10 March 2014

Swooper 520

As mentioned the last 4 new Enviros are now in service with the last one being in standard swoop livery instead of Red Flash:
Plymouth Citybus Enviro 400 520 is seen on an unbelievably rare working of the 32!! ©Tom Michaels
Plymouth Citybus Enviro 400 520 is seen on an unbelievably rare working of the 32!!

It has to be said that this one looks even better than the Red Flash buses – very smart and look seven better in this lovely sunny weather!

Just another day running a bus company

8 March:The police have closed off Caley Way in Kings Tamerton due to an RTC. The service 16 will be unable to service this area and the bus will be diverting up to Roman Way and then inbound to the City the reverse of this route.

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14 comments:

  1. Would have looked far better in Ray Stenning's version of the livery, rather than that random white swoop of the lower deck window...

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    1. I very much agree!
      While this style of livery isn't all that terrible, given the money spent on investment into the PCB fleet, with these E400s, it does seem somewhat disappointing that they didn't pay the extra £s to keep the Stenning livery.
      In terms of cost, while I don't doubt it was a lot, it is an expense that is accommodated elsewhere, so why not in Plymouth?!

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    2. Totally disagree. The Stenning livery was awful and I look forward to the day that the buses currently in this livery are repainted.

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    3. I must admit I am with the second commenter here! I would not go so far as to say the Stenning design was awful, it isn't. would have worked better with different colurs maybe as the darker red just looks drab. The swoop livery is clean and tidy and I for one look forward to seeing more of the fleet repainted. They do seem to have stopped normal repaints for a while, I guess to concentrate on the refurb DDs

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  2. ray stennings livery although nice looking, was time consuming to paint due to masking off for second colour. also in the event of an accident, the bus would be off road longer because of prep work involved with 2 colours. with the new 'swoop' livery it is all one base colour with a white vinyl stripe. far simpler in terms of downtime for body/paint repairs. hope that explains it a bit better.

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    1. Ah. So it's all about making life easy for engineers. There was me thinking that the company thought it was all about good marketing and design and that they thought the new livery was better, not that the old one was better but that it was just too much trouble!!!

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    2. no. its about buses not being off the road for long periods. the new livery IS better but also easy to maintain. the less time a bus is off the road, the better. economic sense.

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  3. it was on the 21a route later today

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  4. hi ya does any one known who won the tender for Plymouth to millbrook bus route ,and millbrook to cremyll route

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    1. I didn't think Cremyll had a bus service any longer apart from odd A-Line journeys.

      Keith

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  5. I beg to differ with M Hudson's explanation. Whilst there may be some truth in what he writes I was led to believe there were issues surrounding the financial payment to Stenning and as a result the livery had to change. You wouldn't after all pay out fees for a livery design and then decide it's too expensive some time later to apply it. The work involved is minimal if we compare it to other liveries such as first bus. Martyn

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    1. Really? More like new Managing Director, wants to put his own mark on the livery. Nothing to do with money. As Mike Hudson tells us, the new GoAhead is all about cutting costs / economic sense. Roll on the £100million a year profits from UK bus that GoAhead has promised the city...the be all and end all of GoAhead these days...

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  6. And well done to him for that. It's a much brighter, crisper livery and more distinctive that the anodyne standard Best Impresssions livery that everyone else has.

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