Stagecoach North Scotland (Bluebird and Highland)

[GusB]

I do not think they were certified as such, apart from some Fife had, which included ex Bluebird ones.

Those are the ones I'm referring to. The K-N plate Interurbans that were used on the 305 and 10 certainly permitted 8 standees, and it was clearly displayed next to the seating capacity.

Edit - PG has beaten me to it

 

[Jordan Adam]

Not quite, the Interurbans were intended to carry up to 8 standees, and had hand-holds towards the front end for this purpose.

You've muddled up my replies!

I was referring to the Jonckheeres, Premieres, Profiles, Panthers and Elites that were used on the 10/35/305 in the past. Indeed it is illegal to have standees, however it doesn't stop it happening!

This was in reply to to this...

Interdecks going to Elgin? Do you mean the elites?

Which in turn was in reply to...

Panthers and Elites are totally fine in high winds, back when they used the SV59 Panthers they never had to take them off the road due to winds. Likewise on the 10 and 35 they've never had to take the coaches* off due to winds.

The part of the reply about standees was just regarding the Interdecks as it has been fairly common for them to have standees on occasion between Aberdeen and Ellon P&R.

Hope that helps!

Those are the ones I'm referring to. The K-N plate Interurbans that were used on the 305 and 10 certainly permitted 8 standees, and it was clearly displayed next to the seating capacity.

Edit - PG has beaten me to it

The M-RSO batch along with the Artics could also take 8 standees. The S-JSE Joncks may have too, but i can't quite recall.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wickedbuses/4410977709/

 

[Pat1105]

I was referring to the Jonckheeres, Premieres, Profiles, Panthers and Elites that were used on the 10/35/305 in the past. Indeed it is illegal to have standees, however it doesn't stop it happening!

The issue with the Interdecks is the I-Shift gearbox rather than the entire coach itself. Plaxton offer the Panorama with the ZF Ecolife much like the Elites currently on the 10 (which are fantastic machines and very reliable), those would be ideal. E400MMCs wouldn't work as the passengers would complain constantly (as they have with the 35), what you need to remember is the Buchan Xpress basically exists because of the lack of train service, hence why it needs high spec vehicles. It also brings in the most revenue at Bluebird, hence how it can afford new vehicles every 5/6 years. In hindsight they should've bought more Elites to the same spec as the ones on the 10 for the 35 and just added a few extra peak short workings to/from Oldmeldrum.

The E200s were quite poor, but they've had work done on them lately and many have been refurbished inside, with the rest being done now.



Luggage capacity isn't an issue on the Buchan Xpress, however comfort is, hence why most passengers would be against any buses. Panoramas are the most ideal option as they're a standard type for the company. Tourismos are good, but again non-standard so very unlikely to be bought.



This is not true however. The E400MMCs on the 35 have been plagued with reliability issues and are loathed by both the passengers and drivers. They're good buses, but not on a route like the 35 regardless of winds.

Also the Buchan Xpress is only the 60/61/63/67/68. The 62 no longer exists, 64/65 are Central Coaches routes and the 66/69 are short local routes.



The issue with the 63 plates here is that they're only 3 speed, so they're pretty hopeless.

Would the 35 not have reliability issues because it is such a long route? Buchan Express routes are a lot shorter so they might not have reliability issues if they used MMC’s?

 

[Jordan Adam]

Would the 35 not have reliability issues because it is such a long route? Buchan Express routes are a lot shorter so they might not have reliability issues if they used MMC’s?

Actually the Buchan Xpress vehicles do higher mileage, the end to end distance of the route is somewhat irrelevant.

 

[Pat1105]

UID E400 was alight in Crimond yesterday. No one injured.

 

[NewcastleOne]

UID E400 was alight in Crimond yesterday. No one injured.

Believed to be 19212

 

[Jordan Adam]

Believed to be 19212

Indeed it was 19212 operating a Service 69 towards Fraserburgh. This also follows 19373 which had a minor fire in Banchory on Monday!

19212 - NK57 DWY – Stagecoach North Scotland (SBLB) – bustimes.org

 

[GaryMcEwan]

19212 hasn't been at North Scotland that long either from being transferred from Newcastle.

 

[Jordan Adam]

19212 hasn't been at North Scotland that long either from being transferred from Newcastle.

Came up in March, only been in service about two weeks. Question is how long will 19213 last, it's already broken down more than once this week!

 

[GaryMcEwan]

Came up in March, only been in service about two weeks. Question is how long will 19213 last, it's already broken down more than once this week!

So it fitted in well with the rest of the North Scotland fleet then with it's reliability.

 

[Jordan Adam]

So it fitted in well with the rest of the North Scotland fleet then with it's reliability.

Indeed... 30+ failed buses in Aberdeenshire and Buchan on Monday, must be a new record.

As for 19373, it had 4 breakdowns (including 1 minor "thermal incident") from Monday - Wednesday and has been off the road since...

 

[Jordan Adam]

Indeed... 30+ failed buses in Aberdeenshire and Buchan on Monday, must be a new record.

As for 19373, it had 4 breakdowns (including 1 minor "thermal incident") from Monday - Wednesday and has been off the road since...

On this note...

19373 is back in service today, albeit it's currently broken down in Culter.

 

[Red Onion]

Today I saw a 747 at the airport, I thought the service was due to end in April (pre-Covid) so was a bit surprised. Must admit I’ve not been keeping up with timetable changes through the pandemic but thought this would never reappear! Think I should do some timetable reading...

 

[Jordan Adam]

Today I saw a 747 at the airport, I thought the service was due to end in April (pre-Covid) so was a bit surprised. Must admit I’ve not been keeping up with timetable changes through the pandemic but thought this would never reappear! Think I should do some timetable reading...

The current timetable is the same as that proposed in April. The service goes back to being roughly 2 hourly Peterhead/Ellon - Airport only and is council supported. Shame that it doesn't go back to the old route though as it provided a handy link between Ellon, Potterton, Dyce ASDA and the Airport!

 

[Red Onion]

Ah I had completely forgotten it had been proposed that way! Is that essentially the old route before they’d tried the Ellon to Stonehaven route?

 

[Jordan Adam]

Ah I had completely forgotten it had been proposed that way! Is that essentially the old route before they’d tried the Ellon to Stonehaven route?

Not quite. The new route operates Ellon - Foveran - Balmedie - Airport direct using AWPR and the A90.

The old route operated Ellon to Newburgh, then went south down the A90 to the Balmedie junction (didn't serve Balmedie) before going up the B977 to Belhelvie, south to Potterton then north on the B999, back on to the B977 to Oldmeldrum Road then done a circular of Dyce (Dyce Drive - Kirkhill - Airport - Wellheads Drive - Dyce Asda) and then heading back out towards Ellon. There was also a variation that took a entirely different route via Oldmeldrum and went round the Dyce loop in reverse serving Asda then the Airport! One of the morning runs skipped Newburgh/Potterton.

Pre-2019 Timetable

 

[Red Onion]

Ah I see, that Oldmeldrum route looks strange! I do remember taking one of the services to the airport from Ellon now, recall it was quite a zig zag affair

 

[Jordan Adam]

Ah I see, that Oldmeldrum route looks strange! I do remember taking one of the services to the airport from Ellon now, recall it was quite a zig zag affair

It was quite a fun route, i have a video from 2018 of 47578 on the 1125 from Ellon which i need to put online at some point... Passenger numbers tended to be quite low however.

 

[PG]

Strikes me that the proof-reading was lacking on the pre 2019 747 timetable. The northbound direction has consecutive timing points for Overton Circle (why?) with the second one misspelt as 'Oveton'.

 

[Jordan Adam]

Strikes me that the proof-reading was lacking on the pre 2019 747 timetable. The northbound direction has consecutive timing points for Overton Circle (why?) with the second one misspelt as 'Oveton'.

Well spotted. A classic "Bluebird Blunder", if i'm not mistaken those timetables are manually created with each time and location also put in manually. Pretty much every set of changes there's at least 1 error somewhere!

 

[PG]

Well spotted. A classic "Bluebird Blunder", if i'm not mistaken those timetables are manually created with each time and location also put in manually. Pretty much every set of changes there's at least 1 error somewhere!

Quite so! Does make you wonder why they don't have a more 20th century solution. I'd have said 21st century but Alexanders were never a firm to embrace new technology. They'd still be running Leopards and Lodekkas if they could!

 

[Jordan Adam]

It probably deserves it's own thread at this point but the glorious 19373 once again broke down at the Airport on the 727 at 8AM. Out of the 6 days it's been in service since last Monday it's had a total of 7 breakdowns... A thriving business for Norscot.

 

[Jordan Adam]

Since Friday Bluebird have started to reinstate some of the Plaxton Panthers based at Aberdeen with 53310 and 53610 now back in service, the latter has already had two breakdowns. Additionally 19373 broke down at the Airport once again on Friday night .

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

It probably deserves it's own thread at this point but the glorious 19373 once again broke down at the Airport on the 727 at 8AM. Out of the 6 days it's been in service since last Monday it's had a total of 7 breakdowns... A thriving business for Norscot.

Perhaps it just can't cope with hard work after years of trundling around Fort William

 

[Jordan Adam]

Perhaps it just can't cope with hard work after years of trundling around Fort William

Possibly, the E400s at Bluebird are very hit or miss, usually miss... Despite being identical the 57 plates are far better than the 58 plates, even though the 57 plates were hammerd on the 25X which is arguably much tougher than the relatively easy life some of the 58 plates had in Fort William. 19369/73/75 are particularly poor while 19170/71/74 are decent.

 

[SouthEastBuses]

Skip to the bottom if this is tl;dr.

With Inverness it tends to mostly be late running. All the North Scotland depots are poor when it comes to maintenance but Elgin (Includes Macduff), Inverness and Orkney are by far the worst these days. Macduff which is a outstation of Elgin recently got 15 E400MMCs for the 35, when they are not breaking down they're normally running at least 20 minutes late. the Panthers before were no better with the 35 frequently being dubbed by locals as "Scotland's Most Unreliable Bus Route".

Similarly the 201/202 between Aberdeen and Braemar are equally as bad, to the point where locals know what journeys to avoid as they know it will be a bus that breaks down (often E400). The 15:15 203 from Aberdeen is a frequent non-runner and often breakdown leading to the 16:00 201 leaving passengers behind in the city centre. It doesn't help that the 201/202/203 used to be Every 15 to 20 Minutes during the day and now it drops down to a 45 minute frequency for the bulk of the afternoon.

Buchan are not too bad, however there's regular complaints about the poor condition of buses on the likes of the 66/66A and 69. The locals go riot whenever a Enviro400 is put on the Buchan Xpress in place of a Interdeck. It should be no surprise that one of them (19373) caught fire at the start of the year.

Stonehaven and Insch are not too bad however the main Coastrider and Inverurie corridor services have been cut to the point that it's turning people away. On certain sections of route there's been a 75% cut in frequency during the day, this is not helped by the fact that Minibuses are regulars on the Coastrider, when not to long ago this was a 15 minute frequency service dominated by ALX300s and Enviro400s.

The X17 which is meant to be one of the major routes in Aberdeen will literally see any bus serviceable. Whether that by Vanhool Astromega's, Optare Solos or Buchan Interdecks. Peak loads are another issue on this route with overcrowding common, not helped by the fact that Aberdeenshire seem to have an unending vehicle shortage and the X17 typically is the first route to have a bus pulled.

To make matters worse the new route 747 between Montrose and Peterhead via Aberdeen Airport which started in January 2019 is normally allocated totally unsuitable service buses which simply put cannot at all cope with the hills on the new Aberdeen ring road. Many of the buses that get allocated to the route are mid life stock that are already well past their sell by date and crawl along at a snails pace making them quite a dangerous hazard as impatient car drivers and HGV's try to rush ahead of them.

In short... The whole Stagecoach North Scotland division is plagued by shoddy maintenance and management.

One year late I know (sorry about that!), but are Thurso / Caithness depot good at maintaining their buses? Or do they have the same issues as they other depots in the north of Scotland?

 

[Blindtraveler]

my ex-wife came from Orkney and although admittedly this was 2013 I could never get my head around why there are always so bad maintaining vehicles up there. There was one so low that you could hear coming a mile off as it's cooling fan was permanently stuck on full power. They also had an eclectic fleet of clapped out coaches that were totally unsuitable for the large the elderly clientele who used the buses up there. I wonder what it's like now

 

[Jordan Adam]

my ex-wife came from Orkney and although admittedly this was 2013 I could never get my head around why there are always so bad maintaining vehicles up there. There was one so low that you could hear coming a mile off as it's cooling fan was permanently stuck on full power. They also had an eclectic fleet of clapped out coaches that were totally unsuitable for the large the elderly clientele who used the buses up there. I wonder what it's like now

Can only speak on what i know however from what i can gather the main issue is that the poor standards from the Rapsons era have continued in to Stagecoach. Because most of the depots are out of the way in rural areas they're visited far less often by management among other 'people of power' such as the traffic commissioner as such they get away with far more than an operator in a city would. Another issue in recent years has been poor communication between management and depot staff, specifically transferring belt fitted higher capacity vehicles without consulting with the depot only to find that the depot needed that vehicle for a school run and have nothing else they can use! This was a particular issue in Aberdeenshire where a year ago they were expecting to cover 29 deckers duties with only 23 deckers (not including vehicles off the road etc) as such it became common for buses to be pulled from service runs so they could be used as duplicates on school duties. Of note the 7:39 54 from Foveran to Aberdeen gained a reputation for failing to run more than it actually operated, as the bus allocated to it was often pulled to operate a duplicate on the 54A to Ellon Academy at the same time.

"Stagecoach North Scotland" were split up in October 2019 back to the old "Bluebird" and "Highlands" opcos and are now run separately with separate management. Certainly at Bluebird reliability has drastically improved to the point where most of the breakdowns are with vehicles known for unreliability (cough 16946, 16948, 19373 & 19375). Reliability seems to have almost improved at Highland but it's really impossible to know if it'll stay this way as Highland have a habit of improving for 6 months and then going back to their shoddy old ways of having a thermal incident every 2 months, painting buses very badly and a low bridge incident every 6 months

Orkney run more low floors now, although there's still a few coaches due to school contracts.

 

[SouthEastBuses]

Can only speak on what i know however from what i can gather the main issue is that the poor standards from the Rapsons era have continued in to Stagecoach. Because most of the depots are out of the way in rural areas they're visited far less often by management among other 'people of power' such as the traffic commissioner as such they get away with far more than an operator in a city would. Another issue in recent years has been poor communication between management and depot staff, specifically transferring belt fitted higher capacity vehicles without consulting with the depot only to find that the depot needed that vehicle for a school run and have nothing else they can use! This was a particular issue in Aberdeenshire where a year ago they were expecting to cover 29 deckers duties with only 23 deckers (not including vehicles off the road etc) as such it became common for buses to be pulled from service runs so they could be used as duplicates on school duties. Of note the 7:39 54 from Foveran to Aberdeen gained a reputation for failing to run more than it actually operated, as the bus allocated to it was often pulled to operate a duplicate on the 54A to Ellon Academy at the same time.

"Stagecoach North Scotland" were split up in October 2019 back to the old "Bluebird" and "Highlands" opcos and are now run separately with separate management. Certainly at Bluebird reliability has drastically improved to the point where most of the breakdowns are with vehicles known for unreliability (cough 16946, 16948, 19373 & 19375). Reliability seems to have almost improved at Highland but it's really impossible to know if it'll stay this way as Highland have a habit of improving for 6 months and then going back to their shoddy old ways of having a thermal incident every 2 months, painting buses very badly and a low bridge incident every 6 months

Orkney run more low floors now, although there's still a few coaches due to school contracts.

So Caithness has improved then?

Great news!

 

[GusB]

So Caithness has improved then?

Great news!

You'd probably have to ask the people of Caithness