Friday 18th September 2009 ~ There Goes That Bus Again

37570 seemed OK yesterday when photographed on K15 12.45 Lynn to Peterborough, but today it lost all its injectors.

20107 and genial chauffeur at Wisbech tonight before departure to Lowestoft at 20.00. Photo by Rob Brooks

Just after 08.30 this morning, I pulled the car over on the way to work to have a chat with Bruce about recent events. I told him 37577 was also due back today and that the chances of Scania 65528 appearing on K3 for a fifth consecutive day had receded as a result. At this point 37567 toddled by on K2 07.30 from Peterborough dead on time, but 5 minutes later the conversation was interrupted as Bruce said "So no Scanias today then ?" just as 65528 went past on Y6 05.50 from Yarmouth ! As it happened neither 37567 or 65528 finished their respective turns. 65528 had been a substitute at Lynn for 20107, but this was given the OK to resume the turn at 11.02 to Lowestoft. 567 meanwhile was taken off K2 this afternoon and changed for 37573. As predicted, 37577 was back and worked K5 after a service.

This evening 20106 was on Y7 and 37565 on L8, which was the opposite to what was expected. This may have been pre-arranged in order to get 106 back to Lynn.

After a pretty good day for punctuality, westbound services suffered delays late tonight. 37564 was 13 late on the 20.50 King's Lynn to Peterborough and 37575 on the 21.50 was around 50 late. Rob H says "At 22:25 followed 575 in from Middleton to Hardwick. I got petrol at Tesco, went back up to use flyover at approx 22:35 and found 572 also heading westbound. Any explanation, or just FST?". Incidentally 37572 on K15 was on time, so the cause of the delays had obviously cleared.

Marcus contacted me today and says "For your information there will be a road closure in Peterborough from Monday 21 September for approximately 5 weeks.
This will be Peterborough Road, between Eye village and the 'Somerfield' roundabout. X1 will be diverted via the northern route along A47, which is already affected by the A1073 works". Time will tell if timekeeping is adversely affected.

The good news on the Gemini front suffered a setback today with a Volvo engineer visiting King's Lynn and diagnosing 37570 with all six injectors broken. Such is the shortage of parts, they are being sourced from as far afield as Belgium and even China, I am told.

Michael Bryant reports that 37564 was not the only Gemini out on the X2 yesterday, 37568 also worked on the 12.38 Norwich - Lowestoft having earlier done the first part of K14. This meant the replacement vehicle on X1 must have been 20103 and it was this which failed to appear west of Lynn. It has had a number of recurring faults of late. Today it appeared on the second part of K16 after 34108 had worked the first leg, the 05.37 King's Lynn to Lowestoft.