ONE IN TWELVE – Fresh Cream

To celebrate the 12th anniversary of the founding of the site, every day during November I’ll be bringing you one of my favourite photos from the past 12 years.

Today’s picture takes us back to 2001 to remind ourselves how good the old blue & cream “core” livery could look when freshly painted.

RA248 about to turn onto Matt Talbot Bridge

I was always very fond of the blue & cream livery which I felt looked well not only when freshly painted, but also stayed good looking over the years inbetween repaints.

This picture of RA248 fresh from a midlife repaint shows how much nicer a freshly painted bus could look without the usual adframes.

RA248 spent a lot of its life in Phibsboro, but moved to Donnybrook for a while when it’s position as a potential tourbus was usurped by RA260, which had suffered upper-deck damage in a malicious fire at Dun Laoghaire. RA260 was repaired by conversion to open-top, and 248 came across to Donnybrook as a replacement.

AV167’s de-roofing (in 2001)

FROM THE ARCHIVE: After only a couple of months in service, AV167 was deroofed in a low bridge accident in May 2001.

Above: a rear view of Dublin Bus Volvo B7TL/Alexander ALX400 AV167 awaiting repair following a low bridge accident in May 2001. Nobody was injured in the incident, despite the fact that the bus was in service on route 19A at the time.

The bus driver became lost while on diversion off the normal line of route due to the St. Patrick’s Day parade, which was taking place in May having been cancelled in March due to Foot & Mouth restrictions. I can’t remember which exact bridge was responsible, either Sandwith Street or Macken Street is possible, as the route had been diverted via Merrion Square South and Clare Street.

AV167 was more or less brand new at the time, having been delivered and put into service early in 2001 (despite the 00 registration). It was based at Broadstone, and worked the 19/A along with the other AV160s.

AV167 was off service for almost a year, but eventually returned to traffic and can now be found at Harristown, working various routes, including recently the 102.

The upstairs of the bus, showing how it had been stripped of seating and prepared for reconstruction.

This shot gives us an unusual opportunity to see the “double-skin” construction of the outside shell of the ALX400 body.

Were this accident to happen now, the bus would probably be converted to an open-top tour vehicle, but at the time there was no question of a brand new lowfloor bus not being put back into normal passenger service.

As a result of this accident, the company tightened up on the marking and supervision of diversion routes during big public events, and paid special attention to drivers who might not be familiar with the city.