i used to go through amen corner to either go to my school in balham where i would take the 355, and i would take 264 back to croydon. i moved 2 years ago, and i miss being there
Aww, god i miss the MCW Metrobuses with their battenberg cake style ginger yellow seats and whiney voith engine i had some happy child memories with em which is why even to this day they still are my favourite and arguably best bus ever built and most iconic for the 80s and 90s - other than the Routemaster of course this video along with others shows Metrobuses were the most dominent bus in London and most of the south. leylands Olympians, Titans etc i didn;t care much for them btw lol.
I have driven both Metros and Titans.....The Metros were not the best at braking, ofter the retarder was not set right, plus there was no where to put your left foot in the cab other than perched up on a plastic casing. The Titans had better, more smoother braking plus you could hold them in a lower gear if required unlike the Metro which was fully auto only. Both of course had good, solid Gardner engines.....
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Aww that is ashame of course never had the chance to drive MCW metros , i just barely got to drive Leyland Olympians with Arriva the shires route 310 just before they upgraded the fleet to Alexander Dennis plaxton trident 2 models, i mostly drive Enviro400s or Volvo Geminis now which probably puts the old school vehicles to shame lol
@@270687carl I have driven a few of the modern ones, Tridents, Darts, Volvos, Scanias......but i prefer Routemasters or Titans, or better still an RT! We had several at the company i worked for. Of the modern buses i found the Plaxton Darts to be a good, solid bus to work on.....
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Yes Dennis Darts were highly reliable both cold winters and hot summers seem to outlive or out perform all other models , although i did once cook a dart marshall once very low on coolant and did 2k worth of damage to the engine woopsiie :)
Also not sure if you knew this i did see a document too relating to this by VOSA in the early days due to the disability equality act it was planned that ALL MCW Metros along with all other models built before 97/98 to be re modenised with hydrolic air pressure systems to lower and raise platforms to make easy access for wheelchair and buggies along with removing the hand rails which were often green for some reason lol , down the middle of both entry and exit doors most common on MCWs and Olympians but by the time of this video 2000-2001 DAF Wrightbus, Volvo etc was already in productions of DLAs DPLs and Volvo by 2005 introducing the Gemini model it was more cost effective starting from scratch , That On top of other laws to pass such as cleaner fuel buses , electrics, wifi technologies among others this all killed off these buses in the end :(
I still have a lot more Metro vids to upload, keep watching! have you seen this vid of mine here? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Z188neqdCWA.html, plenty of Metros on there....
@Leonard Ssenkindu Not totally, we had them at Blue Triangle, ex Hornchurch ones in the main. I have driven some on the 248s, their natural home considering they were ex Hornchurch!
I may have a couple from the early 2000s. I will check and try & upload one at the end of the month, i am away from home for 10 days from this Saturday.
Just out of curiosity, where the metro buses built by Metropolitan of Birmingham? I used to always walk past that the former Metropolitan Schammel factory in Birmingham!
Yes, there was indeed a 77A (see my upload here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pIxVBpKlVV4.html for shots of DMS's on it at Aldwych) which was re-numbered to the 87 when TfL decided to do away with suffix numbered routes. The 87 was a long standing route from East London and was the joint 2nd last to run RT types buses from Barking Garage (it had a Sat allocation of 1 RT alongside RM's although RT's covered for any RM failures as well) so for me it seems strange to see it in South London!