My son Andrew and his wife Joy recently had a short holiday in Edinburgh. Knowing of my weakness for buses they kindly brought me back a variety of images. Joy quite got into it. Nipping in and out of the traffic whilst Andrew was more laid back settling himself on Princess Street with a couple of cans of I’rn Bru. Their combined efforts are pictured herewith, the words are mine.
Whilst LB are the dominant operator in Edinburgh, there are others.
‘First’ group have a strong presence and are represented here by.
LT02 ZCE
A Dennis Trident with Plaxton President bodywork. Cascaded from ‘First London’. Whoever replaced the second door made an excellent job of it.
YM52 UVS
A Scania L94UB with Wright’s Solar body had a spell in Lancashire with ‘First Oldham’ before coming to Scotland where it also worked in Larbert.
CU05 LGK
A Volvo B7R with Plaxton Profile bodywork at one time worked for ‘First Cymru’ in Swansea in the full ‘First’ barbie coach livery. Now resident in Edinburgh.
SN08 BZA An Optare Solo SR owned by LB in a dedicated Standard Life (Insurance) (SL) livery. Route 61 on which it operates, at one time was provided as a free shuttle service around its different Edinburgh locations for SL employees only.
The route was opened up to the public who have to pay a fare whereas it still remains free for SL employees. I wonder how the Taxman sorts that one out.
SV55 FKL A Volvo B7R with Plaxton Profile Interurban bodywork is based at Stagecoach Western’s Dumfries depot and is seen working the service 100 from Moffatt which lies 60 Miles to the South.
LSK 879 A Volvo B13R with Plaxton Panther 2 bodywork shown being operated by
‘Parks of Hamilton’ in Scottish ‘citylink’ livery. The M 91 route on which it is operating runs from Inverness to Edinburgh via Perth.
SF62 CPU Another winner from Plaxton with the ‘Elite i’ bodied Volvo B11R chassis which was new in February this year. I had a look around and inside of one of these vehicles at the Euro Bus Expo 2012 at the NEC last year and they really are impressive. It is operating on megabus.com’s route 900 which is the Glasgow-Edinburgh shuttle that it runs jointly with Scottish ‘citylink’.
No visit to Edinburgh would be complete without a ride on an open top bus. No matter which of these open toppers you chose to ride on despite the varying liveries and vintages, you would still be riding with LB.
V513 ESC built in 1999 and VLT 143 built in 1959 are separated by 40 years.
V513 ESC being a Plaxton President bodied Dennis Trident and of course VLT 143 is an AEC Routemaster and was RM 143 in its London days.
The Trident is one of five former main fleet vehicles painted in the ‘Edinburgh World Heritage Tour’ livery while the RM is one of ten RM’s together with two RCL’s in the fleet.
T503 SSG is another Lothian vehicle under the paint being an Alexander ALX 400 bodied Dennis Trident. The batch of buses that this was part of were amongst the first low floor deckers in service with Lothian.
VLT 143 once more.
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