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2 minutes ago, SunnySouth said:

Can't really blame Phil for that then, I guess. Sounds like keeping on top of maintenance was too much for him?

Well he's always been a bit of a dealer. Nothing wrong with that in itself and he does have a couple of  ex Southampton Regents that seem to be keepers, or did have, I haven't been keeping up with things lately. And you can't save them all, I realise that but it was a shame he let 276 go as Atlanteans were such a major part of Southamptons history for so long and that was the last one. I mean the last one delivered, there are still some in existence.

But then it's easy to say that sitting here. I know how much work it takes to keep a bus going, especially an East Lancs bodied bus which likely has very little framework left under the aluminium panels. 

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On 12/28/2022 at 9:14 AM, lisbon_road said:

Continuing on the Southampton scene, @Yoss and others, it will be interesting to see if Go-Ahead take over the new First Depot in St Denys.  For those outside the area, the old Southampton Corporation main depot was in Portswood and was huge and it was sold off to Sainsburys and a decent enough new depot built.

I agree with all the sentiment about Go-Ahead being an improvement and how lucky we are to have them here to take over.  But the way that the buses all do dead milage from the Go-Ahead depot in Chandlers Ford is indeed crazy and one way and another, can't help with driver recruitment. 

First never seemed to look after the buses in Southampton, and the last Atlanteans were especially scruffy.  Not the one in the picture - that's taken on the last Atlantean Running day - a proper event for nutters and looks good. 

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Would seem sensible to take over the St Denys depot, I dont know what maintenance facilities they have at Chandlers Ford.

I remember when the Atlanteans were new and shiny. We used to like peering down the periscope and making funny faces at the driver. :D

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Yeah, I'm wondering how they are going to make it work. Five new routes is going to require a fair few buses. I wonder where the buses are coming from too. I don't think they will want to take on any of Firsts as I think they will want any trace of First Bus gone. 

I have occasionally seen other Go South Coast buses on Blue Star routes including Salisbury Reds and Southern Vectis and once I even saw a Brighton and Hove bus trundling down Shirley Road. 

Also the Unilink contract requires new buses every five years and they will be due for renewal next year. Five years ago the then Unilink fleet was simply moved over to Blue Star so that could be an option but I doubt that will be feasible in a little over six weeks so it will be interesting to see what turns up. 

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Actually it's six new routes but the frequencies are reduced on some.

 

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Which is fair enough. I see our local route 3 will become a 19. I was surprised they bothered at all as it is the same as the Blue Star 17 but for the last four stops where one goes via Lordshill Way and one via Aldermoor Road to reach the same destination, Lordshill Sainsbury's. 

Currently both routes are every ten minutes so I wonder if they are going to reduce the 17 to 20 minutes too then alternate them so it's still a ten minute headway on the main route. 

On the Millbrook route they haven't replaced the 2 at all. The First and Blue Star route are essentially the same same but one goes clockwise round the Millbrook loop and the other anticlockwise but as it only takes about seven minutes to go round it doesn't make much difference which way it goes. Also Blue Star use a fleet of smart Enviro 400 City's and first only used crappy single deck Streetlites so I think they can easily absorb the extra capacity. 

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6 hours ago, SunnySouth said:

What happened to 276? That is indeed a shame :(

Trying to find this out online is proving problematical. Gov. website says it is still sorned so it might be languishing somewhere. There are no MOT results and it last changed hands in 2009 so that doesn't bode well. 

I know somebody who would know but he tends to work 127 hour weeks and it usually takes about four attempts to get hold of him but I probably will try to before Feb 19th.

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I have previously written about a 1936 Mercedes bus that went through the ice and was lost on  lake Mjøsa Norway during the fighting in April 1940 and I have now managed to find a good picture of this special bus.

It still sits on 400 meters deep and there has been talk of raising and saving it, but the ownership of the bus is a bureaucratic nightmare.

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30 minutes ago, 808 Estate said:

Thats a seriously deep lake.  😲

And the average depth is 150 m. There is a lot of interesting things at the bottom of Mjøsa, everything from cars to aircraft wrecks to large quantities of dumped ammunition, so there are always new things to be found. And it's Norway's largest lake and Europe's 35, so there's probably a lot that hasn't been found yet.

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38 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

And the average depth is 150 m. There is a lot of interesting things at the bottom of Mjøsa, everything from cars to aircraft wrecks to large quantities of dumped ammunition, so there are always new things to be found. And it's Norway's largest lake and Europe's 35, so there's probably a lot that hasn't been found yet.

This one always caught my interest at the time. 36 years underwater and it's in better condition than half of the VW buses over here in the UK 🤣

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.roadkillcustoms.com/1957-volkswagen-bus-pulled-from-lake-in-norway-after-36-years/amp/

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On 1/2/2023 at 4:37 PM, SunnySouth said:

In Southampton today, gratuitous 'nearly the end' pic for posterity. The blind was already set like that, no request needed! :D

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Here's one I took earlier, not sure exact date but it is post deregulation day, 25th Oct 1986, as the bus has a CityBus logo not Southampton City Transport ones. But probably not long after. 

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The inspectors hut has changed too. The old one was  a metal and glass prefab type thing rather than the current fiberglass one. I also think the old one was considerably longer. 

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A little anecdote. For many many years the last bus on every route would leave the city centre at 23.06. Here is a map of the area where all the bus stops are. Sorry about the marker pen, that's another story, but you can just see through it. 

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The information sign is the inspectors hut, the horizontal road with the yellow dot  is Pound Tree Road and the vertical road is Vincent's Walk. At around 23.06, sometimes a bit after but never before the inspector would come out of his hut stand in the road and give the right away to the number 14 which was parked by the yellow dot. At which point every single bus would leave at exactly the same time. 

The inspector always gave the nod to the 14 then all the buses in Pound Tree Road could see the 14 either directly or in their mirrors and all the buses in Vincent's Walk could see the 14 cross the end of the road, again either directly or in their mirrors. 

About a dozen Atlanteans would leave within seconds in a cacophony of sound and smoke and smell. You could stand there and hear them slowly disappear to be replaced with utter (or relative) silence. 

This happened every single night without fail. No bus could leave until they were all ready and then they all left together. It really was a stunning (to us) sight and sound. Many a time we'd drive down and watch them go. Sometimes I'd catch one of them and sit downstairs at the back watching the mini convoy drive off through the city centre until they all went their separate ways. 

They don't do it any more not least because 23.06 is far too early these days. I often thought they picked that time to deliberately miss all the pissheads kicking out of the city centre pubs. Either way it's a strange time but whenever I see it (which isn't often being a postman) it always makes me think of this. 

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What an amazing (if a tad bizarre!) tale; what an incredible sight that must have been!

Being a lad from the neighbouring city (we'll say no more!) I used to travel to So'ton pretty frequently with my old Nan for days out, starting with the 727 (was there a 747 too?) when it was the preserve of Lynxes. What a fascinating story that route has had over the years (as I'm sure you know!), passing through seemingly just about every operator in the south before ending up back with First's Portsmouth & Fareham ops as the current X4 'Solent Ranger'. I guess that'll be the last route that takes First vehicles into Southampton, unless there are still any local obscurities coming out of Hoeford?

I recall during the Barbie days So'ton (I presume Portswood had a paintshop?) developed a particular habit of squaring off windows and such with black paint, which IMHO looked bloody awful! I often wondered what that was all about, a rare bit of local quirkiness though in a sea of corporate identity!

(Not my pic)

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1 hour ago, busmansholiday said:

Was called the whistle bus in Sheffield. Every night at 11.15 an inspector would blow a whistle, then it was every man (or woman) for themselves. Seen a lot of very close shaves in Pond Street over the years 

Oh, I'm glad it happened in other places too. I'm only really familiar with Southampton and London and it obviously never happened there as there was no last bus as such and no one point where all the buses started from. 

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11 minutes ago, SunnySouth said:

What an amazing (if a tad bizarre!) tale; what an incredible sight that must have been!

Being a lad from the neighbouring city (we'll say no more!) I used to travel to So'ton pretty frequently with my old Nan for days out, starting with the 727 (was there a 747 too?) when it was the preserve of Lynxes. What a fascinating story that route has had over the years (as I'm sure you know!), passing through seemingly just about every operator in the south before ending up back with First's Portsmouth & Fareham ops as the current X4 'Solent Ranger'. I guess that'll be the last route that takes First vehicles into Southampton, unless there are still any local obscurities coming out of Hoeford?

I recall during the Barbie days So'ton (I presume Portswood had a paintshop?) developed a particular habit of squaring off windows and such with black paint, which IMHO looked bloody awful! I often wondered what that was all about, a rare bit of local quirkiness though in a sea of corporate identity!

(Not my pic)

32254-LT52WVZ.jpg

I assumed the 727, which was also called the X27 at times was because it used the M27, or A27 if it was less express. I know for a while it was non stop between Southampton and Portsmouth and went straight down the M27 but as you say it was handed round all the operators either as a commercial service or Hampshire County Council contract and I think they put extra stops in to try and attract more passengers. 

It's strange that nobody could make it pay because a direct service down the the M27 is much shorter and quicker than the train which meanders all over the place between the two cities. Maybe the rivalries are true and just nobody wants to travel between the two. 

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35 minutes ago, Yoss said:

I assumed the 727, which was also called the X27 at times was because it used the M27, or A27 if it was less express. I know for a while it was non stop between Southampton and Portsmouth and went straight down the M27 but as you say it was handed round all the operators either as a commercial service or Hampshire County Council contract and I think they put extra stops in to try and attract more passengers. 

It's strange that nobody could make it pay because a direct service down the the M27 is much shorter and quicker than the train which meanders all over the place between the two cities. Maybe the rivalries are true and just nobody wants to travel between the two. 

Trains do a pretty decent trade on the Pompey-Fareham-Soton run, the fast services are a journey time of about 45 minutes. I think it comes down to public perception as much as anything, the train is just viewed as the better option for whatever reason.

I recall the X27 well, it was a joint Hoeford/Portswood effort I think, with random pair of Volvo B10Bs - M967 GDU was a bus seated Plaxton Verde, and K114 PRV was a Northern Counties coach seated effort. GDU was in service beforehand with CityBus in a plain maroon livery, not sure where PRV came from but it's a local reg mark - both ex demos perhaps?

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Here we go, ten minutes googling, there were probably others. Some here I don't remember at all. The white/blue/yellow things appear to be Tellings Golden Miller, that passed me by completely. Also I thought I remembered Southdown doing it at one point but I can't find any proof of this. 

In no particular order... 

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Don't remember this at all. 

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This is in preservation, they did use 289 and 290 for a while but not sure it ever did it in this livery. 

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And this one is branded  727  whilst on the X34 to Oxford which is a route I never knew about either. This is at the old Southampton bus station but is branded Stage coach 727 so I wonder if it's that brief period after Stagecoach bought Hampshire Bus but before they asset stripped the bus station to property developers? 

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Again looking at the branding some claim to be non stop and some stop at Fareham and Cosham. 

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