Darting Northwards!

Apologies for the gap in blogging this week, I've had a bit of a mini-holiday up in Blackpool over the past few days to sample the delights that the North of England has to offer, and there most certainly was plenty of decent stuff to see! I shall post further on the various bits and bobs of interest in the coming days, but for now I shall re-unite you with a couple of lost friends. 

Can you tell what it is yet!? A shot of the bus in question along with a similarly liveried Asda truck!


This, under her new very stylish green livery for the Asda shopper bus is our old friend, K110 SFJ, who is now owned by the Halifax Joint Committee. They also own L126 YOD which is pictured below and used as the spare for this contract. Unfortuantely, HJC no longer operate any public services, so sampling their wonderful fleet of Olympians and MCW Metrobus', not to mention a number of step entrance Darts was impossible. What I really must commend though was the quite frankly stunningly good customer service operated at Halifax bus station. The man who was on the help desk was able to give me every last detail about the services they had lost, and who they were now operated by, as well as telling me about the 1 service they did still operate in another town, and how I could get there using connecting services etc etc. He also aided me in being able to locate the depot, and working out which services to use to be able to get there. His knowledge and friendliness was truly outstanding, I just wish I'd taken down his name so that I could let his employers know! As I'm sure many of you will know first hand, the way we get treated as enthusiasts varies wildly, and indeed I did incur one particularly bad experience over the few days which I will undoubtedly come onto in a later post, but its people like this that really make the hobby so much more enjoyable, and accessible, a true rose among what unfortunately are many thorns within the industry! That said 'down here' generally we do have a wonderful bunch of companies who are more than willing to aid us in our hobby, particularly Plymouth Citybus as of late, but also A-Line Coaches who have been truly wonderful to myself and other enthusiasts over the years. 

Anyway, back to the point of the post, here is the photo of L126 YOD in which is pretty much the PCB livery she left us in, but with the red painted over in green. K110 however looks very well cared for, and the livery really is very smart indeed! The buses certainly look set to be well looked after in the near future.