Thursday 24th March 2011 ~ Nice Day For It

Wow - a whole week has passed with a low floor service - possibly some kind of record, I will have to look back at the stats. Weather was beautiful today and buses seem to have slipped on timings a bit, possibly due to more leisure traffic. Several seen during the morning were up to 10 minutes late, whereas yesterday most ran to time. I had to go to Milton Keynes for a funeral this afternoon and as I left work at 12.23, heard a terrific racket which to my surprise turned out to be 37572 passing through eastbound on L10, its fan having clearly gone the same way as many before it. Just before I reached MK, I passed a service to Cambridge with a very inviting looking B12 Paragon coach belonging to Stagecoach, no low floors there ! I also saw my first butterfly of the year, a Brimstone, but that doesn't really belong in this blog :+0
An unusual swap occurred this morning when Y13 07.30 Yarmouth to Lowestoft with 37567 was changed on arrival for 37157 to work the 08.15 to Peterborough. Rachel saw 37567 awaiting transfer to the depot, but there was apparently no rush as it was still there an hour or so later.
Yesterday 37577 appeared in service with revised destination display, so what exactly is going on ??? Richard A explains : "When a new route or destination is required for any bus with the latest destination equipment (called Hanover), the information is programmed into a computer then each bus is updated individually. This process only takes a few seconds using a lead which is plugged in to the bus. Often this is done by an official at Norwich, in between runs or whilst at Norwich bus station.
At the moment, most of the fleet is being updated due to the changes to timetables/routes over the next few weeks. A side effect of this is often the change of font style or size. It just depends on the way it has been programmed in centrally".
Ah, thanks Richard, so no fiendish plan then after all.