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455s are red, 701s are blue. From Derby it sped, To a siding it drew. Several years later, finally a debut...

A nonsense proposal. The only way to actually bring all the buses under TfL ownership would be for TfL to buy all the existing garages and drivers. Unless he's planning to build new garages all over London, and poach staff, as even one East Thames Buses type garage will be irrelevant to most of...

The expression "good service" slightly irritates me as well, as it sounds like patting yourself on the back for delivering what should be normal anyway...

Indeed! They make engines there as well, and a battery plant is being built next door, it's a major manufacturing site, much more so than Alstom Derby.

While the Borismaster design was flawed (though I really liked the open platform when in use), it never concerned me that they wouldn't have a second life once they finished life in London. 14 years is a decent life, and the extra cost of a bespoke bus wasn't massive when compared to the cost of...

The 700 seating is poor for anything other than short journeys, but at least it's very durable. They look as good as new still, whereas the IET seats aren't just uncomfortable, they aren't durable enough, with the metal bar poking through after a short time in service, so a double failing.

I find the Chiltern 168s very comfortable. The SE 375s are decent too. The IC70 was also too low for taller people. FGW then went the other way with the tombstone seats on their refurbished HSTs!

Camden Town station was closed this evening (around 22:30ish), due to a lack of staff according to the driver. Bit of a weird one, it's one thing a sleepy station not being open, but not a busy destination and interchange one.

Is this because of the current OHLE upgrade work, or has the Sunday timetable always assumed just two tracks are available?

The MML is very much the poor relation of the Inter-City routes. It's even a second class citizen in its own London terminus, having lost much of it to Eurostar, leaving it with a limited number of platforms, shunted into a corner. The loss of the HS2 connection to the East Midlands is a...

Been pretty chaotic with the total closure of the Northern Line between Golders Green and Edgware this week https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/24236571.northern-line-station-closure-bus-replacement-chaos/

Seems like a glut of units to be built in the late 2020s, considering the HS2 trains will start production then too. A shame that the Northern order couldn't have been brought forward, seeing how old the Sprinters are, though whether that order would have gone to Derby anyway is debatable.

An integral Hydrogen coach is surely something that ADL/Plaxton should be considering. Wrightbus are planning a hydrogen coach for 2026, though maybe just the chassis.

We currently have more train assembly plants than we had 20 years ago. That's part of the problem.

A "Southeastern" Rover would to me be slightly more appealing, as the Kent one, not including travel to and from Kent, seems aimed more at people already there on holiday, rather than someone from e.g. London, wanting a 3 day/2 night break in Kent. The ticket could include a single journey...

If TfL ever start running London Overground services on the Dudding Hill line, then Battery bi-mode Aventras would be ideal...

A down side is stock in that period being delivered with massive areas of standing capacity to cater for this expected growth. If the 700s were being delivered now, I imagine they'd have more comfortably spaced seats as the whole driver towards the 700 style design wouldn't exist. 1711320887...

My point was that if CAF hadn't won the initial Northern order, they might not have bothered tending for other UK work, or just stuck to niche products like the Mk 5s, not bothering with a UK factory. Instead they became the default option for anyone wanting high floor DMU, the customers who...

If Bombardier had changed their mind, and quickly knocked up a diesel Aventra for the Northern requirement, would CAF have got its foothold in the UK with that 195/331 order, which has led to a steady number of other orders, including the most recent one from LNER which could have kept Derby going.

Metroline kept the "T" part of Trident codes for Enviro 400s, e.g. TP - Trident Plaxton President TAL - Trident Alexander Long TE - Enviro 400