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4873 on a 23E Harborne Green Man (from city).

That's a new one on me.

Just seen a de-branded 6878 and to be honest it looks a bit of a mess. The 23/24 Harborne branding is still clearly visible and readable even from a distance, and there's been nothing applied to at least partly cover it (like on 6858-61). The non-route specific stuff (charge into city, relax extra legroom etc) has been left as it is so it looks unfinished. Which is exactly what it is.

Disappointing how standards of presentation have dropped so much in just a relatively short space of time. And yes, I know most people just care that the bus turns up etc, etc. 

With the X21/22, 23/24 brands' being the only branded buses at BC aswell as a common occurrence on the X12/13 and 97/A it makes sense.
 
Factoring in BC is planned to close. With both an east and south replacement garage, bound to be electric ready. The X21 etc brand vehicles may not even go to either of these garages for long, if at all.

New garages are a fair way off so I doubt the removal of branding has anything to do with that. The bottom line is that these buses are used on any route nowadays so there's little point in keeping them branded in that case. 

6874/6888 both debranded

The beginning of the end of route branding at BC. I know I'm in a minority here but that's a shame in my view. I like route branding and when used on the correct routes (I know at BC thats's gone out of the window) it does give a sense of identity. It will be a pity when the rest of the 68/19 batch have their branding removed and all semblance of colour will have been banished from the fleet for good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8ygjp744lo

Bus fell into a ditch in Leverington, Cambridgeshire yesterday evening. I'm around that area every Thursday (didn't need to come to Leverington this week) but I think this may be a GRS bus, who have a number of ex-NX buses on their fleet.

The roads are terrible around here.

It certainly looks like an ex-NX President

23/24 also screwed once again due to closure of Harborne High Street for emergency gas works (again) inbound and Harborne Road at Five Ways down to a single lane.

6880 was 74 minutes late by the time I got off this evening. 

7533 on a 23E to Bartley Green, Field Lane. One of a convoy of five 23/24s heading out of city.

As Marge said, grey is just extremely flat and unwelcoming compared to other cities' colours, just off the top of my head I thought that the colour blue could be nice, our football team is literally nicknamed "The Blues". It would make sense and have a meaning linked to the city, even a brighter silver colour (like the U11DD) could be nice as a nod to our Selfridges building, maybe even a dark brown with gold highlights to pay homage to our bull? maybe a blue red and yellow livery that takes inspiration from not only UOB but the Birmingham flag, there were many other colours that could've evoked something nice about this city than several boring and muted greys.

even more ideas, why not bring back one of the older colour schemes like blue and silver/blue and cream and port it to something like the TfWM diamond pattern, I feel like that could look nice and iconic? https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1242937202850140302/1305207040767037530/image.png?ex=67323048&is=6730dec8&hm=55bf51e8141548c350399b5e0f1d156560424ea343137d29d48f4a8d6c887ec9&;

Our other football team isn't called the Blues and has a significantly larger fan base than Birmingham City.

Regardless, I do think that a more vibrant colour than grey would have been far more effective if a single colour had to be the way forward. 

From Monday BC are putting two extra buses out as duplicates in the morning peak on the X21/X22 to try and help with overloading and late running

Apologies if I've missed something somewhere but with these duplicates currently using electric vehicles (and also being used on football shuttles), does BC have facilities to charge these or is this being done elsewhere? 

At the moment the charging infrastructure in garages has been failing to keep up with deliveries and would unlikely be ready for the initial timescales quoted for the orders.

A lot of the higher frequency Birmingham routes run commercially 21 hours a day, with the first bus inbound at around 4am and the last bus outbound at around 1am. 

1897 on the 7 this evening, heading into city after the Villa game had ended and completely ill-equipped to deal with the football crowds. Not a change bus either, it had been on that board all day - poor planning.

On a separate note, caught my first ever electric on the 33 tonight. Nice smooth and rattle-free ride but my word, the headroom towards the back is absolutely shocking (I'm 5'11 and banged my head) and sitting on the rear seat downstairs my knees were nearly touching my chin. Appalling design and very uncomfortable. The bus was also way too small. Wouldn't want to catch one of these long distance on the X1.

EDIT: on second thoughts, 1897 could probably accommodate a lot more passengers than one of the PB electrics!

meaning?

Posts 1022 and 1023 in this thread discussed  this point

Yep, anyone with memories of the old Fleetline red plastic seats would agree with that. Even modern versions aren't much better - First had a fleet of Streetlites with grey versions of these sort of seats, they were uncomfortable driving in the cab at the best of times and awful when it was hot.

Also, I'm no scientist but I remember enough from school to know that bacteria won't survive very well in such conditions as on a bus seat - too cold/warm, too much disturbance caused by constant backsides sitting down and getting up, etc. Something that isn't spotlessly clean doesn't mean that it is also a health risk, it obviously isn't.

I know the dust from the seats has never been very nice if you hit the padding but in any enclosed public space you will be breathing in the same dust particles anyway. Just don't hit the seat too hard and it's not an issue!!!

Remember the upstairs rear bench seat on Fleetlines? Absolutely rock hard. If the bus took a corner too quickly you'd slide from one end to the other. 

There's no longer a right turn from Bristol Road into Harborne Lane so presumably buses had to continue up Bristol Road and make a u-turn at either Weoley Park Road or the gap in the central reservation before that (might be too tight for a bus to turn), then left down Harborne Lane.