Meeting an Old Friend

	Meeting an Old Friend
	Former London Buses transfered to
	BeeLine of Bracknell

Spending most of normal bus working hours either asleep on the X7/X9 between Bracknell and London or in the office out of sight of buses it was a nice bonus to ride local Beeline service 171/2 on the evening of 19th January 1999 and find it worked by old friend F101GRM, the former Uxbridge Buses LX1, who I had known well in her days on London Transport route 607 from Shepherd's Bush to Uxbridge.

Routes 171 & 172 form two complimentry halves of an evenings only circular town sevice between the Bus Station and Great Hollands. The 171 goes via Crown Wood, Birch Hill and Great Hollands, while the 172 works via Wildridings, Great Hollands and Birch Hill. Arriving at the Bus Station as a 171 a bus will change numbers to 172 and vice versa. The service is usually worked by Beeline's roaring Northern Counties single deck bodied Scania beasts.

The Old Girl stormed into the Bus Station looking magnificent in Beeline's all over yelow with the jazzy blue and orange vinyl skirt and carrying Beeline fleet number 800. Having the 1 & 2 on the three track number blind half cocked to save changing numbers when reversing direction slightly spoiled the initial impression. Once aboard the decline of this once great lady was painfully obvious. The sagging seat frames made the whole bus seem to be folding along its centre line. Some rather urgent driving implied that there was life in the engine which had never been alowed to show in the grinding trafic of Ealing and Acton.

Old Friends New Paint


The lady in question F101GRM. Photographed February 1999	F102GRM was numbered at the end of the Lynx batch as 809. Photographed February 1999	Another former 607 Express - LS470 was a CentreWest trainer before passing to Beeline. Photographed February 1999

Uxbridge RW43 (HDZ5443) was not renumbered when transfered. Photographed February 1999>	Buslines G56XLO became Beeline 507 in all over advertising. Photographed March 1999	Buslines G55XLO became Beeline 506 and stayed yellow. Photographed February 1999

Sometimes when high floor coaches are not available Lynxes are put to work on X7 London Link duties. I had thought F101GRM would be idealy suited with high backed seats etc. but drivers told me the bus was not even poular on local work ! Management took a different view, when 6 Scania ULF Wright Excelsior buses were delivered in May 1999 to replace Lynxes 800 was one of the two Leylands retained. For details see the Bracknell fleet page

Old Friends New Paint Vol II

The summer of 1999 saw another round of retendering in London with new buses for (f)Gold Arrow to retain some of their routes. The displaced buses could be lightly refurbished, mainly a case of repainting into the new operators colours and put to work elsewhere in CentreWest or beyond into wider world of (f) First Group

BeeLine recieved an allocation of second user Dart 8.5SDL3003 with Wright Handibus bodies from CentreWest's DW class for use at Slough and Bracknell to replace the Renault Dodge S75 chassis RW class, even though both sets of buses were delivered new in 1990. The RWs are rumoured to have been sent to Glasgow for further service, much to Glasgow's disgust.

After sending the first batch of DWs to Slough Bracknell found themselves short of vehicles for a couple of days while their low floor Scania ULFs were needed as shuttle buses for a "Transport for the Disabled" exhibition at Crowthorne. As a result a few DWs waiting to go off for repaint were temporarily licenced, including changing the legal lettering, and worked Bracknell local services in red livery.


DW109 went straight to work without waiting for repaint early in August 1999	RW42 (left) is joined by DW79 (centre) & DW85 (right) Photographed 22^nd August 1999	DW108 becomes Beeline 108 Photographed 22^nd> August 1999