Wednesday April 13th 2011 ~ Getting Your Money's Worth

What an extraordinarily good buy the B9 Geminis were - I'm sure I've started a blog entry with that sentence before. Love 'em or hate 'em, their reliability figures must be the envy of many a bus company. Despite yesterday's 'bad day', the casualty rate for the B9s is quite amazing. In the next week or so, at least one will pass the 300,000 miles mark since the fleet were introduced in October 2008. Both 37574 and 37575 are rapidly nearing that figure with 37572 not far away either. Today 37575 was rostered for K14, but by lunchtime, this turn was running with 37571. It looks like the Volvo technician had 571 this morning and then worked on 575 this afternoon, however, the latter needed a part ordering, so it will probably not be back on the road for a couple of days yet.
Shortly after 7am this morning, there was a fatal accident between Guyhirn and Wisbech. This closed the A47 until around 15.00 this afternoon, with services using the diversion via Wisbech St. Mary. K1 and K2 were caught up in the congestion, but by this afternoon were both running near to time. K5 also suffered and 37573 was already 10 late heading for Peterborough, it is due past Bruce at 08.04. It was seen returning no less than 40 late with 37567 on Y6 just a couple of minutes behind it.
Following on from Tuesday's misfortunes, 37157 on Y13 was involved in a slight collision in Peterborough at lunchtime and was unable to continue on the 13.05 to Lowestoft. This service restarted at King's Lynn at 14.32 with the only bus available, Scania 65525 ! In an effort to get this out of the circuit as soon as possible, it somehow managed to drop a couple of turns - may be it turned around at Yarmouth ? Anyway, it came back to Lynn on the 16.55 service (L11). So two Scanias in two days giving a bit of variety and thanks to one of our top men for tipping me off on 65525 being used.
Thanks are also very much due to Bruce for monitoring the service today while I was at Long Sutton. there was an unexpected swap on L8 with 37159 being replaced at Lowestoft by 37156. Malcolm writes " Today saw 37579 on K19, 37569 on K1, while 37156 was spare in the bus station this afternoon. 37567 was on Y6 and Dart 42446 worked the 1438 X2 service to Norwich with 37578 arriving on Y7". I think the intention had been to give 37156 a safety service, though whether this happened is debatable. It actually worked the first short leg of Y13 from Yarmouth to Lowestoft this morning and 37157 replaced it on arrival. As Malcolm says it was spare this afternoon before being used on L8 westbound at 15.25.
Tonight 37564 came into King's Lynn on L12 as booked, but then went to Vancouver Avenue as there was no driver available to take it to Peterborough at 20.50.