Thursday April 14th 2011 ~ The Wind Of Change

At a meeting in King's Lynn tonight, it was announced that First Eastern are to relinquish the local town services and Hunstanton routes to Norfolk Green as from a date to be announced in June. The only unaffected service will be the X1 which will continue to have a maintenance base at King's Lynn. 22 buses will be transferred away, presumably meaning the need for Saddlebow compound will cease. This also explains why it has recently been cleared of withdrawn vehicles. As I mentioned earlier this week, evening services in the town had already gone over to NG operation from Monday last. All the First local drivers are being re-employed by NG and this will leave 42 Excel drivers I believe. It is likely that there will be a reduced requirement for maintenance and cleaning staff and some redundancies are expected. There is a possibility that some Norwich buses may be repaired at King's Lynn when resources are stretched.

On the X1 today, L12 & Y13 swapped buses at some point. 37571 and 37569 being the vehicles. K4 began with 37565, but came back from Lowestoft with 37159 which had earlier worked the 09.38 Lowestoft to Norwich X2. 37575 was successfully repaired at King's Lynn today.
Malcolm saw 37566 on  L8 and 42451 worked  the 1538 X2 service to Norwich. 37156 arrived 14 minutes late on Y9 & departed 6 minutes late to Kings Lynn. 37567 arrived on time on L10 diagram.
At Wisbech, services were seen departing on time westbound, but most were around 5 late returning from Peterborough. Heaviest delay was to 37576 on K17 which was 11 late on its booked arrival time for the 15.56 to Lowestoft.
While 37577 is away for repairs, B7 Profile coach 20352 is scheduled to be arriving at King's Lynn on loan. The other two Essex Profiles 20351/3 have already left for Scotland I am told.