Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
Most hated bus
Anything operated by Buses Excertera.....
Most hated bus
Mostly scrapped now but Plymouth Citybus had a few that really struggled up some of the steeper hills on many of the routes. The slow climb from the Lord Luis to Chaddlewood deserves a particular mention. Haven't been on one attempting church hill mind. Rare but a few also had the pleasure on the 5A when turning right from Holmwood Avenue up the steep bit of Goosewell Road.
The last route I saw them running is the 34 and 27 & 28s but think their days are numbered.
Dislike the MCV Evolution buses, mostly because lack of leg room, & a local bus company in my area Avon Buses allocate these to a route that takes 2 hours, & knees & other muscle joints start aching after 50 minutes, that you get so relieved when you get off, annoying thing is the route itself 22 Chester-West Kirby-Moreton is one of those underrated scenic routes in the area.
of the buses that run in Huddersfield:
TLC Travel Solo SRs (they all have the extremely basic interior and God-awful rock hard seats)
Arriva Yorks Lowlanders (somewhat ugly IMO; from what ive seen, generally scabby)
Yorks Tiger's MCV Evolutions (generally horrid; the bell is basically a fire alarm sounder)
Streamline's ex Lothian Dart (woefully sluggish and somewhat unsuitable for the 370/1 routes Streamline operate)
certain First Hudds ALX400s (rock hard seats and some are somewhat rickety I find)
Can imagine that 2 hours on a Dart probably isn't most desirable - the ride quality isn't great. I've driven a few MCV Evolutions - but with a MAN chassis. I'd have thought they'd be more suited to provincial operations - smoother with an insane BHP rating. Although I liked them overall (second to none in terms of agility), the cab felt strange - the driver's seats were so high up that my line of sight wasn't far off being above the windscreen .
They turn up everywhere - when I moved from South London to Loughborough, a load of them turned up on the local routes to Leicester, replacing the Olympians . I wouldn't have thought such gutless buses would be much cop on hilly provincial routes down in Devon - they must have been going really cheap!
It was Northern Counties that built the Paladin, i did dislike the short wheelbase Paladins First Manchester had them & allocated some the long then 10 Manchester-Warrington think it was one of those built on the Volvo B6 chassis.
Streetlites. Had a ride on close to new London examples and was scared it was about to fall apart (17 and 67 plates on the 39 back in October).
Compare this to Arriva Wrexham's Enviro 400 City buses, which are quite honestly the best buses I have ever ridden, so much for my mum and gran to comment on how great the ride quality was.
- MPDs. Rattly, noisy and about as unreliable as they come.
- B7L / Wright Eclipse. The ones we have in York are down right dreadful. Ridiculously noisy and underpowered and the seats are hideous
- Some of the Volvo 7900s - the early ones in Edinburgh (13 plate) rattle like hell, rock hard seats and rather noisy when the diesel engine kicks in.
- Some B7TLs - it's hit and miss - but the older Lothian examples are very sluggish
Depends which one you're on.
- Some B7TLs - it's hit and miss - but the older Lothian examples are very sluggish
No option to hold gears I imagine either.Depends which one you're on.
The ones which have had the turbo and/or intercooler reconditioned/replaced are generally pretty good.
I'd much rather have any B7TL than one of the 11 plate B9TLs, which have excellent engines but are strangled by the gearbox for emissions regulations, so are fairly gutless because they change up just as you get into the power band and tend to struggle on hills.