First Manchester

[Quackdave]

RE: First Manchester

(18/09/2016 17:16)Dentonian Wrote:  I can only assume you are talking specifically about the 2015/6 school year, when 30894/912/5 replaced 30874/7/8. I can assure you that in the three years or so the W-regs were there, I never once saw any in service on visits to Bolton. On enquring on this - or another - forum, I was told they were mainly for schools and the bus workings were such that only one of the three had any non-school work on. That was when it finished an afternoon school contract, it ran dead to Piccadilly to operate a single journey on the 36 around 1715-1730 hours. They never left the depot at weekends.

Can't speak for M-F, as I never visit Bolton during the week, but the X-reg were certainly out most Saturdays, on a variety of routes, although 519/520 were their most common haunt.

My memory doesn't extend to how often I saw the W-reg ones, but I definitely did see all of them at least once, which implies they must have been used on Saturdays to some extent; and a search for their registrations on Flickr suggests that it wasn't especially unusual for them to be found in ordinary service.

(Back to the present, 30894 was on the 425 on Saturday.)