Saturday 11th July 2009 ~ A Very Useful Bus

20123 on Y6 this morning passing 'The Locomotive' pub on the approach to Wisbech

37564 & 37565 pose in King's Lynn bus station this evening after arrival on L11 and Y7 respectively. It has been a good week for 565 although it is still by far the lowest mileage B9. In contrast 37564 leads the fleet in this respect and with 84551 on the clock tonight it is expected to reach the 100,000 miles mark in around six weeks time all being well.

Royale 34108 spent a fourth consecutive day on the X1 today. Its use has enabled scheduled services to be carried out on Geminis 37563/4/8/9. Maintenance takes place on the B9s roughly every 14 days and whilst at King's Lynn, the early shift often get a B9 finished in time to do K5 (the 07.45 to Peterborough), Lowestoft do their servicing in the day and this can only be done when there are sufficient vehicles to cover. Only 37566 of the Lowestoft allocation will require a service this coming week and that not until about Friday, so it will be interesting to see if 34108 returns to its normal haunts on the X2.

34108 earned its keep on K16 today which ends at Lowestoft. B10M 20105 was unusually turned out for K4 this morning, another turn which finishes at Lowestoft, but this was to enable final adjustments to be made to 20107 which had taken over K4 by teatime. Gemini 37572 did K2 this morning, but this turn returned from Lowestoft with a very noisy 20103 which hasn't been about for a few days. 572 then relieved 37563 on L13 as the latter was required for servicing.

20123 had a long day today as it did Y6 which begins with the first westbound service from Yarmouth, Y6 at 05.50 and finishes the day as the 19.10 Peterborough - Lowestoft which arrives at its destination at 23.30. I saw 123 twice today and on both occasions acceleration was accompanied by some rather unhealthy looking grey smoke from the exhaust. At 18.30 this evening it was failed at Wisbech due to overheating, but a top up of coolant saw it resume its duty westbound. Later it was seen departing King's Lynn on the 20.35 eastbound.

B7 20351 remained at Vancouver Avenue today as did 37579 at Rowan Road. 20352 was L12 and 20353 K19. 352 left Wisbech bang on time on the 13.26 to Lowestoft and was being driven with gusto shall we say, at least that's all I'm prepared to divulge here.

Thanks to everyone who has reported sightings this week. Bruce is off to Devon on Thursday so the blog will be less comprehensive as a result.