First visit is to Colchester in July 2009. The old Bus Station had been closed and a temporary one was in place at the time. First were the main operator in the town along with Network Colchester which was the name for former Arriva operations run by Tellings Golden Miller. Various Independents ran into the town also including Chambers, Hedingham, Beestons and Carters.
First up is Hedingham ADL Enviro 400 EU07GVY which was based at the Hedingham Depot, all vehicles carried the depot code as part of their fleet number and the traditional L at the beginning.
Carters of Capel St Mary ran into Colchester from Hadleigh with the 755 service, former Stagecoach London Dennis Dart R707YWC which was in use this day.
Chambers of Bures were running a large fleet of ex Metroline Volvo Olympians at this time, P488MBY was AV8 with the London operator, it had gained some fairly solid tree deflectors by this point also!
Next up is a familiar vehicle to locals, new to First Eastern Counties for the Excel X94 service in 2002, AO02RBY became 20501 and transfrerred to Essex for use on the X22 Stansted Airport Aircoach route. It did of course return to FEC for further use on Bernard Matthews contract work and the odd outing on X1 services prior to being sold.
Finally another vehicle now with a local connection, YN08HXZ was a Scania Demonstrator in use with Beestons of Hadleigh, seen above arriving at the Bus Station. It went on to work with Eastons of Straton Strawless before passing to its current owner Sanders Of Holt.
Hope you enjoyed Number One, Number 2 on the way soon.....
Grahame.
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