Clacton Rally

Today was the Clacton bus rally, held as ever in the car park at the Factory Outlet shopping centre.

The plan was to take DAF P337ROO but upon preparing her to go I noticed that the air wasn't unloading as it should when it reaches maximum pressure - and after dumping some air via the footbrake it was also failing to build air. Now I've been here before with sister 335, and I'm 99% certain the air dryer pack is at fault - I await professional advice but it did mean 337's attendance at the rally was canceled.

302 it was then!

Volvo D302PEV is booked to attend the next 4 events (North weald, Bus Coach Preservation magazine show, Alton and Showbus), mainly cos its just been repainted and I want to show it off at the bigger events, so I certainly wasn't planning to take her to Clacton as well, but hey ho.

The day itself went well with good weather and plenty of socialising with other preservationists. I went with other owners from Yeldham Transport Museum and so we arrived and departed in convoy - something that always generates a few funny looks from other road users and people on foot, but is none the less quite fun to be a part of. Not only that but it does provide instant help if there should be any mechanical issues.......as you'll see in a minute.......

As always, 302 was put forward for service and did one return trip to the town centre (via the railway station). We came close to wishing 337 had made it but got everyone on with two seats to spare! I had Heart playing on the radio just as Harris Bus used to do when they operated it in service; I don't think the music on offer was to everyone's taste but I'm quite certain it was the only vehicle in service to offer such entertainment!

Being as I was part of a group, we shared the service work by driving each others vehicles, so I didn't actually drive on 302's trip (I drove part trips on D261FUL and KPJ264W) - doing this gave each of us the opportunity to be passengers on our own vehicles, which is something we rarely get do as only PCV licenced drivers can drive buses in passenger service with more than 8 passengers on board.

Here's 302 in Clacton town centre:

Now I mentioned mechanical issues earlier; thankfully it wasn't me but another owner in our group.....

We were positioning our vehicles to take a group photo when I noticed a rather large split in the side wall of a front tyre - the consensus was that cords were showing and it was therefore too dangerous to drive on. None of us were carrying spare wheels but thankfully a member of the rally organising group (our near neighbours at Colne Estuary Preservation Group) were able to lend us a spare wheel (a gesture which was very much appreciated). All we then had to do was jack the bus up..........but none of us had a jack......

 Having exhausted all options at the nearby depots of Headingham and First (both have no engineers on Sundays!!) the owner with the dodgy tyre had to make use of the breakdown cover to get a specialist in to actually swap the wheels over. Whilst most of us preserved bus owners do have full breakdown cover, it is usage limited in much the same way as the AA or RAC is with your cars, so we'll always try to fix something first if we can and only make use of the breakdown cover as a last resort.

It's safe to say we've learned a lesson today and we'll all now make sure we're carrying spares and tools - and if we're traveling as a group in convoy we should be well enough equipped to deal with pretty much anything that's thrown at us!!

335 Accident

 As mentioned in my last post, 335 was damaged in a slow speed collision at the place where she's stored - the incident occurred on Sunday 11th May and affected the nearside front corner & windscreen.

It was already off the road for 2014 pending a decision on its future - radiator still leaks plus the gearbox has a mind of its own and the diff whines. Having already sunk the best part of £4,000 into it trying to rectify one mechanical defect after another, I'd been pondering whether to carry on or use it for spares for 337 and then scrap it.

No decision had been made when the accident occurred - not my fault by the way.......335 was parked in her space at the time - so the person who did it has agreed to pay for it to be repaired. 

There's some images of the damage on the website HERE.

YTM Open Day

Today it was the Yeldham Transport Museum open day - all 4 of my vehicles were in attendance, with P337ROO operating in passenger service.

On the whole it was an enjoyable day with glorious sunshine all day long.

As stated above, 337 was made available for passenger service and thus operated two trips; one to Halstead and the other to Braintree rail station. She performed faultlessly throughout despite the high temperatures - I finally have a reliable double decker!

Mind you, the original and constantly unreliable double decker, sister 335, has been involved in an incident at its storage location and will now be off the road long term as a result - more on that in my next update.

Back to the subject at hand........below is a picture of 337 at Braintree station - the "blind" does work and was showing "Braintree rail station X1" but of course a combination of bright sunlight and LED's flickering mean the camera didn't pick that up:

Harlow & 302 repaint

Well its all happening at the moment!

Today was the Harlow running day; an event I was particularly looking forward to given Dart J317XVX's association with Harlow based County Bus & Coach Co.

Unfourtunately visitor attendance, and thus passenger numbers, were low but 317 appeared to be well received. We did a feeder service from Great Yeldham (route 320) via, Finchingfield, Great Bardfield, Great Dunmow, Takeley, Hatfield Heath, and Sheering...........we picked up errrrr nobody!

After a short break we did a round trip on route 809 to Churchgate Street via Old Harlow. This turned out to be our busiest trip with 10 passengers plus another two that we picked up in Old Harlow on the way back to the bus station. The 809 has some very tight turns and so I was glad I took the narrow Dart.

After another short break we did route 380 to Mark Hall North - again the narrow Dart came into its own what with the prolific car parking and the unwillingness of oncoming cars to give way. I expect that some roads don't have a Sunday bus service usually and so car drivers probably didn't expect us to be operating along their roads today. Passenger numbers on this trip were 5.

Following straight on from the 380 was a 389 trip to Potter Street. Compared to the other routes the 389 is relatively fast with no speed bumps or dodgy car parking to worry about. This was my favorite of the three routes! On the return journey we passed through the bus station and then onto Harlow Town station before returning back to the bus station. We took 4 passengers to Potter Street, lost one there to another service but gained an unsuspecting member of the public; we lost all 4 on passing through the bus station and thus carried fresh air to and from the town station.

We then did another trip on route 380 to Mark Hall North, initially departing the bus station with 5 passengers but lost one on the outward journey. Car parking and cars in the opposite direction forcing their way through were particularly bad on the return journey.

Finally we had the return feeder service, route 320, back to Yeldham. Now having brought nobody in, I expected nobody going back. Wrong!! A couple asked if I'd drop off on line of route........well yes, obviously thinks I.......so I ask where they're going to thinking they'd say somewhere like First Avenue or Old Harlow..........Dunmow came the reply! I don't know how they got to Harlow in the first place, but I duly obliged and they were our only two passengers.

Despite the low passenger numbers, I enjoyed the day and I look forward to it hopefully happening again next year. Below is an image at Mark Hall North on our second trip:

In other news, as per the title of this post, Volvo D302PEV has finally got its repaint completed. I'll let these two images do the talking:

"Cobham" and 337's MOT

It was the London Bus Museum's event yesterday, more famously known as "Cobham" and is held at the world famous Brooklands site in Surrey.

The entrance to the site was poorly signed and as such I got told off for the second year running for appearing at the wrong entrance...........please please please if the organisers see this can they take note that clearly signing the route in for visiting buses would be useful and appreciated by those of us not familiar with the Brooklands site!

The rally itself wasn't as good as previous years - the number of visiting buses were notably less that recent years - it is a shame but even I am considering giving it a miss next year.

In other news 337 was put in for her MOT today and I'm pleased to say she sailed through with no advisories. Thankfully the whole thing was completely uneventful and we didn't suffer any of the shenanigans that occurred at 335's MOT last year. Talking of 335, it's likely the MOT will be allowed to lapse as I'm considering replacing it with something else that'll hopefully compliment my current fleet and prove to be more reliable.........more news when I have it!!.......

South East Bus Festival

Today was the first event of the 2014 season, the South East Bus Festival; a bus rally added on to the Heritage Transport show.

The event is held at The Kent Showground in Detling, near Maidstone and this year attracted around 125 buses and coaches - up from 95 last year.

I had originally planned to take the newest acquisition, 337, but due to issues with the DVLA I wasn't able to tax it in time so I took 302 instead.

Having offered to run in service, I was asked to operate two trips on the offsite shuttle bus linking with Arriva services towards Maidstone - the Kent Showground is on the A249 dual carriageway and so the shuttle service provides a safer option than crossing the road on foot.

On both runs we had around 9 passengers each way on each trip - here's an image of 302 waiting in the layby on the A249 for the Arriva bus to show up:

P337ROO

The day has finally arrived and P337ROO was collected from TM Travel in Sheffield and driven back to her new home in Essex.

Having stopped periodically on the journey to make sure everything was ok, we were having a good run down the M1 motorway........then it was onto the A14 and at the first roundabout I saw a massive amount of white smoke or steam at the back as I stopped..........

Turned out to be coolant but the header tank was still full and so I can only assume it was a combination of being overfilled at the start of the journey and the long run at constant top speed. From this point on I never went above 50mph (top speed being 56mph) and this seemed to resolve the issue.

That is until we hit the A505 and stopped for a routine check..........I discovered a split water hose and a fairly steady stream of coolant running out onto the road. It took about 10 litres of water to refill the system. As the leak was minor, I elected to carry on (we were only about 20 minutes from "home").....

Several stops and refills later we successfully made it with the leak being only marginally worse than when originally discovered. Thankfully the guilty hose should be a relatively easy fix.

So there we are, my fourth bus is now safely tucked up in her new home in North Essex.