Temsa Avenue

[trentside]

After seeing this video a few years ago, I'd always assumed that the Temsa Avenue was a good hill climber. Today, I travelled on the X93 between Whitby and Scarborough and had the misfortune of being swapped onto one of these vehicles (with hard plastic seats) as the Scania OmniCity that had come in from Middlesborough had over-heated. The bus ascended the hill out of Robin Hood's Bay at about 5mph, and was doing similarly low speeds on other hill climbs, causing significant tail backs. Performance was better on the main road, but we were still outpaced by a tractor at one point. Luckily, just made my train connection at Scarborough - but it was touch and go!

My question, then, is are the Temsa Avenue's all this bad, or did I just get a bad one out of the bunch? Does anyone have an idea what they're like to drive? I'm quite curious about such unusual vehicles!

 

[Stonesourscotty]

There not a common bus and are mainly only in the northeast as arriva compared them against the pulsar another awful lightweight bus ive yet to sample one and probably never will as i hear there unpopular and like to burn out?

 

[BestWestern]

They're supposedly 'lightweight and low cost' I believe? Which to me suggests 'cheap and nasty'. I seem to recall that they are used/built in Turkey or somewhere of that ilk, and Arriva introduced them over here as an initiative to save fuel and costs. Presumably it wasn't overly successful, as you don't see many of them. Arriva might even be the official UK supplier through their dealerships?

 

[MK Tom]

Wow I literally didn't even know these existed. Arriva seem to have a thing for unusual choices of vehicles.

EDIT - done a bit of searching, First have one too. Bradford area it seems.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Wow I literally didn't even know these existed. Arriva seem to have a thing for unusual choices of vehicles.

EDIT - done a bit of searching, First have one too. Bradford area it seems.

Arriva Bus and Coach are the UK distributor for Temsa. There are a number of coaches around the country supplied by them. There were a number of demonstrators with one supplied to Arriva North East, and one supplied to First in Bradford on long term loan.

This led to a batch of twenty being supplied to Arriva North East at Redcar depot. They were quite spirited when new though the fuel consumption may have led to them being downrated. The seats are just very thin cushions applied to plastic mouldings with velcro, I kid you not. As for heating, because they're Turkish and that isn't really a consideration, they've fitted box heaters beneath the seats, rather like you'd find on a UK bus of the 1950's.

They are lightweight but not as good on fuel as a Pulsar, nor as nice to travel on. Hence why Arriva North East have subsequently purchased more and more Pulsars.

 

[Ben.A.98]

Whilst on holiday in Scarborough I had to travel on one of these buses. It was terrible getting out of Robin Hoods Bay. Nearly came to a standstill on the way up the hill.

 

[Flying Snail]

After seeing this video a few years ago, I'd always assumed that the Temsa Avenue was a good hill climber.

Lots of power is not what is required to drive in those conditions, a smooth steady progress without any excess power application and staying away from the brakes not a Jeremy Clarkson impersonation is what's needed. Considering how much difficulty other vehicles were having I am wondering if that bus had winter tyres fitted.

Don't know anything about those particular buses but it is not unusual for identical bodies to be sitting on completely different chassis and drivetrains which will give vastly different performance. Even within a class some vehicles will be better than others from new and after years of service and maintenance the performance gap between 2 supposedly identical buses can be enormous.

 

[Paul_10]

Although I have never travelled on these buses and never will due to my location I am aware there has been quite a few fire incidents with them and two(I think) of them were so severe they had to be scrapped.

Maybe another reason why ANE have not bought anymore of these buses?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Although I have never travelled on these buses and never will due to my location I am aware there has been quite a few fire incidents with them and two(I think) of them were so severe they had to be scrapped.

Maybe another reason why ANE have not bought anymore of these buses?

Er no! The first major fire was in late 2011 at the same time as the next batch of Pulsars was being delivered. Basically, ANE were "encouraged" to take a batch on as part of Arriva B&C's sales programme. However, the problems with reliability, spec and the fuel consumption meant that when given a free hand, more Pulsars were ordered!.

Another thing that I failed to mention is that when you travel on them, it isn't just the seating that points to an urban bus doing country/inter-urban work. It's clearly a citybus and it's obvious that it was designed as a two door machine internally. They're interesting machines but, in my opinion, they're a right mess.