30834

[winston]

Yeah I agree diamond is Rotala's biggest bus operation and the investment seems to go to Wessex or Preston. A small investment in perhaps 15-20 new or second hand vehicles (b7lre's or centro's) could make a huge difference for diamond as it would allow all the red and white diamond darts to be withdrawn straight away and using them for the 4 and 301 would cascade the cadets to services like the 40/42/43 and even allowing a few to go to Redditch and Kidderminster.

Absolutely, even a combination of 20 new/secondhand full size vehicles shouldn't break the bank, but would make a big difference to allocating suitable vehicle to the most suitable routes

Looking at yourbus they use brand new citaro's competing on the citylink service with trent barton and the Y36 with Nottingham city transport and there fleet is superb and they are a relatively new business. I'm not saying ordering a high number of citaro's is the answer but how can your bus acquire so many new high quality buses for services they are gambling on as operators already run on the same services.

The Yourbus fleet is pretty impressive now for a relatively young company, they see to be something right. Its a pity we didn't see a bit more of that when Scott Dunn was in charge of Diamond..... If have seen on the net that the Yourbus Citylink service isn't doing that well against Trent's Red Arrow, not sure how true that is

[Ash]

It seemed a big gamble investing in brand new citaro's for a service like Citylink which could fail against someone like Trent barton in comparison diamond have been competing with NXWM (Travel West Midlands) for a double digit years on most of it's service such as the 4/16/50/40/42/43 to name a few so would be a safe bet to invest in new vehicles or newer vehicles for these services knowing the profit each service makes due to running them for so long.

[winston]

It seemed a big gamble investing in brand new citaro's for a service like Citylink which could fail against someone like Trent barton in comparison diamond have been competing with NXWM (Travel West Midlands) for a double digit years on most of it's service such as the 4/16/50/40/42/43 to name a few so would be a safe bet to invest in new vehicles or newer vehicles for these services knowing the profit each service makes due to running them for so long.

You'd think so, bit it just doesn't seem to happen. Maybe Diamond isn't making much money for Rotala hence the lack of investment compared with Wessex & Preston

[tank90]

It seemed a big gamble investing in brand new citaro's for a service like Citylink which could fail against someone like Trent barton in comparison diamond have been competing with NXWM (Travel West Midlands) for a double digit years on most of it's service such as the 4/16/50/40/42/43 to name a few so would be a safe bet to invest in new vehicles or newer vehicles for these services knowing the profit each service makes due to running them for so long.

You'd think so, bit it just doesn't seem to happen. Maybe Diamond isn't making much money for Rotala hence the lack of investment compared with Wessex & Preston

Well there is a back lash to that tho (not meaning to have a go at you) but if Rotala don't spend money in Diamond and get rid of buses that are far to small for its routes there will not be a Diamond. There was enough money to buy Redditch and Kidderminster but they shouldn't until they had got rid of aload of mpds out of the fleet. yes they are useful for some services but on the whole in Worcestershire they are to small. There is one thing that First/Midland Red West did right with Redditch and that was in the end they over estimated the size of bus incase there was a large loading, sometimes that was a bus running empty or 1/8 full or it was packed but they did get rid of the Merc Minis and the Solos didnt last long either.
Diamond have gone back on some of there Pete's Travel roots as all the Pete's buses in Redditch where full length darts and they even had the President in Redditch too for awhile. The little darts would do well on a short high fequency route where they are departing like clockwork or even on a route like the old non-peak 68 and 67 and of course the 60/63 and 50/64. But the problem with Redditch is your peak demand can be double triple or even quadruple your off peak demand which is hard to juggle, unless you have a lot of drivers and enough small medium sized buses and large buses to run a succesful operation or just over estimate. Under estimating has and will cripple Diamond. if Central Connect had been better funded their 97 would of had newer Double deckers and would still be going. But because Wessex and Sussex where more eye cathing they got money and Wessex has contiued to get money.
What did Tividale get for the Centros that went to Bristol for the UWE+ service (between St Mathias Glenside (that might be wrong) and to Frenchey and of course to other campus's?

[Ash]

It seemed a big gamble investing in brand new citaro's for a service like Citylink which could fail against someone like Trent barton in comparison diamond have been competing with NXWM (Travel West Midlands) for a double digit years on most of it's service such as the 4/16/50/40/42/43 to name a few so would be a safe bet to invest in new vehicles or newer vehicles for these services knowing the profit each service makes due to running them for so long.

You'd think so, bit it just doesn't seem to happen. Maybe Diamond isn't making much money for Rotala hence the lack of investment compared with Wessex & Preston

Well there is a back lash to that tho (not meaning to have a go at you) but if Rotala don't spend money in Diamond and get rid of buses that are far to small for its routes there will not be a Diamond. There was enough money to buy Redditch and Kidderminster but they shouldn't until they had got rid of aload of mpds out of the fleet. yes they are useful for some services but on the whole in Worcestershire they are to small. There is one thing that First/Midland Red West did right with Redditch and that was in the end they over estimated the size of bus incase there was a large loading, sometimes that was a bus running empty or 1/8 full or it was packed but they did get rid of the Merc Minis and the Solos didnt last long either.
Diamond have gone back on some of there Pete's Travel roots as all the Pete's buses in Redditch where full length darts and they even had the President in Redditch too for awhile. The little darts would do well on a short high fequency route where they are departing like clockwork or even on a route like the old non-peak 68 and 67 and of course the 60/63 and 50/64. But the problem with Redditch is your peak demand can be double triple or even quadruple your off peak demand which is hard to juggle, unless you have a lot of drivers and enough small medium sized buses and large buses to run a succesful operation or just over estimate. Under estimating has and will cripple Diamond. if Central Connect had been better funded their 97 would of had newer Double deckers and would still be going. But because Wessex and Sussex where more eye cathing they got money and Wessex has contiued to get money.
What did Tividale get for the Centros that went to Bristol for the UWE+ service (between St Mathias Glenside (that might be wrong) and to Frenchey and of course to other campus's?

Tividale got the MCV's when the centro's went down south, for the 16 and 404E which soon got sold to Transzit in New Zealand. Looking at the 4 for example today there were S reg darts in service back in 1999/2000 Pete's Travel used 8 X reg darts so in 2013 buses that are older than what was used in 1999 are still appearing on the service. In terms of capacity if some of there parked up withdrawn darts at Long Acre and Tividale were reinstated even short term surely it would ease the capacity problem for now in Redditch and Kidderminster. The problem with the 97 is that it wasn't frequent enough and the same is happening to the 16 and 50 if you want to be successful in a service you have to match the frequency of your competitor like what is being done on the 4/40/42/43/301 as it's all about who gets the stops first a diamond bus on the 16 is going to do no good when running in between 2 or 3 NXWM buses where as on the 4 a diamond bus is nearly always slightly in front of the NXWM and in some cases you just miss a diamond and what bus turns up next another diamond bus a few minutes later before any NXWM bus appears hence taking the passengers.

[winston]

It seemed a big gamble investing in brand new citaro's for a service like Citylink which could fail against someone like Trent barton in comparison diamond have been competing with NXWM (Travel West Midlands) for a double digit years on most of it's service such as the 4/16/50/40/42/43 to name a few so would be a safe bet to invest in new vehicles or newer vehicles for these services knowing the profit each service makes due to running them for so long.

You'd think so, bit it just doesn't seem to happen. Maybe Diamond isn't making much money for Rotala hence the lack of investment compared with Wessex & Preston

Well there is a back lash to that tho (not meaning to have a go at you) but if Rotala don't spend money in Diamond and get rid of buses that are far to small for its routes there will not be a Diamond. There was enough money to buy Redditch and Kidderminster but they shouldn't until they had got rid of aload of mpds out of the fleet. yes they are useful for some services but on the whole in Worcestershire they are to small. There is one thing that First/Midland Red West did right with Redditch and that was in the end they over estimated the size of bus incase there was a large loading, sometimes that was a bus running empty or 1/8 full or it was packed but they did get rid of the Merc Minis and the Solos didnt last long either.
Diamond have gone back on some of there Pete's Travel roots as all the Pete's buses in Redditch where full length darts and they even had the President in Redditch too for awhile. The little darts would do well on a short high fequency route where they are departing like clockwork or even on a route like the old non-peak 68 and 67 and of course the 60/63 and 50/64. But the problem with Redditch is your peak demand can be double triple or even quadruple your off peak demand which is hard to juggle, unless you have a lot of drivers and enough small medium sized buses and large buses to run a succesful operation or just over estimate. Under estimating has and will cripple Diamond. if Central Connect had been better funded their 97 would of had newer Double deckers and would still be going. But because Wessex and Sussex where more eye cathing they got money and Wessex has contiued to get money.
What did Tividale get for the Centros that went to Bristol for the UWE+ service (between St Mathias Glenside (that might be wrong) and to Frenchey and of course to other campus's?

Tividale got the MCV's when the centro's went down south, for the 16 and 404E which soon got sold to Transzit in New Zealand. Looking at the 4 for example today there were S reg darts in service back in 1999/2000 Pete's Travel used 8 X reg darts so in 2013 buses that are older than what was used in 1999 are still appearing on the service. In terms of capacity if some of there parked up withdrawn darts at Long Acre and Tividale were reinstated even short term surely it would ease the capacity problem for now in Redditch and Kidderminster. The problem with the 97 is that it wasn't frequent enough and the same is happening to the 16 and 50 if you want to be successful in a service you have to match the frequency of your competitor like what is being done on the 4/40/42/43/301 as it's all about who gets the stops first a diamond bus on the 16 is going to do no good when running in between 2 or 3 NXWM buses where as on the 4 a diamond bus is nearly always slightly in front of the NXWM and in some cases you just miss a diamond and what bus turns up next another diamond bus a few minutes later before any NXWM bus appears hence taking the passengers.

Ash, that's not strictly true, the 58 plate Centro's left earlier than that. If I remember right there was a slight overlap but
they left when the Royale spec Centro's arrived, so again Diamond had 8 new buses in then 9 nearly new out. The Diamond fleet had its best investment with the arrival of all the MCV's. But sadly we all know what happened to them, I still don't believe they left just down to poor build quality, I think the timing of Arriva's arrival also had a hand to play in it. Surely the fact that the MCV's had been built some time ago & no other operators were interested in taking them off MCV should speak volumes.........

[Ash]

Yes winston 801 to 813 were left and used on the 404E and 801 and 806 on the 202  with 812 and 813 movind down south a bit later

[PM]

It seemed a big gamble investing in brand new citaro's for a service like Citylink which could fail against someone like Trent barton in comparison diamond have been competing with NXWM (Travel West Midlands) for a double digit years on most of it's service such as the 4/16/50/40/42/43 to name a few so would be a safe bet to invest in new vehicles or newer vehicles for these services knowing the profit each service makes due to running them for so long.

You'd think so, bit it just doesn't seem to happen. Maybe Diamond isn't making much money for Rotala hence the lack of investment compared with Wessex & Preston

Well there is a back lash to that tho (not meaning to have a go at you) but if Rotala don't spend money in Diamond and get rid of buses that are far to small for its routes there will not be a Diamond. There was enough money to buy Redditch and Kidderminster but they shouldn't until they had got rid of aload of mpds out of the fleet. yes they are useful for some services but on the whole in Worcestershire they are to small. There is one thing that First/Midland Red West did right with Redditch and that was in the end they over estimated the size of bus incase there was a large loading, sometimes that was a bus running empty or 1/8 full or it was packed but they did get rid of the Merc Minis and the Solos didnt last long either.
Diamond have gone back on some of there Pete's Travel roots as all the Pete's buses in Redditch where full length darts and they even had the President in Redditch too for awhile. The little darts would do well on a short high fequency route where they are departing like clockwork or even on a route like the old non-peak 68 and 67 and of course the 60/63 and 50/64. But the problem with Redditch is your peak demand can be double triple or even quadruple your off peak demand which is hard to juggle, unless you have a lot of drivers and enough small medium sized buses and large buses to run a succesful operation or just over estimate. Under estimating has and will cripple Diamond. if Central Connect had been better funded their 97 would of had newer Double deckers and would still be going. But because Wessex and Sussex where more eye cathing they got money and Wessex has contiued to get money.
What did Tividale get for the Centros that went to Bristol for the UWE+ service (between St Mathias Glenside (that might be wrong) and to Frenchey and of course to other campus's?

Tividale got the MCV's when the centro's went down south, for the 16 and 404E which soon got sold to Transzit in New Zealand. Looking at the 4 for example today there were S reg darts in service back in 1999/2000 Pete's Travel used 8 X reg darts so in 2013 buses that are older than what was used in 1999 are still appearing on the service. In terms of capacity if some of there parked up withdrawn darts at Long Acre and Tividale were reinstated even short term surely it would ease the capacity problem for now in Redditch and Kidderminster. The problem with the 97 is that it wasn't frequent enough and the same is happening to the 16 and 50 if you want to be successful in a service you have to match the frequency of your competitor like what is being done on the 4/40/42/43/301 as it's all about who gets the stops first a diamond bus on the 16 is going to do no good when running in between 2 or 3 NXWM buses where as on the 4 a diamond bus is nearly always slightly in front of the NXWM and in some cases you just miss a diamond and what bus turns up next another diamond bus a few minutes later before any NXWM bus appears hence taking the passengers.

Ash, that's not strictly true, the 58 plate Centro's left earlier than that. If I remember right there was a slight overlap but
they left when the Royale spec Centro's arrived, so again Diamond had 8 new buses in then 9 nearly new out. The Diamond fleet had its best investment with the arrival of all the MCV's. But sadly we all know what happened to them, I still don't believe they left just down to poor build quality, I think the timing of Arriva's arrival also had a hand to play in it. Surely the fact that the MCV's had been built some time ago & no other operators were interested in taking them off MCV should speak volumes.........

Looking at the body/chassis numbers for the MCVs is interesting-it shows some had been made up to 2 years before diamond bought them so they had been sitting around ages