Cannock Garage

[Bob]

Again I can understand certain faults can only be found when V.I is carried out and yes Arriva Cannock do have a poor fleet with ****ed up volvos that have been to the moon and back and shagged darts that have been to the moon and back but let's move from Cannock at the moment to say, Derby who have a pretty decent fleet, I Derby got through 6 or 7 breakdowns in a day does it make Arriva shit and say there running a poor service? We've established breakdowns can't be helped, we've established that certain things can be rectifies by a mechanic or if shoe was on the other foot and NatEx got through as many breakdowns in a day does that make them shit? Would they be slagged off like what Arriva have?

Maybe thats the point?  Tamworth derby etc have decent fleets. Cannock has a terrible fleet....

[arrivaaston]

I fail to see how its FACT "/........... But I suppose of course the great the wonderful NatEx never suffer a breakdown, the only good thing about Natex is that I paid about 1 or 2wuid in strapnil for a daysaver..... Natex are a piece of piss to rob

[Bob]

I cant begin to imagine just how bad Auto Steer must of been when the flletlines fitted with it sent to other garages in favour of Bristil VRs without any power assistance ?

I dont think autosteer was fitted till tthe mid 80s was it? Around about when the VRs were going

Did ypu mean walsall garage? I think what it was was that wolverhampton got rid of their VRs toward  the end of 1983 as they were being withdrawn for overhaul,  then they and the remaining examples largely second batch were concentrated at walsall allowing all their remaining fleetlines to go elsewhere :)) tge last ones left in or around may 1984

[arrivaaston]

74 broken down this morning, bus was fixed at bus station but has delayed the service by 15 minutes, no criticising as we've established its better when there fixed at the bus stn and service is delayed

[Liverpool Street]

i am not having a dig here, but i think arrivaaston has a lot of learning to do. i have experience in maintaining coaches/buses in the past and behind the scenes. you cannot prevent breakdowns - it happens. buses/coaches are getting more technical, emissions and being green hampers performance, but you cannot predict when something will fail. with nx having an engineer in a van at wn, it means that if he can fix small defects as they arise, mileage isnt lost as much,

ticket machines can fail, even the old ones did. a 2 min job, and bus can carry on. if a bulb, especially headlight goes, again 5 min job. this is an ideal tactic, as it means the engineers at garage dont have to deal with these small defects, and get to carry on with scheduled stuff/major repairs. when i was in charge of maintainance where i used to work, i used to have a kit in each vehicle, so even if i was out driving, and say a bulb went, id do it whilst out.

tony might answer this, but i suspect a number of tow ins now also occur due to the health and safety arrangements, i.e the attending engineers not being allowed to do major repairs at the roadside, esp if they had to crawl under the engine etc as well as the reasons already given for tow ins.

arriva seem to let themselves down, but when their other garages have a much better fleet, and lower age, they must be fighting a loosing battle.

its easy to slag operators off, but it hits them not only with grief off the tc, but if a bus isnt rolling it looses money. even small operators breakdown, although some may carry on with a defect until end of service wheras others will stop. no operator is immune to breakdowns, but some are more active in prevention than others. hence the guy from nx at wn bus station. its a comfort to see support there - and especially as lights wipers etc are concerned, its great nx try to sort these issues as and when they happen

It's much like BC's City Engineer. Even fix small leaks without major loss of mileage. (Or even repair it for the driver to return it to garage.)

Basically, if you work with vehicles, you must expect a certain degree of defects, and should have procedures in place to reduce the disruption as much as possible.

[Bob]

Cannock has had TWELVE breakdowns today!  Largely on 32/3 but on pye greens with two breaking down within minutes of each other.  Also a 2 and the 74 mentioned earlier.  Thats a fifth of the bloody fleet! !!!!!!

[Trident 4609]

Cannock has had TWELVE breakdowns today!  Largely on 32/3 but on pye greens with two breaking down within minutes of each other.  Also a 2 and the 74 mentioned earlier.  Thats a fifth of the bloody fleet! !!!!!!

Have any of these breakdowns consisted of some of the older buses in the fleet or does this include some of the younger buses such as the 57 Plate and 61 Plate VDL's?

[Bob]

Dont know.FT06 ZTE has broken down quite a bit in the past.  Darts break down more than anything else and theyre also the worst condition interior wise. But in their wisdom theyre getting rid of volvos and keeping absolutely knackered lightweight midibuses...

[arrivaaston]

The 32 has had 2 buses on majority of today, the 74 was rectified and back in use, 3719 has been out all day, the volvos are going due to costs of running them and a couple of drivers I speak to says he'll be glad to see the back of them and that they are useless, 3602 is proberbly the worse 1 for breaking down

[Bob]

They dont breakdown nowhere near as much as darts though! Plus darts are really unpleasant to travel on on interurban services which theyre frequently used on and not big enough for

[arrivaaston]

I agree darts on 70's is daft but how many of them volvos sound horrific? 3602/3/5/8/10 are the worse volvos of the lot, 3601 and 3609 are proberbly the best ones, 3606 now only acts as a "spare" 3612 seems to be a regular for fucking up and them Yorkshire things aren't much better, they may have the nice seats in but IMO the whole batch of volvos would look better on the back of a watsons wagon lol

[Bob]

The ex Yorkshire ones are beasts lol. I love em.proper buses not lightweight nails

[Ashley]

3605 3606 and 3610 are actually my top three but maybe i'm just speaking from bad taste

[Bob]

10 trips on various routes missed in cannock today due to breakdowns...crikey they need to get a grip. Its loads for a small garage

[winston]

10 trips on various routes missed in cannock today due to breakdowns...crikey they need to get a grip. Its loads for a small garage

They must be loosing quite a bit of revenue on a daily basis, plus potentially passengers due to poor service