Diamond Bus - Unusual Workings

[nitromatt1]

The first diamond 255 is at 20:45 from Wolverhampton so may be but seems along wait it could have been for the 26A.

Still quite a long wait (until 20:30) and it would seem pretty foolish to put a B7RLE on the 26A, given the nature of that route

[winston]

These would be my suggestions to increase patronage for diamond services.

Re-introduce the 4 between Walsall and West Bromwich every 15 minutes on a Sunday (was successful before the change as the 404E) with may be a 4H every half an hour to Halesowen to provide a sunday link.

Operate the 002 on Sunday's every 15 minutes, Merry Hill is just as if not as busy as any weekday or Saturday and offer a Sunday special £2.50 day return for 6 weeks to see if the service takes off.

To save money is the 16 making profit? as most of the buses I see are empty and mostly using solo's now.

A sunday 401E service as there is no bus on the Tame Bridge Estate on a Sunday and Walsall is always busy with shoppers on a sunday and could offer a 20 minute frequency using just 2 buses.

Is the 401e a busy route? I dont know just asking

The 16 could easily be improved-bcc have been operating for 29 years now so they should give it a try and try to improve the sevice.

Shut long acre

BRANDING

More deckers for redditch

Get all buses through paint shop, get old logos off and put DIAMOND logos on and stick to it

Increase proportion of longer buses in fleet

As for More Deckers here in Redditch, how about looking at the Diamond Network and seeing which routes can have them as in there aren't any low bridges and look at those that need them. Redditch could in all tense and purposes could have Bendi buses for 57/58 as the route has no tight corners excluding the bus station and turning into Plymouth Road from Bromsgrove/Station Rd.

As for the Brand, personally the Signature colours should be changed for the rest of the fleet and I think Red and Black with the swishes being Black as the Red and Black Diamond brands are the strongest out of the 4 Diamond brands (Red Black Blue and White/Barbie) also if Wessex and Preston can have fancy liveries why can't the West Mids?

Also the R reg Darts from first there was nothing wrong with them apart from one thing. No ramp, so I would cut a ramp out of a old little Dart or a 20 seater solo to put into these r reg darts to extend there working life.

If the 6 Yourbus Mercs are still for sale buy them paint them white and swap them with buses at Heathrow to bring up to the Midlands.

As for week past holders buy a bulk with Rotala and not Diamond Preston Wessex as it would be cheaper.

And finally the White Volvo bus(es) for the National Grid Contract, I'd look into seeing if the ex National Express Coaches could be used instead and if yes paint the Volvo bus(es) into fleet colours and put them on the 4, and put the Coaches onto the work.

Dan,

I think garage space in Redditch would be the main problem for operating Bendi's on the 57/58, effectively each Bendi will take up 1.5 x space of a standard full size single decker. There are plenty of late model Merc Citaro G's ex London around

I don't think there is anything at Heathrow worth bringing up, only MCV bodied Dart SLF's which are being disposed of due to poor build quality allegedly

I wouldn't have thought that it is viable to keep some of those 14 x 11 reg Levantes on NG contract long term, surely any major sub contractor to NX or even NX op's would be interested in acquiring a batch of that size to allow the withdrawal of older vehicles on the network, which would be partially depreciated over a batch of brand new vehicles

[the trainbasher]

Could be for the 81?

[PM]

These would be my suggestions to increase patronage for diamond services.

Re-introduce the 4 between Walsall and West Bromwich every 15 minutes on a Sunday (was successful before the change as the 404E) with may be a 4H every half an hour to Halesowen to provide a sunday link.

Operate the 002 on Sunday's every 15 minutes, Merry Hill is just as if not as busy as any weekday or Saturday and offer a Sunday special £2.50 day return for 6 weeks to see if the service takes off.

To save money is the 16 making profit? as most of the buses I see are empty and mostly using solo's now.

A sunday 401E service as there is no bus on the Tame Bridge Estate on a Sunday and Walsall is always busy with shoppers on a sunday and could offer a 20 minute frequency using just 2 buses.

Is the 401e a busy route? I dont know just asking

The 16 could easily be improved-bcc have been operating for 29 years now so they should give it a try and try to improve the sevice.

Shut long acre

BRANDING

More deckers for redditch

Get all buses through paint shop, get old logos off and put DIAMOND logos on and stick to it

Increase proportion of longer buses in fleet

As for More Deckers here in Redditch, how about looking at the Diamond Network and seeing which routes can have them as in there aren't any low bridges and look at those that need them. Redditch could in all tense and purposes could have Bendi buses for 57/58 as the route has no tight corners excluding the bus station and turning into Plymouth Road from Bromsgrove/Station Rd.

As for the Brand, personally the Signature colours should be changed for the rest of the fleet and I think Red and Black with the swishes being Black as the Red and Black Diamond brands are the strongest out of the 4 Diamond brands (Red Black Blue and White/Barbie) also if Wessex and Preston can have fancy liveries why can't the West Mids?

Also the R reg Darts from first there was nothing wrong with them apart from one thing. No ramp, so I would cut a ramp out of a old little Dart or a 20 seater solo to put into these r reg darts to extend there working life.

If the 6 Yourbus Mercs are still for sale buy them paint them white and swap them with buses at Heathrow to bring up to the Midlands.

As for week past holders buy a bulk with Rotala and not Diamond Preston Wessex as it would be cheaper.

And finally the White Volvo bus(es) for the National Grid Contract, I'd look into seeing if the ex National Express Coaches could be used instead and if yes paint the Volvo bus(es) into fleet colours and put them on the 4, and put the Coaches onto the work.

There are 4 nice centro bodied MANs which would be nice in the west midlands

[jc]

We had Bendy's years ago in Redditch and the depot is built to service them, however keeping a fleet of vehicles that can only be used on one or two services may not be a very viable option. The odd one did make it to Birmingham back in the day ...

[winston]

We had Bendy's years ago in Redditch and the depot is built to service them, however keeping a fleet of vehicles that can only be used on one or two services may not be a very viable option. The odd one did make it to Birmingham back in the day ...

I remember them as a kid, the MAN / DAB's new in 1980

[PM]

MPD on 002

KX57MTE on 202

30807 had horn sounding persistently for a bit this afternoon on howley grange road-driver told to hit it and it went off after a good few whacks.

[nitromatt1]

30807 had horn sounding persistently for a bit this afternoon on howley grange road-driver told to hit it and it went off after a good few whacks.

In my neck of the woods then, surprised I didn't hear it! :)

[PM]

30807 had horn sounding persistently for a bit this afternoon on howley grange road-driver told to hit it and it went off after a good few whacks.

In my neck of the woods then, surprised I didn't hear it! :)

Haha driver was told to continue to Merry Hill then he sort of refused then we waited 15 minutes then he was told to whack it and off we went. Would have been funny if we had to wait for the next one which would have been the MPD and god knows how full that would have been  :P

[Ash]

Hardly any of the b7rle's were on the 4/4H/4M full of darts and cadets only saw 2x13 reg ones all day. So must be being used elsewhere.

[John]

Hardly any of the b7rle's were on the 4/4H/4M full of darts and cadets only saw 2x13 reg ones all day. So must be being used elsewhere.

'KX57 MTE' was on the 202 Ash if you have not already seen Peters post

[PM]

Still doesnt explain where one 002 bus was, one royale was if eclipse on 202-so what darts were out on the west brom routes today-Ash did u see any of the other second hand eclipses out or was it just 2 new ones and darts/cadets-fortunately today wasnt hot otherwise there would have been problems-just wondering if there would be enough other buses to cover quite significant numbers of other buses not on the roads today-must have been MPDs all round :P

[winston]

Still doesnt explain where one 002 bus was, one royale was if eclipse on 202-so what darts were out on the west brom routes today-Ash did u see any of the other second hand eclipses out or was it just 2 new ones and darts/cadets-fortunately today wasnt hot otherwise there would have been problems-just wondering if there would be enough other buses to cover quite significant numbers of other buses not on the roads today-must have been MPDs all round :P

They could have been in the depot having work done on them

[PM]

Still doesnt explain where one 002 bus was, one royale was if eclipse on 202-so what darts were out on the west brom routes today-Ash did u see any of the other second hand eclipses out or was it just 2 new ones and darts/cadets-fortunately today wasnt hot otherwise there would have been problems-just wondering if there would be enough other buses to cover quite significant numbers of other buses not on the roads today-must have been MPDs all round :P

They could have been in the depot having work done on them

Probably the case but just shows the problem of not having enough longer single deck buses-the sooner those yourbus presidents are out in redditch the better then tividale could have 20850/30013/30428/30445/30516/30636/30701 which if they reinstated some first presidents and put the yourbus ones ready for service would give tividale a few more long darts as routes like the 40/002/301/4H/M shouldnt be having MPDs

[Ash]

Didnt see any other b7rles apart from those 2 w336vgx w567jvv s397hvv t447ebd and 30202/7/11/13/16 were the buses i saw