Sunday 15th August 2010 ~ Coach Poached

20126 has never been a common sight on the X1 - until now that is. Here it deputises for 37570 on the 08.30 from Yarmouth today, seen at Walpole about 5 late this morning. Thanks to Des for the tip off.

I made a trip up to Walpole Highway at just after eleven this morning to view the 10.10 ex Peterborough, the reason behind this being that it 'dies' at Lowestoft and then goes empty to Yarmouth and I just had a hunch that things might get interesting. The 10.10 passed by with 37566, so nothing too exciting there. As services cross here, I waited to check the 08.30 from Great Yarmouth and was very surprised to see 20126 heading towards me. Our man on the spot explains : "Yarmouth has four X1's to stay on a Saturday night and needs three of these for service on the Sunday.
On Saturday, a Lowestoft driver operated a Yarmouth shift that started in Lowestoft but finished in Yarmouth. To get him home, he was allowed to drive the bus (37568 off K18) to Lowestoft to garage for the night. Then 37570 was garaged at Yarmouth with a defective Digi Tacho. So, only two deckers were available for the Sunday service".
 Well I must admit I would never have guessed what happened there !
While 20126 was the only unusual vehicle to appear today - and it did indeed complete the turn which finishes as the 21.10 Peterborough - King's Lynn, viewed by Rob H and myself after a beer in the Lattice House ! - there was almost a Gemini failure too, Stan (a new name on this blog) explains "the driver of the 15.48 to Peterborough (37565) couldn't get the bus to reverse from the bus bay in Lowestoft bus station. He revved the engine for a few minutes and it moved, but only to the roundabout near the police station. He had to wait to give way to traffic and went to pull away, but the bus went very slowly and was shuddering. The driver managed to get the bus off the roundabout and parked at the side of the road. He told all the passengers that the onboard computer was reporting an air pressure fault on the brakes and that he would have to reset the computer to rectify it. He switched the engine off and waited for some minutes. He then started the bus up again and away we went. At Tesco he stopped for passengers and the bus would not pull away at all. The driver stopped the engine and again after some minutes started the engine and away we went. The bus changed drivers in Yarmouth and I travelled to Norwich with no further problems".
Punctuality was average today with a maximum delay of 12 minutes noted.