Wednesday 28th January 2009 ~ Bruce and his X Ray Specs

No we weren't dreaming, 31602 really was at Lynn station after our visit to the pub !

The sacred King's Lynn 'board' detailing the vehicles allocated to X1 duty today.

Bruce and his dear friend 20105 photographed this evening

My attempts to check the X1 vehicles today were pretty futile. My sightings up to teatime were K1 37579 running 8 late from Wisbech eastbound departing 08.47. Y8 06.02 ex Yarmouth was 37568 and this was on time and stuck all day. There was then a long gap until I saw 37565 arriving at Wisbech 3 late on Y14 12.48 from Peterborough. The next service K15 13.18 ex Peterborough had 37570 and was 4 late at Walpole at 14.23. K3 was Profile 20352 slightly late. Dead on time was the 17.01 Wisbech - Peterborough K4 with 37572. Bruce saw K6 running quite late this morning due to congestion at Eye Green and most unusually this was B7 20351.

Michael says that yesterday 20104 was K19 and 20103 was on the other X2 turn which seems to regularly get a B10, 14.08 Lowestoft - Norwich etc. Today K19 was 20107 and Lynn also turned out 20104 on K18 and 20109 on K20 this morning. 20109 didn't do the afternoon part of K20, but it did arrive at Lynn tonight off an X1. The Hunstanton schools buses today were 20118 (2), 20131 (4) and 20106 (5).

37574 had arrived at Lynn tonight on what we think was Y21, but it was due to go to Volvo King's Lynn for a sender unit. Whilst on this subject, the Volvo facility at Lynn is expected to close down on Friday which will leave Ely as the nearest outlet to King's Lynn. This could adversely affect B9 availability, tonight for example 37563/575 were off the road with adblu faults and 37570/77 are due to have their CCTV repaired tomorrow. In addition 37566 is confirmed as collision damage and is believed to be at RH Bodyworks. This will mean tomorrow could be interesting as B10s if not Scanias will have to cover the shortage. 37563 had begun the day on K5 but was obviously removed at some point and this has become a regular occurrence with this bus recently.

Bruce and myself visited King's Lynn garage tonight and thanks to the staff for supervising our visit. Later after a beer, we were on the way home when Bruce insisted he had seen a Class 31 diesel locomotive as we passed King's Lynn rail station. Thinking he'd lost it, I begrudgingly agreed to go back and check and lo and behold there were 31232 and 31602 just about to depart on a test train !! A bit off topic but definitely worth reporting in this day and age.