be the biggest bus depot in the UK with space for up to 450 buses and 1200 employees. COME IN NUMBER 9, YOUR TIME IS UP Today (Saturday 26th July 2014) saw the withdrawal of the 'Heritage' route 9 in London (Trafalgar Square & Kensington), operated by Tower Transit with a small fleet of original type Routemasters.

Scene today Friday 25th. July 2014 on ‘trentbarton’s (tb) 'rainbow/rapid one As from tomorrow, the mixture of Wright bodied Scania and Volvo buses currently running the service are being replaced on ‘tb’ s ‘rainbow 1’ and ‘rapid 1’.

Borderbus New 146 Service Three Enviro 200s have been acquired for the service, BB09BUS, BB59BUS and BB62BUS, with the first two being noted in service at Beccles Old Market Place around lunchtime today

Konecting at Anglian Unusually 723 was transferred to Anglianbus not very long ago, however, is already back on a route it saw regular service on whilst with its previous operator. First day of BorderBus 146 and Sanders Fleet Update Today was the first day of operation on BorderBus' new service 146 operating between Norwich and Southwold via Beccles. The services is run by three Alexander Dennis Enviro200s in the yellow, blue and white livery. Beccles Depot Visits and Norwich City Centre Sightings I was granted permission to head down to the end of the yard to photograph anything I wanted, as long as I promised not to publish any company-sensitive photos on the blog

X38: Exeter - Plymouth The X38 connects Devon's two cities with each other and with Dartmoor. It runs every 2 hours Monday to Saturday daytimes with three journeys each way on Sundays and is operated by Stagecoach. X7: Leicester - Milton Keynes The X7 is a cross-county link from Leicester in the North, through Northampton to Milton Keynes in the South. It runs every hour each daytime and is operated by Stagecoach.

Mullanys Coaches 'Harry Potter' shuttle - new Enviro400s We've previously reported on the special 'Harry Potter' buses serving the Warner Bros Studios Tour in Watford Coaching additions for three local operators Two of our correspondents have recently photographed three notable additions to the coach fleets of three local operators Routemaster 60 at Finsbury Park photo special - part 1 This year marks the 60th anniversary of the iconic London Routemaster and to celebrate their Diamond Jubilee a special event attended by over 130 examples of the type was held at Finsbury Park on the weekend of 12th/13th July, Norfolk Green Fleet Update 25/07/14 Steven Knight Media reports that three Optare Solo M850SLs 47243-5 GX55 DXM/O/P are due to arrive on transfer from Stagecoach South soon Routemaster 60 at Finsbury Park photo special - part 2 This year marks the 60th anniversary of the iconic London Routemaster and to celebrate their Diamond Jubilee a special event attended by over 130 examples of the type was held at Finsbury Park on the weekend of 12th/13th July

Incoming Volvo B7Ls

More Volvo B7Ls from Somerset have arrived and entered service in Plymouth over the last few weeks:

60918 in full West of England livery!
60895 with Buses of Somerset fleetnames still carried

Exeter Bus Station 50: The Green Set

Over the last few weeks I have received a few photographs from people for the blog but have not managed to fit them all in with everything else going on at the moment! Today we the second instalment of Richard Smiths photographs taken at the Exeter Bus Station 50th anniversary bus rally. The earlier red set can be found here