Diamonds problem

[winston]

With Diamond now appearing to be introducing a new standard livery for all Diamond operations, Rotala should have taken the opportunity to introduce a totally new livery scheme similar in style to that recently introduced at Wessex, it looks far more superior / gives a better quality image than the drab allover blue Diamond have chosen. Even the Diamond logo looks pretty basic

Wessex red livery:

http://www.flicker.com/photos/rocknrave/7235953996/in/photostream
http://www.flicker.com/photos/rocknrave/7170812480/in/photostream
http://www.flicker.com/photos/rocknrave/7472878150/in/photostream

Winston, I couldn't agree more I think the Wessex Red livery is very professional looking and very smart but simple even the new Preston Bus livery isn't too bad even thought some people are critical of it.

With Diamond now appearing to be introducing a new standard livery for all Diamond operations, Rotala should have taken the opportunity to introduce a totally new livery scheme similar in style to that recently introduced at Wessex, it looks far more superior / gives a better quality image than the drab allover blue Diamond have chosen. Even the Diamond logo looks pretty basic

Wessex red livery:

http://www.flicker.com/photos/rocknrave/7235953996/in/photostream
http://www.flicker.com/photos/rocknrave/7170812480/in/photostream
http://www.flicker.com/photos/rocknrave/7472878150/in/photostream

Winston, I couldn't agree more I think the Wessex Red livery is very professional looking and very smart but simple even the new Preston Bus livery isn't too bad even thought some people are critical of it.

at least  the blue livery for diamond is better than the variations  there have been with the first livery

One livery is better for transferring buses between the 4 garages they will soon be operating out of, but allover blue is a bit bland. I would have liked to have a complete new livery inspired from the Wessex Red example

[Ash]

I would like to see diamond in the black country on them or diamond in Worcestershire to add some kind of identity similar to how they have labelled the areas individually on their website. The livery is a bit bland but now your going to have red and white diamond, blue diamond, black diamond and red diamond livery vehicles more regularly on services like the 4 which is not good. Also some buses I guess will not get repainted into the new blue livery especially the red and white darts which are in a right state externally.

[winston]

I would like to see diamond in the black country on them or diamond in Worcestershire to add some kind of identity similar to how they have labelled the areas individually on their website. The livery is a bit bland but now your going to have red and white diamond, blue diamond, black diamond and red diamond livery vehicles more regularly on services like the 4 which is not good. Also some buses I guess will not get repainted into the new blue livery especially the red and white darts which are in a right state externally.

Don't be so sure of what will get repainted, its unlikey that they will be replaced with new vehicles

[tank90]

I say experiment with the Signature Livery. I say this as it looks smart. Now I know what I shall say next will be meet with some oppostion but if you put the signature Livery over the top of the Red Diamond keeping the the black band it would look amazingly good. ok abit samey as Wessex but the Midlands is the Home of Midland Red and now Rotala (Diamond) own a bit of MR they should use it more as it isnt a bad colour. I would then put the Royale buses into the silver to show them off abit.

[BU07 LGO]

Seems Preston have invested in lots of new Hybrid Gemini's

http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=rec&w=all&q=preston+bus+hybrid&m=text

[winston]

I say experiment with the Signature Livery. I say this as it looks smart. Now I know what I shall say next will be meet with some oppostion but if you put the signature Livery over the top of the Red Diamond keeping the the black band it would look amazingly good. ok abit samey as Wessex but the Midlands is the Home of Midland Red and now Rotala (Diamond) own a bit of MR they should use it more as it isnt a bad colour. I would then put the Royale buses into the silver to show them off abit.

Tank,

No I think that's not a bad call on a red based Signature livery, another option may be to just adopt the Wessex Red livery with a new Diamond fleetnames, buses are then easily interchangeable between the West Midlands & Bristol, and they livery retains the traditional red for former Midland Red operations

[winston]

Seems Preston have invested in lots of new Hybrid Gemini's

http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=rec&w=all&q=preston+bus+hybrid&m=text

There's only 4 (40606-9)

[tank90]

I say experiment with the Signature Livery. I say this as it looks smart. Now I know what I shall say next will be meet with some oppostion but if you put the signature Livery over the top of the Red Diamond keeping the the black band it would look amazingly good. ok abit samey as Wessex but the Midlands is the Home of Midland Red and now Rotala (Diamond) own a bit of MR they should use it more as it isnt a bad colour. I would then put the Royale buses into the silver to show them off abit.

Tank,

No I think that's not a bad call on a red based Signature livery, another option may be to just adopt the Wessex Red livery with a new Diamond fleetnames, buses are then easily interchangeable between the West Midlands & Bristol, and they livery retains the traditional red for former Midland Red operations

That had crossed my mind too but my thinking was that it would be different to Wessex and slightly bolder and stand out better in Birmingham Coventry Redditch Kidderminster Halesown and so on. Wessexs is good but alittle to little the red of Red Diamond is slightly darker and the darker grey of the Signature brand would make the livery sing on a (god forbid anymore that arent SRs) solo midi single hybrid or DD. Also you wouldnt have to change the Signature colour scheme either. it was small thinking on my part i think (fuelling my own ego lol)

Dan.

[winston]

I say experiment with the Signature Livery. I say this as it looks smart. Now I know what I shall say next will be meet with some oppostion but if you put the signature Livery over the top of the Red Diamond keeping the the black band it would look amazingly good. ok abit samey as Wessex but the Midlands is the Home of Midland Red and now Rotala (Diamond) own a bit of MR they should use it more as it isnt a bad colour. I would then put the Royale buses into the silver to show them off abit.

Tank,

No I think that's not a bad call on a red based Signature livery, another option may be to just adopt the Wessex Red livery with a new Diamond fleetnames, buses are then easily interchangeable between the West Midlands & Bristol, and they livery retains the traditional red for former Midland Red operations

That had crossed my mind too but my thinking was that it would be different to Wessex and slightly bolder and stand out better in Birmingham Coventry Redditch Kidderminster Halesown and so on. Wessexs is good but alittle to little the red of Red Diamond is slightly darker and the darker grey of the Signature brand would make the livery sing on a (god forbid anymore that arent SRs) solo midi single hybrid or DD. Also you wouldnt have to change the Signature colour scheme either. it was small thinking on my part i think (fuelling my own ego lol)

Dan.

The only issue that I can see with having a red based Signature livery, especially in the West Midlands is that the front of the bus would be predominantly red i.e. same as NXWM

[tank90]

I say experiment with the Signature Livery. I say this as it looks smart. Now I know what I shall say next will be meet with some oppostion but if you put the signature Livery over the top of the Red Diamond keeping the the black band it would look amazingly good. ok abit samey as Wessex but the Midlands is the Home of Midland Red and now Rotala (Diamond) own a bit of MR they should use it more as it isnt a bad colour. I would then put the Royale buses into the silver to show them off abit.

Tank,

No I think that's not a bad call on a red based Signature livery, another option may be to just adopt the Wessex Red livery with a new Diamond fleetnames, buses are then easily interchangeable between the West Midlands & Bristol, and they livery retains the traditional red for former Midland Red operations

That had crossed my mind too but my thinking was that it would be different to Wessex and slightly bolder and stand out better in Birmingham Coventry Redditch Kidderminster Halesown and so on. Wessexs is good but alittle to little the red of Red Diamond is slightly darker and the darker grey of the Signature brand would make the livery sing on a (god forbid anymore that arent SRs) solo midi single hybrid or DD. Also you wouldnt have to change the Signature colour scheme either. it was small thinking on my part i think (fuelling my own ego lol)

Dan.

The only issue that I can see with having a red based Signature livery, especially in the West Midlands is that the front of the bus would be predominantly red i.e. same as NXWM

not if you paint what is silver red and leave the darker grey. But I can see your point, red would work better than blue or black tho.

http://wmbusphotos.com/centralConnect/30030.html

[Dylan4579]

they should scrap the solos, and try to be dominant on a corridor, such as Dudley road, compete on 2 routes with similar routes, such as the 128/9,or become dominant in a bus station, such as west brom.

[PM]

I think that Diamond's problem is that they tend to go for subsided routes

That is not sustainable for a bus operator these days.

With local authorities being cut to the bone, it is inevitable that subsidised bus routes will be put under the microscope.  Worcestershire have of course cut a number of services in recent years, and the 192 (once operated by Diamond) has been cut to run between Halesowen and Kidderminster only with another operator providing the remaining service.   Centro have got to save a substantial sum of money in the next few years and it is inevitable some tendered routes will go.

And Diamond of course have lost a number of Black Country routes, some to Arriva and others to NXWM (who then put out publicity in the Network Reviews claiming to be putting on new evening services - which in reality of course are those operated by a different operator under contract to Centro).   Add in a failure to compete with NXWM on a number of routes (even when NXWM's offer is tatty Tridents) and it is clear Diamond have a substantial problem.

Bar the minnows, we are effectively in most of the West Midlands heading back to a situation we had pre 1986 of the WMPTE monopoly - albeit now under private control and repackaged as National Express West Midlands.  NXWM running all local bus services is as ridiculous and anti-competitive as Tesco running every supermarket, Ford making all cars and telling you that you can "have any colour as long as it's black" or only the BBC providing television.   If the politicians and Centro were really serious about competition in the industry we would have route or area franchising with NXWM being under pressure to make improvements or lose the business to another provider.  The Nicholas Ridley model of competition is as broken as a clapped out Metrobus and it amazes me why Conservative politicians who are so keen to push the mantra of "competition in public services" into other areas of life are happy to continue propping the 1986 bus model in the West Midlands when it has failed to deliver what Ridley intended.

I agree that we are heading to a monopoly situation and that this is far from being a "good thing" and that actually it is unfair to blame the tories for the catastrophy of WM bus deregulation as they wanted to split it up meaning they wouldnt have kept the travelcard. Therefore, competition would have been easier and would still be easier but it was the labour pta and people such as Phil bateman that decided that the labour policy would be to keep WMT as one single private sector monopoly. Eventually, the tories gave in as otherwise they would not have privatised and then no investigation followed. So actually, if the tories had had their way then the situation would not be as it is today. And would it be fair to say that labour, despite being in power for 13 years and promising to revolutionise transport and that transport policy could be deemed a failure if more people weren't on buses did absolutely nothing to address the situation despite being a majority in power wanting to change things. As it is, the best thing they really did to revolutionise transport was build a coach lane on a motorway but that is a different story.

[Ash]

they should scrap the solos, and try to be dominant on a corridor, such as Dudley road, compete on 2 routes with similar routes, such as the 128/9,or become dominant in a bus station, such as west brom.

If diamond were to try out another commercial service it should be the 302 and share the bus stop in Walsall with the diamond 301 stop.

[sonic84]

I always felt like Diamond tried commercial routes but never seem to stick to them long enough to build up a customer base.

Examples I can think of are;

449 / 450 West Bromwich - Bearwood - Quinton - Brandhall - Langley - West Bromwich

I only remember it running for a very short amount of time, before it got pulled.

I remember under Go West Midland, they ran the 87 along the full length of the route, but very quickly cut it to run Oldbury - Birmingham, and then extended it back a few times.

It surprised me that they pull out of the 120 as well.  Didn't  Diamond and WMT run that at 20 minutes each, and if i remember correctly it wasn't until diamond withdrew of the service that WMT increased the frequency to every 10 minutes.

I'm sure there 9 route used to pick up a fair few passengers as well, and with all the investment they put into that service with the Royale diamond branding, it was a shame it didn't continue.

They tinkered around with a lot of the ex ludlows routes as well.  They basically ran the 004 into the ground by curtailing it to run Halesowen - Harborne only... they were never going to pick up passengers, partiularly when NXB had already extended the 636 to Halesowen at that point.  The unique selling point of the 004 was that it ran direct to Merry Hill from Harborne and there was no other service you could get there.  Bearing in mind, that the 002/004 was actually the quickest route from Halesowen - Merry Hill as well.  I believe ludlows had structure the timetable such that there was a bus every 10 minutes from Halesowen - Merry under the 002/004/007 routes.

They also had the 230 run to a timetable which was almost impossible to keep to.  Ludlows used to interwork the 006 and the 230 such that since the 006 was only a 20 minute round trip, the 230 had 70 minutes to complete a trip, leaving Halesowen at 25 minutes past the hour, and arriving back at 35 minutes past to run on 2 circuits of the 006.

Once the 006 was withdrawn by Diamond (again another popular route), the 230 now had ten minutes less to complete the round trip, with no opportunity to catch up on lost time, meaning it became extremely unreliable.

[Ash]

I always felt like Diamond tried commercial routes but never seem to stick to them long enough to build up a customer base.

Examples I can think of are;

449 / 450 West Bromwich - Bearwood - Quinton - Brandhall - Langley - West Bromwich

I only remember it running for a very short amount of time, before it got pulled.

I remember under Go West Midland, they ran the 87 along the full length of the route, but very quickly cut it to run Oldbury - Birmingham, and then extended it back a few times.

It surprised me that they pull out of the 120 as well.  Didn't  Diamond and WMT run that at 20 minutes each, and if i remember correctly it wasn't until diamond withdrew of the service that WMT increased the frequency to every 10 minutes.

I'm sure there 9 route used to pick up a fair few passengers as well, and with all the investment they put into that service with the Royale diamond branding, it was a shame it didn't continue.

They tinkered around with a lot of the ex ludlows routes as well.  They basically ran the 004 into the ground by curtailing it to run Halesowen - Harborne only... they were never going to pick up passengers, partiularly when NXB had already extended the 636 to Halesowen at that point.  The unique selling point of the 004 was that it ran direct to Merry Hill from Harborne and there was no other service you could get there.  Bearing in mind, that the 002/004 was actually the quickest route from Halesowen - Merry Hill as well.  I believe ludlows had structure the timetable such that there was a bus every 10 minutes from Halesowen - Merry under the 002/004/007 routes.

They also had the 230 run to a timetable which was almost impossible to keep to.  Ludlows used to interwork the 006 and the 230 such that since the 006 was only a 20 minute round trip, the 230 had 70 minutes to complete a trip, leaving Halesowen at 25 minutes past the hour, and arriving back at 35 minutes past to run on 2 circuits of the 006.

Once the 006 was withdrawn by Diamond (again another popular route), the 230 now had ten minutes less to complete the round trip, with no opportunity to catch up on lost time, meaning it became extremely unreliable.

When diamond tried out the 450 it used the 'new' black diamond centro's. As shown in the bottom photo of the link below. That was at the time when they invested heavily and the centro's were used on the 404B and 404H well before they were introduced on the 404E which still used the X???AKW darts at the time. When the 404B/H/449/450 were stopped the centro's were put on the 401/2/401E and 404E. Strange really as they withdrew off the 404H to only return a couple of years later with the 4M and operate the complete route from Walsall to Merry Hill but at every 60 minutes which really I dont understand as the Sunday service is every 30 minutes. It must be the only service I know especially diamond's where the sunday service is more frequent than the mon-sat service.

http://wmbusphotos.com/diamondpages/30803.html