North East Independents

[DunsBus]

RE: North East Independents
Delivery of all 12 of Perryman's new Optare Versas for the recently-won 51/52/60/68 and Sunday 20 services is now complete with vehicles now in the process of receiving fleetnames and fleetnumbers.

Using a mix of my own sightings and photos posted on the internet the batch is as follows:

008 YA13AEB
009 YA13AEC
010 YA13AED
011 YA11AEE
012 YA13AEF
013 YA13AEG
014 YA13AEJ
015 YA13AEK
016 YA13AEL
017 YA13AEM
018 YA13AEN
019 YA13AEO

Seating capacity is B41F + 18 (008-011) or B41F + 21 (012-019); in both cases the seating capacity drops to B38F if a wheelchair is carried. 008-011 have Rescroft seating fitted with seatbelts whilst the remainder have Esteban Civic V3 seating.
Both types of seats feature leather trim.

Power is provided by Cummins iSBe engines rated at 201bhp. Mobitech front, rear and side displays are fitted together with an internal audio-visual next stop information system. Perryman's have informed me that the audio-visual displays are currently in the process of being fine-tuned before going live.

All 12 have legal lettering for the new Charlesfield depot at St Boswells, as four of the five recently-won services (20/51/52/68) operate wholly within Scotland a separate O-licence has had to be obtained for this base.

I have travelled on several of the new Versas so far and am very impressed by them. The audio-visual display seems to work well on the 60 route although when passing through Greenlaw the "next stop" and "welcome aboard" audio announcements have been made when the buses have yet to reach the main bus stop in the village, this will doubtless be put right soon.