The forthcoming changes to bus services in the Retford area (see HERE), whereby most of the Veolia operations are taken over by Yourbus, will use in part a selection of former London area double-deckers. With that in mind I have riffled through my draws once again and found that this will not be the first time that vehicles from such a source have been used in that town and its surrounds.

Back in the mists of time Chesterfield’s subsidiary Retford & District operated at least one former London Transport Daimler Fleetline with MCW bodywork (formerly DMS 1412 circa 1973), whilst Kettlewells ran a similar bus (DM 1067 circa 1975), another Daimler but with Park Royal bodywork. These were not some of LT’s finest, well certainly not when they were operated in London, the fleet of 2646 such vehicles causing disruption to services as they constantly went ‘mechanical’. Strange though that once they were sold off to the provinces, there they found that the type was more suited to the ‘country’ environment. Indeed Kettlewell’s own bus was probably one of the last of the type to operate in revenue-earning service, long after it had left the great Metropolis.

In more recent years Veolia who Yourbus will replace, have used a number of Volvo Olympians with either Alexander or Northern Counties Palatine bodywork. Both types came from the Metroline company, although the latter began service with London Suburban Buses before their being absorbed into London Northern and then subsequently taken over by Metroline.

Stagecoach have operated a selection of Dennis Dart single-deckers that were cascaded out from their East London and Selkent subsidiaries including some of the first Alexander ALX200 SLF bodied versions along with the more traditional Plaxton Pointer type. One other source for Stagecoach was an interesting trio of Mercedes-Benz Optare Prisma single-deckers that came into the company upon the takeover of the Roadcar company. These originally operated with the Tillingbourne Bus Company based at Cranleigh in Surrey.

It is believed that at least six former London General Dennis Tridents with Plaxton (later TransBus) President bodies from the initial batch of the PDL-class will be acquired by Yourbus along with a smaller number of unknown single-deckers.

So once again it seems that what goes around comes around.

Images

All images were taken in Retford town apart from two, Stagecoach 23953 that was captured heading through Torworth bound for Retford on route 99. One other image shows London General PDL 6, one of the six currently being prepared by Ensignbus, back in its former years operating route 88 at Clapham Common in October 2000.