Lothian Buses & First Scotland East

[gilesbus1]

Lothian Buses & First Scotland East
Hi

Had a quick trip up to Edinburgh on Wednesday, there was a lot to see and not enough time to do it unfortunatly.

Lothian - I did see examples of all the fleet and its subsiduaries, the number of tours has grown, I saw a couple East Lothain Buses Tridents with moderate loads. The oldest operstional buses in the Lothian buses main fleet as appose to sightseeing operations appears to be 52 registered Tridents, although not many of these eitrher, they appeared to be operating on route 25 alongside newer 04 reg examples.

Of note is that the Volvo B9TL's with Mark II bodies deliovered since 2009 seem intermitently to have two styles of radiator grill, one with the full Wright W front ande one with it removed for branding, there seems to be examples of both from more or less every batch.

First Scotland East

The routes at Musselbortough appeared to be carrying more or less zero loads so the future of that depot must be still in the balance.

Of interest a Scania East Lancs Omnidekka was in the new livery and also much more suprisingly was a Volvo Olympian with an Alexander Royale RH body on an R ---EHS plate operating from North Berwick outstation on a service to North Berwick, the livery on these differs from examples at First Manchester in that the back is all solid Purple without relief, which actually looksd much smarter, none of these buses carried any branding.

Most buses used on services operated from the other end of Edinburgh eg Livingston depot apperaed to be Volvo B7TL / Plaxton Presidents or Wright Eclipse Gemini and Volvo B9TL's with the latter body. Single deck use seems to almost have ended on services into Edinburgh with only a couple of Scania L94UB Wright bodies being seen of both types, one was an ex First Manchester V----DND operating in from Bannockburn depot the other a newer 52 reg Solar based at Musselborough???? AFAIK.

On the trip up out of interest a McGills van was seen travelling south bound towards England on the M74 on the trip back South an East Lancs bodied Volvo Olym,pian in Rotala livery was seen on trade plates heading North, one of the old East THames buses/Harris bus examples, also seen heading South on the Hard Sholder was a TRident Enviro Enviro400 on delivery to London.

Gilesbus1