Thursday 23rd October 2008 ~ We Have Lift Off !!!

37571 after arrival at King's Lynn on L12 from Lowestoft

37565 in Vancouver Avenue tonight

My shaky photo of 37563 on Nene Quay in Wisbech while working K15 12.31 to Peterborough today. Jamie R is peeping out of a downstairs window laughing at me taking the pic !!

Today was GEMINI DAY at last. 37568 & 37571 were used by King's Lynn and 37563 came out of Yarmouth together with 37567 from Lowestoft. By the end of the day the newcomers seem to have impressed everyone by their appearance, although their lack of speed - a 50 mph limiter - is a major source of complaints from drivers it would seem.

The full rundown of todays workings is as follows :-

37563 Y14 07.32 YAR -LFT, 08.25 LFT - PBO to Lynn K15 08.55 LFT - PBO from Lynn, 13.18 PBO - LFT (booked to return to Lynn later tonight)

37567 L13 07.45 LFT - PBO to Lynn, K5 11.25 LFT - PBO from Lynn, 15.48 PBO - YAR

37568 K6 complete : 07.59 KLN - PBO, 09.18 PBO-LFT, 13.55 LFT-PBO, 18.18 PBO-LFT

37571 K20 06.47 KLN - NOR, return light L12 11.48 PBO - LFT from Lynn, 16.25 LFT - KLN

This all out effort to get some of the new buses into traffic was to ease a situation where some of the Yarmouth RMLs had been pressed into service while the rail replacement services between Norwich and Lowestoft used borrowed vehicles. Today 20507, 20106/121/141 were all in use on these.

Four more Geminis arrived at Lynn today, 37565 and 37566 are taxed and ready for service, while at Rowan Road 37569 & 37573 are awaiting documentation.

Services generally ran about 10-15 minutes late today, but the worst period was in the evening rush when 20500 left on time with the 16.31 Wisbech - Peterborough (K2), but the 17.01 (K4) which was seen belting through Walpole Highway by Bruce and myself at 17.23 with 20501 running 35 late then disgraced itself by losing all its air on the Wisbech Horsefair roundabout. this left several people stranded and they had to all wait for K6 which itself was precisely 30 late with 37568, departing at 18.01 after a gap of 90 minutes since the previous westbound service !

37568 managed to lose more time and was 34 late leaving Lynn on the 19.42 to Lowestoft.

As can be seen the two Geminis from the coast both came off their digrams at Lynn with L13 going forward with 20107 and Y14 with 20126. The latter had done K19 to Norwich and would normally have then done the X2, however, it must have returned empty to Lynn on this occasion. Meanwhile Paragon 20508 was on the X2 and returned on K19 tonight. Michael saw 20111 on a Bernard Matthews contract this morning and it then did an X2.

Rob H had to drive to Norwich this morning and saw K6 with 37568 and 37571 returning empty to Lynn off K20. Judith was very excited by seeing 37563 and Jamie R did it to Peterborough on K15 saying the seats weren't as hard as he thought they would be ! Chrissie reported 37567 leaving Wisbech on K5 9 late en route to Peterborough. It was only 4 late coming back. Bruce had to go to Spalding today and missed a lot of the action, but we joined forces at Walpole Highway tonight to have a chinwag and view 20501 and 37568 heading west - yes we really were talking for that long !

Despite all the excitement there were still B10s to be had : 20103/04/07/14/17/18/26/27 were all in action at various points on the X1.