Tuesday 10th March 2009 ~ Eating Ones Words

37573 now with standard destination glass passes Walpole Highway on Sunday 8th.

"You have to hand it to the Geminis", I said to Bruce just after 9am this morning "they are certainly very reliable". At that point I was very much unaware that subsequent observations would question my judgement !

You may recall that yesterday's observations had left some unanswered questions. The two turns concerned were K18 which after consultation with Andrew looked at first as though it had left Lynn at 16.12 with Scania 65527, but on reflection the Scania had probably relieved 20105 which in turn did K18. The other mystery was K19 and with neither Sam nor Michael viewing it, I can only come to the conclusion that it was Gemini worked throughout (as on Friday), but this time with Lynn's 37579.

Back to this morning then and the first sign of things to come was Bruce reporting 20107 running 7 late on L9 06.32 from Yarmouth, the 09.31 ex Wisbech to Peterborough. The following 10.01 (Y10) was not seen, but 20104 then turned up on the 10.31 which is L11 07.05 from Gorleston and then Suzanne saw L12 07.15 from Lowestoft departing Wisbech with 20105 !! The no-show of Y10 is best explained by Rob Horspole who was on the scene.

" I arrived at Horsefair at 09:37 shortly after 20107 en route to Peterborough. I could have got on that, but decided to wait for my parents to arrive on their free Norfolk Green bus so that we could travel together on the 10:01. (There was a guy in a hi-viz vest on 107 accompanying the driver). 20107 was pulling onto the roundabout as the local bus arrived. And then we waited. At 10:05 the service to Lowestoft arrived with 37573 and a nice blonde lady driver. Unfortunately, while her passengers were alighting and embarking, a delivery lorry parked to her offside rear, which as she had other buses parked in the bays on either side made her exit from the bay more difficult than usual. However, after a few minutes she managed to complete the manoeuvre with the assistance of the Gemini’s somewhat feeble horn and her more robust verbal suggestions as to how the lorry driver might have parked. And so we waited some more, and at 10:23 37563 arrived into its awaiting bay. There was quite a queue by then, some of whom were obviously early arrivals for the 10:31 service. We got onto the bus, and went to sit at the back on the lower deck. Oh dear, the use of the back seats as footrests by some passengers is not doing them any good, and their condition can at best be described as “dirty”. I refrained from sitting nearest the window as I could not identify what the brown substance was which was on the seat, but suspect it had previously been on the bottom of a shoe! And so we reversed out of the bay, and began to move forward, with what sounded a most disconcerting noise coming from the engine. We stopped level with the taxi waiting area opposite the car park exit, and the driver was on his phone. Within seconds, 20104 appeared, and we graciously reversed back and then moved into a vacant bay, and we transferred onto 20104 with the poorly Gemini left to have its “engineering fault” resolved. I gleaned from other passengers that 37563 had called at Vancouver Avenue with an “Adblu problem”, and indeed the driver of 20104 explained how the performance of a Gemini is adversely affected, in particular in pulling away at junctions, when this happens. There were 3 empty seats on 20104. I and several passengers commented that we want our coaches back – and both drivers remarked “so do we”!
Our journey to Peterborough was uneventful, and comfortable. The return on 37564 which was the 13:58 from Peterborough (K16) was adequate, but with the seats unsurprisingly in a similar state to those on the other Gemini".

So thanks to Rob, the picture is complete. To be fair I don't think this kind of thing happens on a daily basis, but it does indeed confirm that Adblu influenced failures are still occurring.

Earlier I had passed K1 with 37565 on its way to 'Owestoft', but this didn't come back and 565 then took over K19 and returned to Lynn, thanks to Sam for confirming this. It is not known what did the second part of K1 (12.25 ex Lowestoft) but it would seem a reasonable assumption that it was 20353 which had unusually been sent out from Lynn on K19. Mention has been made previously of some rather unusual vehicle allocations at Lynn recently (not least of which was 37564 on K7 yesterday - this is a Lynn internal turn and very rarely gets a Lowestoft car). This would appear to be because the regular man who rosters the buses has had an understudy standing in this week.

Because of 37563's adblu problems, Y10 was restarted at Lynn at 12.12 with 37574 which had done the first part of K20. 37563 was then repaired and sent out on the second half of K20.

37566 which had been on K2, was tonight over the pits at Lynn and what worked forward at 18.42 to Lowestoft is unknown.