Those Volvo Olympians used to be operated by London General/Central from all bus garages where they were used as training buses until March 2009 when they were withdrawn in London because of the Low Emmison Zone and transferred to other operators outside of London including FirstGroup and Stagecoach and some of them were transferred to Abbey Travel after being replaced by the Plaxton Presidents on training duties after Go Ahead London decided to switch from Volvo Olympians to Plaxton Presidents as training buses
I was a conductor at weston in the 1960 s on the ks double deckers and the lowdeckers the seafront was service 103 and 7 was 105 and high st to bournville was 108- 109 they were good days and great fun in the summer the lowdecker convertible open tops still survive .
I looked in the First Bus Handbook, and apparently, the only Beaver-bodied MB Vario (Plaxton) from first somerset and avon left in the UK is M869 ATC, which was new to Bristol Cityline.
First have picked back up the 4s and are doin the 16s, but i dunno how much longer for! and they are doin the sunday X26 too. i think first will prob end up with quite a few of their old services back like the 83 and 806s. just a shame the beavers are bein phased out cos they r my favourites!
yeh i think they just use anythin on anything at the minute! i saw a beaver on the 121s, doubles and beavers on the 7s too. i spect they are just workin on certain vehicles! guess we will just have to watch this space with the beavers!
well they cud be replacing them with 8.8 darts, or optare solos i guess? shame tho cos i dont think they r gonna go for the new beaver 2s. its only the 3s mainly that use beavers now anyway, as the 5s 14s and 7s are all usin single deckers anyway! yeh now we have bloody coombs and bakers dolphin tryin to operate bus services! lol
yeh lets be fair they are nackered! and the old J reg ones went years ago and they were only 2 years older than most of the current ones! yeh its a shame but maybe they will replace them with SLF darts like they use in bath!
