09 deckers hit the streets

New 09-reg Volvo B9TL/Wright Eclipse VG34

2009 registered cars may be thin on the ground, but thanks to an ongoing delivery of buses originally ordered way back at the end of 2007, Dublin Bus has a number of smart new 09-reg double-deckers on the streets in the first month of the year.

The new buses have seen the end of the 44-year practice of matching fleet and registration numbers, making identification of buses difficult for both enthusiasts and staff alike.

The company bas started to introduce new larger fleet number transfers front and rear, but as seen in this view of Summerhill’s new VG34, not all buses have received these yet.

ONE IN TWELVE – Public Private Partnership

Unique photo? Private bus operating normal Dublin Bus service

The replacement of a watermain at Ballymore Eustace in Co. Kildare in 2005 resulted in the somewhat unique situation of a normal Dublin Bus service being partly operated by a private operator, MacDiarmada. The diversion routes were too narrow for any buses in the DB fleet.

Although independents have operated Schoolink service for many years, this was a fully fledged normal bus service. The private minibus operated the southern section of the 65, meeting the Dublin Buses at Blessington.

At the Ballymore Eustace terminus.

Operation Freeflow 2008

Operation Freeflow aims to help buses beat those winter jams

Operation Freeflow commences on Sunday the 30th of November 2008.

An additional 166 Gardai have been transferred to the Dublin Metropolitan Region.

These probationers will be solely deployed on traffic duties for the duration of Operation Freeflow.

In addition to the 166 members there will be

• motorbike patrols
• members of the Garda Mountain bike unit daily
• Daily Traffic patrols (am and pm) of the Air support Unit
• The Garda Mounted Unit
• Mobile patrols

An Garda Siochana encourage people to use Public Transport especially over the Freeflow period.

Schedules, timetables and availability of Public Transport Services can be accessed via the Public Transport icons attached to the web-site.

• Keep junction free
• Avoid illegal parking
• Look out for VMS signs
• Do not clog yellow boxes

Safety message - Security on Public Transport at Night.

–As part of our commitment to Operation Freeflow An Garda Siochana has undertaken to provide Gardai dedicated to ensuring the safety of persons travelling on, and in the vicinity of public transport Centres in the City. The unit will consist of one Sergeant and six Gardaí, who will patrol city centre transport centres and on the various modes of transport.

As part of ‘Operation Lifesaver’ (run in conjunction with Freeflow) on-going checkpoints will be held enforcing the Road Traffic Legislation. The following offences will be specifically targeted

• Drink Driving
• Speed
• Inappropriate driving
• Seatbelts
• HGV offences
• Mandatory Alcohol Testing (MAT) checkpoints will be held regularly over the Freeflow period

Traffic Control Centre, Harcourt Square will be the hub for the daily management of Operation Freeflow in the Dublin Metropolitan Region. The Traffic Control Centre has live video conferencing with the Dublin City Council traffic centre, who help regulate the flow of traffic through out the city.

ONE IN TWELVE – Distant Relatives

To celebrate the 12th birthday of this site, every day during November 2008 we are showing one or more old photos from the period 1996 to date.

A normal Dublin scene in the AD-era . . . or is it?

At first glance this O’Connell Street scene from 1999 looks fairly normal, a couple of Dublin Bus AD-types passing in the city centre.

Look closer however, you you will see that this is a rare meeting of the AD on the left with its country cousin, Cork’s DA-class. (Both are Alexander Setanta bodied DAF SB220 citybuses, but the eagle-eyed will spot some slight differences between the two types)

AD41 and DA9 are seen outside Dublin Bus HQ in O’Connell Street.

As a bonus, below is another DAF SB220 odd shot – P40 seen on loan to Bus Eireann, working a short on route 126 in 1998.

P40 as Naas Express (this size only)

ONE IN TWELVE – Wide Open Spaces

Tallaght LUAS station on Jan 22nd 2003

Sometimes you don’t notice places changing on a day by day basis, even though the changes add up over time to produce very large differences in the environment.

This shot of Tallaght LUAS stop, under construction in January 2003, shows just how much has changed in 5 years.

The wide open vista with lots of light, and the mountains visible to the left is long gone now, as this area is overshadowed by highrise buildings, and the line itself is actually underneath office developments just beyond where the buses are crossing.

The buses themselves have changed colour, but that is pretty normal for Dublin, where liveries have changed radically every decade since the 1960s – green to blue and cream, to orange, to green, to blue and cream, to yellow and blue . .

It’s only a matter of time before blue and cream comes round again, but the wide open spaces of Tallaght will never return.

ONE IN TWELVE – Instant Mods

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

Click on the picture for the full-size version.

Brand new RVs at Donnybrook in 1999

The delivery of the final order for 195 RVs in 1999 included the first “euro” additional buses, and a lot of the later 500s were stored for periods of time before entering service. At the same time, a change in specification came into effect – following successful trials of a DMD display on RV460 earlier in the year, it was decided that all future buses would be so equipped.

No specific instruction was given to Alexander about how the destination window should look, so they produced these vehicles with a smaller destination glass, correctly sized for the DMD display, as used for many UK operators who specified DMDs.

However, on delivery, it was felt by Dublin Bus that these smaller destination boxes looked “ugly” and an immediate instructions were issued to Alexander to revert to the original sized window, with the DMD centred within it. After a very short period, those vehicles already delivered with the small destination glass were dispatched to Louth Commercials for modifications to make them look like the others.

The top photo shows some of the RV580s stored new in Donnybrook.

RV565 was one of a number of buses which ran in service with the smaller window for a short period in 1999.

RV585 when new.

ONE IN TWELVE – AD AIRLINK

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.

Click on the picture for the full-size version.

ONE IN TWELVE – Cold

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.

RV490 in February 2001

This photo is not up to my normal standard technically – it was taken with a very low quality digital camera. However, it’s still a photo that I enjoy as it reminds me of a specific morning in early 2001.

A sudden cold snap in February of that year saw snow in the suburbs over several days, causing some disruption to transport, particularly on the first morning.

The picture shows RV490 on Ballinteer Road at around 0930 – I had boarded this bus on Broadford Road at about 0810, and it had taken an hour and twenty minutes just to get this far. By this time, there was no possible way that I was going to be in work on time, so I phoned work, then got off the bus and walked back home.

The snow stayed for a few days, and then melted away, and the traffic was only really bad on that first morning. It should be noted that traffic around Ballinteer and Dundrum was far worse in those days than it is now – it would routinely take up to 50 minutes to reach Taney Cross from Ballinteer, as there was no Wyckham Way or M50 extension, and all traffic was routed through the crossroads at Dundrum Village.

ONE IN TWELVE – Join the End of the Queue

Passengers queueing for the shuttle buses to the Phoenix Park to welcome the Irish team back from Japan in May 2002

ONE IN TWELVE – The Musical Tour

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 we remember a very short-lived tour operation in Dublin.

Click on any picture for the fullsize version.

Ailsa 83-WD-463 on the short-lived Musical Tour

Alongside Dublin Bus and Dualway there have been other smaller tour operators in the city, such as Viking Tours, and, a few years ago, The Musical Bus.

This short-lived operation departed from the North side of St. Stephens Green close to Dawson Street, and boasted a live band on board for each tour.

The bus was an Ailsa, imported second-hand from the UK by J J Kavanagh and used for a while on Naas Town Service before being converted and sold on to this one-bus operation.

The Musical Bus did not last long, and I’ve no idea what happened to the vehicle afterwards.

ONE IN TWELVE – VanHool Tours

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.

Click on any picture for the fullsize version.

D635 in tour bus guise

During the early years of this site, when I ran it while living in the UK, I would usually visit Dublin twice a year or so to get fresh photos and see what was happening on the scene. No such visit was complete without a ride on the city tour, which gave me the opportunity to travel on the VanHools of my youth, which were by the mid 90s gone from normal service.

Of all the buses used on the tour service, my favourites were D635 and DF760, both of which I had known from new in the mid 1970s. 760 had been allocated to my “home” garage, Donnybrook, and although it didn’t work my local routes, I still considered it one of “my ” buses.

I had even stronger memories of D635 however, as despite being a Summerhill bus, it was allocated to a route which came very close to home – so close in fact, that it could be seen from a vantage point at the top of the tall pine tree which grew in our back garden. I had been given a telescope for Christmas one year, and discovered that by climbing to the top of the tree, I could just see the 16As turning round at the Bottle Tower through a gap between the houses. I spent several happy afternoons up the tree watching the buses through the telescope, until complaints from the neighbours to my parents brought a quick end to the practice – they were not so sure it was buses I was watching (though in all innocence, it was! )

When not up a tree, I would often wander over to the Bottle Tower junction, where all the local routes – 14, 14A, 16A, 17, 47A and 61 could be watched together. D635 was a regular on the 16A, and stood out because it was out of sequence from the rest of the route’s allocation, which consisted of D665-669, and 673-699.

The odd ones out were 634, 635 and 644 which had somehow escaped being allocated to Clontarf (through 634/5 were to be sent there in an allocation tidying excercise in 1980).

D635 had a brief spell in Donnybrook in the early 90s, thus becoming one of a small number of buses which would have worked the Churchtown area as both a 14/A and a 16A.

I was pleased to come across it surviving on tours in the late 1990s, and even more pleased that it eventually survived all the others in the system as a tree-lopper to become both the last VanHool owned by Dublin Bus, and the last two-tone green vehicle in the fleet at the time of it’s eventual disposal in February 2003.

Even that is not the end of the story for D635, which has survived in private hands in tree-lopping format, and is currently undergoing renovation to become a special event vehicle.

Given my childhood method of observing the new VanHools on the 16A, it is somewhat appropriate that this bus became a tree-lopper – perhaps there is a message there somewhere?

ONE IN TWELVE – Lost Location

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 we look at a picture taken 11 years ago which can never be recreated – not only is the bus long gone, but the location itself has vanished forever.

Click on any picture for the fullsize version.

Bombardier KD105 parked on the now vanished ramp up to Connolly Station

When this site first started back in 1996, virtually the entire fleet of 366 Bombardier/GM double-deckers were still in service with Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann, and the first 4 years or so of the site recorded their steady decline and eventual scrapping.

This picture, taken in 1997, shows a typical Dublin KD – Clontarf’s KD105 – in the two-tone green livery in which they ran all of their lives, the only modification being the introduction of a thin orange band and logo when Dublin Bus devolved from CIE.

This picture, taken on a wet Friday in May, reminds me of how useful the ramp up to Connolly Station was as a location for layovers. Behind the KD are a couple of Bus Eireann vehicles, including a VC which would probably still be in service today. The location no longer exists – the ramp was levelled and removed in 2002 to make way for the new LUAS Red Line tramway station which opened in 2004.

KD105 is here resting on duty 3/27B – it had been delivered new to Clontarf in February 1982, and was one of the batch which replaced the last open platform Leyland PD3 buses at that garage.

Translink add to Volvo order-book

Volvo Bus have confirmed an order for 45 B7RLE single-deck buses with ADL Enviro 300 bodywork for Translink, as well as confirming current Bus Eireann and Dublin Bus double-deck orders.

Volvo B7RLE ADL Enviro 300 (Photo: Volvo Bus)

PRESS RELEASE

Orders totalling more than 200 vehicles confirmed at this week’s Euro Bus Expo show have underlined the market-leading position of the current Volvo bus range in the British Isles.

Whilst the new Volvo B5L Hybrid Double Deck may have stolen the headlines at the show, the current Volvo bus line up – the Volvo B7RLE Single Deck and the Volvo B9TL Double Deck, which are now available with four and three body choices respectively – continue to rack up important orders, maintaining their positions as the market-leading products in their respective classes.

Volvo B7RLE – versatile, durable and economic

Volvo’s low entry single deck citybus, the B7RLE, is part of the B7R family – Volvo’s best selling chassis worldwide. Renowned for its versatility, economy, durability and reliability it’s easy to see why the B7RLE is a truly competitive, efficient chassis – ideal for any urban environment. Two examples of the Volvo B7RLE are on the Volvo stand at Euro Bus Expo.

The Volvo Wrightbus Eclipse Single Deck is now a mainstay of the FirstGroup fleet and the example featured – destined for service with First Leeds – has the tried and tested 7.1 litre Volvo D7E Euro 4 engine rated at 290hp coupled to the ZF 6 speed automatic gearbox.

The Wrightbus Eclipse bodywork features 44 seats and ACIS RTPI system, guide arm compatibility and ten camera CCTV system. A newly face lifted Eclipse 2 is also displayed on the Wrightbus stand, one of 10 Volvo B7RLEs poised to enter service with Lothian Buses.

Another long-standing Volvo customer, Transdev Blazefield, has ordered 19 Euro 5 compliant Volvo B7RLE Eclipse 2s for their Burnley & Pendle operation, whilst Warrington Borough Transport have ordered 12 similarly specified vehicles – their first of this combination – as part of their fleet upgrade programme, which are due to go into service on a variety of routes around the borough in June next year.

In addition to the 27 Volvo B7RLE Eclipses delivered in the summer to trentbarton for their Rainbow 5 service between Derby and Nottingham, a further 14 of the new Eclipse 2 bodied B7RLEs will be delivered in the New Year for their Calverton Link service running from Nottingham. GHA in Wrexham have also taken three of the Ballymena-bodied Volvo single decks.

A second Volvo B7RLE  is displayed on the stand, this time Euro 5 compliant and featuring the ADL Enviro 300 bodywork, which forms part of an order for 45 vehicles for Translink, It has 55 seats with 3&2 seating in the rear section.

The Volvo B7RLE is also available with body options from Plaxton in the guise of its Centro model and now, for the first time – Optare with its newly launched “Esteem” model.

Rotola plc has purchased 33 Volvo B7RLE single decks for use on its Diamond Bus Network in the Midlands, twenty-two of which feature the Plaxton Centro bodies and have gone into service on a number of key routes in the Black Country under the ‘Black Diamond’ brand. The remaining eleven B7RLEs have Wrightbus Eclipse bodywork and are entering service in partnership with Worcestershire County Council under the ‘Red Diamond’ brand.

Kent County Council will be the first operator to put the new Volvo/Optare single deck combination into service with a total of six such vehicles. Whippet Coaches are hot on their heels, with three due to enter service on the Cambridge busway in 2009 – a further 10 Volvo B7RLEs with Wrightbus Eclipse bodies, operated by Stagecoach and fuelled by bio-diesel are set to join them.

Volvo B9TL – leader of its class

Over 500 Volvo B9TL Double Decks have been registered in the UK alone this year, and with body options available from Wrightbus, ADL and Optare further orders in the pipeline are likely to cement its leading position, both in the UK and Ireland.

The Isle of Man will see their first ever new Volvo bus when 11 Wrightbus Gemini bodied Volvo B9TL Double Decks enter service on the island in early 2009.

Across the Irish Sea,  a batch of 10 B9TL Geminis are currently being delivered to Bus Eireann, whilst Dublin Bus is currently taking delivery of 50 Volvo B9TLs with ADL Enviro 400 bodywork, with a further 50 to follow, and their first ever Wrightbus double decks will enter service in the Irish capital before the year end.

London sighting tour operator Big Bus have recently taken delivery of 10 Volvo B9TL Double Decks with Optare Visionaire body work – three of which are open top, with the other seven “half top”. The Euro 5 compliant vehicles are being deployed on all three of the companies “hop-on hop-off” tour routes which take in many of the capital’s tourist sights.  A further order for 10 has been confirmed for delivery during 2009.

Speaking at the show, Volvo Bus Sales Director Phil Owen said, “Our product range and the comprehensive options available is attracting new customers as well as retaining existing Volvo operators. “We are committed to providing the best in customer service – from the initial quotation to the vehicle handover and support through the life of the vehicle, with an emphasis on being able to recommend the best driveline configuration for a particular application to maximise performance and optimise fuel return.”

He added, “Whether it’s product information, driver training, soft products or after sales service, we want Volvo customers to feel that they truly are getting the best.”

ONE IN TWELVE – Aerdart

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 we go to 2001 for the launch of the short-lived Aerdart service.

Aerdart DLA7 seen before entering service in 2001

Sample through Bus/Rail ticket

The launch of the Aerdart service by DelGro (owners of Metroline in London) seemed to show the start of an interest in the Dublin market by the large players in the UK bus scene (and was to be followed over the next couple of years by the entry into the Irish market of First and Veoila). The route linked Dublin Airport to the DART rail network at Howth Junction, running 7 days a week, with through ticketing to or from any station in the Dublin area.

The Aerdart service eventually foundered however, with the company blaming poor interchange facilities at Howth Junction where passengers had to lug their baggage up and down sets of stairs, and frequent closure of weekend DART services for engineering works.

The photo was taken on Saturday 31st March 2001, a few days before the launch of the route. I was lucky enough to meet up with a visiting Delgro executive who took the bus out for me to photograph, and printed the sample ticket above. He also explained to me that Metroline bosses had assumed they would use their existing livery for the Irish service, but that local staff had warned that red white and blue might not be the most sensitive of livery choices for this market!

The buses themselves were very smartly turned out Dennis Dart SLF Pointers, dual door with luggage space.

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.