Friday 6th March 2009 ~ Getting Smashed

K1 on Thursday morning : Camera shy 37572 - the one still devoid of adverts seen at Walton Road, Walsoken.

K1 on Friday morning : Jamie R did a point and shoot job on a much more photogenic 20126 this morning as I was driving !

It is not often that the buses which King's Lynn despatch on a Friday morning are still all on the same turn by evening, but that actually happened today. The allocation of vehicles was also surprising. Probably predictably in a move to get it back to its Yarmouth home for the weekend, 20126 was sent out on K1. I passed it on the 07.48 ex Peterborough on the way to work and it took me by surprise. It stuck all day and was 13 late going back to Peterboro' on the 16.01 this afternoon. I also failed to mention this week that it is now devoid of side adverts - very unusual for Yarmouth who usually plaster it all over with same. L12 came back from Lowestoft with 20104 last night and today this worked K18 on which it was seen 18 late entering Wisbech to work as the 15.39 to Lowestoft. Yet another B10 was out all day, this being 20118 on L13.

One other B10 did work on the X1 in rather unexpected fashion today. Gemini 37569 suffered a broken destination screen glass between departing Wisbech at 12.01 to Peterborough and when I passed it at Walsoken on the return 12.48 ex Peterborough. Whether it was a missile responsible or a stone kicked up by a passing vehicle is not known. It made a big oval hole in the glass and was removed at Lynn with 20105 working forward. Andrew says this had been out on the 42 service to Fairstead earlier. He then saw 37569 work a King Edward VII School to North Wootton schools turn with the glass removed before being reglazed. It was in Vancouver Avenue repaired this evening.

Very unusual today was Lowestoft's 37568 being sent out on K17 (an internal B7 turn), while 20353 did K20. This is probably because the B7 needed some sort of repairs which could be carried out during K20's idle period which is roughly between 10.30 & 15.00. Nevertheless 20353 was still on K20 early this evening and looked to be heading for a Yarmouth overnight. The other fully active B7, 20351 , was on K4 today while the other B7 turn (K3) was covered by 37579. Equally noteworthy on the diagramming front was that of 37566 on K19, all day for once and it came back to Lynn tonight. B10 20109 will be absent for a week now as today it had a trip to ARM at Setch for a chassis wash prior to MOT. With 20121 now back on the road, 109's absence may not be quite so critical as it would have been in recent weeks.

One extremely unusual by-product of today's events is that it meant three consecutive services were single decker this evening, namely the 18.59 Lynn - Peterborough (K20) with 20353, the 19.59 (L13) with 20118 and 20.59 (Y14) with 20105.

A survey of eastbound services arriving at Wisbech this afternoon was as follows :

K15 37571 -3, K16 37563 -13. K17 37568 -12, K18 20104 -18 and K3 37579 -7. Seen going to Peterborough were : K3 37579 RT, K5 37577 -14, K7 37573 - 22, K1 20126 -13. K4 with 20351 was 12 late arriving at Wisbech to do the 17.01 westbound.

Absentee on the B9 front today was 37564. Finally 37565 which was one of the last B9s to receive the exhaust emissions ad is also the first to see it removed. 37572 is now the only B9 completely without any adverts.