News from Oxford
High Wycombe & the surrounding areas

update Monday, May 31st 1999 by Malcolm Crowe

The last week has been a busy one with a couple of spells of driving , once on 4 road followed by Saturday with 2 trips on X90s. The city centre continued to be very busy and congested and everyone will, I am sure, be delighted when all the works in connection with OTS are complete. A number of route changes were caused by the works and the Citylink services are very often to be seen on the Marston Ferry road and Banbury Road entering the City from the London direction. A Cityline driver was heard to comment that one round trip on 52 road had taken 2 hours and 20 minutes. Normally an hour is the round trip time.

A chance was taken to visit Wycombe and a number of Oxford Cityline buses were seen to be helping out. These included Darts 505 and 512, Metrorider 778 and Olympian 202.  A nice photo of 512 was secured on the 329 route inbound from Reading.

In the Oxford Bus fleet works continues with repainting the Volvo buses with work completed up to 604 and 605 in process in the paintshop. The first Park&Ride Trident arrived on Saturday morning as 101, T101DBW. Various unusual workings have seen new SLF Darts from the 401-410 batch at work on 2, 15 and even 60 road. Older Darts are now to be seen on 51 road in place of the Metroriders.

On the Stagecoach from a further single door conversion Olympian from London has arrived in the shape of 528. Registration number to be confirmed but I think it is ex L112. More Tube deckers have arrived and 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51 and 52 are now in service. 34 differs from its fellows in that paintwork was fully completed at the builders and it does NOT have the livery covering the windows.It can thus picked out at a distance. also useful is the fact that fleet numbers appear on the upper deck front offside window enabling avid spotters to see what is passing by on the motorway for example. I also managed to get a picture of 941 this weekend displaying its full rear advert for the Cowley Shopping Centre.

Finally there will be pictures of the new Park&Ride Tridents on the page tomorrow, June 1st. As is now customary, I will have a special launch page for the buses which will be accessible from this and other pages.

Please click here to see the new buses after noon on Tuesday 1st June - this link has now been fixed. Park&Ride Launch - Dateline Tuesday June 1st 1999

You can still view the Tube launch report here.

Oxford Dart 512 climb out of the Thames Valley at Marlow on an early
Summer evening in May, en route to High Wycombe. This is a very
steep climb and the Dart had gathered a long line of cars following !

Oxford Metrorider 778 helps out a Wycombe during the last week
of May 1999.

Another unusual working was that of Citylink nr 5 branded for the X90
and seen here between Terminal 4 and Central Bus Station whilst
working a late afternoon X70 on Friday 28th May. This was caused
by severe traffic delays in Oxford leading up to the launch of OTS.

As mentioned before some Titans have been registered prior to sale later this year.
970 is now YAZ8773 and is seen on a 300 working emerging from Cornmarket.
This street will be closed to all traffic from June 1st 1999.

Another service re-routed during the last week before OTS was the X3
which was turned in Magdalen Street or Broad Street for much of the week instead of using
its more normal route via Queen Street.

As mentioned in the news above, Tube 34 has now arrived and is seen
here leaving Gloucester Green bound for London.
The variation on a theme livery can be seen in the picture. It is painted on
and is not Vinyls as with all the rest of the fleet.

Tube nr 3 has reverted to original registration having donated 3063VC to
one of the later Volvos now working the Virgin Rail contract.
G543LWU was with Wallace Arnold when new.

Tube nr 40 is seen here climbing the Chilterns on its way to London on the M40.
It is the first of the new deckers to bear a cherished registration T40UBE.
Many of the new deckers have plain red backs which are intended for advertising.