' Scene’ on the West Coast of Scotland part 3.

Earlier this year, I had a short break staying at the Alexandra Hotel in Oban. The tour company was ‘Highland Heritage’ (HH) with whom I have no connection other than as a satisfied customer.

 

On this particular day we went to Fort William .

 

K300 WCM

A DAF SB4000 with Van Hool Alizee T9 bodywork. Formerly YD03 PFA. it was operating a ‘citylink’ service to Oban.

 

SV09 EGZ

A Volvo B7R with Plaxton ‘s Profile bodywork although in Scottish ‘citylink’ livery is a ‘Stagecoach’ vehicle based at Inverness.

 

SV09 EGJ 

Although carrying a similar registration and livery, this is a Volvo B12B with Plaxton Panther bodywork again of ‘Stagecoach’ but based in Glasgow.

 

S269 KHG

A Volvo B10M with Jonckheere Modulo bodywork. The legal titling shows the bus as being with ‘Highland Country Buses’ trading as ‘Stagecoach in the Highlands’. At one time it worked for ‘Stagecoach Bluebird’. 

 

SV55 KVB

 

A Volvo B7R with Plaxton Profile Interurban bodywork again working for ‘Stagecoach in the Highlands’. 

 

R947 XVM

A Volvo B10M with Alexander PS bodywork. It’s a long time since I saw one of these in ‘Stagecoach’ service, I thought that they had all gone.

 

SV58 BMU 

A Dennis Trident 2 with Alexander Dennis Ltd. (ADL) Enviro 400 bodywork working for ‘Stagecoach in the Highlands’ based in Fort William and carrying branding for ‘the fort link’.

 

Fort William is at the end of the the railway line from London via Glasgow that is traversed by the ‘Caledonian Sleeper’ every night of the week except Saturday. 

 

Apart from the loco, the train that I saw was made up of  2 sleeping coaches, a comfortable day coach and what is best described as a catering car that supplies food and drink etc.

 

Hauling it was 67 011.

 

The Class 67 is  a Bo-Bo diesel electric loco that was built by Alstom at Valencia in Spain. One of 30 loco’s in the class,

 

They were built to operate on high speed mail and passenger trains. 

 

Unfortunately, the mail work dried up at about the time the loco’s were delivered and they have had to be utilized on other duties such as the Caledonian Sleeper. 

 

Others have undertaken ‘Thunderbird’ duties around the railway system which involves having loco’s stationed at strategic points from where they can be despatched to recover broken down trains. One such location where I have seen them is at Doncaster.

 

 

 

Also between duties at Fort William was Class 156 156457. This had operated the service from Glasgow.

 

The Class 156’s were built in Birmingham by Metro Cammell (now Alstom) as part of the plan to replace earlier ‘Heritage’ DMU’s and further reduce the levels of loco haulage of passenger services.