Thursday 12th May 2011 ~ The X1 : A Celeb Bus Service

I suppose in a strange kind of way, I have made the X1 a sort of 'celebrity' bus service and there can't be many of those !
I must stress that this was never my intention, don't forget that if you were here at the start, this began as a blog for a few bus friends and was never intended to attract the attention of the masses. All this publicity in 2011 I find quite astonishing. Anyway, I am told that the splitting of the X1 route appears to have been shelved for the time being - even though I think all the necessary timetables / duties are in existance. This is something I am glad about, but when I was speaking to Colin Booth the other day he assured me that it will still be possible to travel from Lowestoft through to Peterborough, even though a change of bus may be necessary at some point. To be fair, this happens quite often anyway, so the public will probably barely notice. With all the X1 vehicles being required at King's Lynn for servicing etc from June, the variety promises to continue. Who knows, we may even get a coach in reserve that works (unlike 20352).

Today the timetable had barely begun when there was a failure of sorts. 37160 to be precise, which I think was on K16 06.02 from Lynn and which was halted at East Winch with the emergency buzzer sounding. Scania 65532 was sent out to assist and then went forward to Lowestoft where it must have been a rare sight. It in turn worked the 09.55 back to Peterborough as far as Lynn where 37566 had recovered from a brake fault and was able to finish the diagram. 37160 was silenced and checked over at Lynn and was ready in time to work K5.
Malcolm witnessed K1 having 37564 swapped for 37156 at Lowestoft today and Rachel had 37567 on L11 12.05 from Peterborough which was 20 late into Lowestoft. Timekeeping through Wisbech was OK today, but at teatime K19 16.05 from Peterborough (37578) became embroiled in heavy traffic and was 15 late leaving for Lowestoft.