Prepared on Notepad by Ian Smith,
This page created 27th September 2016.
TA, TAS: Dennis Trident, Alexander ALX 400Takeover by Macquarie BankOn 23rd June 2006 Stagecoach plc announced that it had sold its entire London operation to Macquarie - an Australian bank. Stagecoach fleetnames quickly disappeared, and buses gained legal lettering for the East London Bus Company. Then repaints removed the blue skirts and Stagecoach swirls, and East London or Selkent logos began to appear. The black area under the windscreen was retained.
New all-red liveries: 17138 wears Selkent hops at Crystal Palace, August 200; 17176 has East London Thames barges on the 26 at Aldwych, July 2007.
Business continues: 160 goes, 287 double-deckedMid-way through September route 160 (Sidcup - Catford Garage) swapped Stagecoach Tridents for Tridents from Arriva Kent Thameside. So some of Catford's Tridents migrated to Barking, to allow for the double-decking of route 287, which until now had been using Darts (and one peak-time TA). A few of the Tridents from Catford were loaned to Dartford, to continue on the 160 until AKT could get its act together. Some of the SLDs from Barking were similarly loaned to London United. Other Tridents from Catford went on loan to other Stagecoach garages, presumably to assist in the repaint/refurbishment process.
Enviro400s arrive for 61In December 2006 route 61 was taken over from First London, on the basis of new buses. They were to be new Enviro400s - EnviroTridents. Some of the new buses had arrived in time for the assumption, but eight older Tridents were loaned from around the fleet for up to a fortnight during the transition.Once arrived, the ten EnviroTridents stuck to the 61, which needed nine (five on Sundays), so on Sundays there were substitutions of older Tridents to keep maintenance in order.
Selkent Tridents in Bromley Garage yard, December 2009: 17343 and 17351 off 61, 17283 off 208.Coaching Operations sold offThe Waterden Road commercial and coaching operations under the East London Coaches label were closed down in February 2007. The only two Tridents there, TA48 and TA49, now white and single-doored, were sold to Ensignbus, who sold them on for further use.Otherwise 2007 was a quiet year, the most notable Trident events being two overall adverts: 17774 wore one for Venezuela, following a deal for fuel oil from that country for London Buses, and 18212 wore one for an exhibition of Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs. The emphasis seemed to be property marking, the blue skirts and Stagecoach swirls disappearing during the year in favour of unrelieved red. There was a temporary route, the 574, in Dagenham during a prolonged road closure.
18465 on 30, St.Pancras, July 2007. 18251 on 15, Strand, January 2010.
2008The major event early in 2008 was the closure of Stratford Garage (SD). Its land had been compulsorily acquired for the London O******s in 2012. The buses were transferred to the new garage at West Ham (WH), where land had been cleared and a start made on garage facilities.Catford Tridents were used in February 2008 for the introduction of a new Night service in South-East London, the N136 to Chislehurst. Later in the year Upton Park added the new N550 to existing N50.
During the year there was renewed effort to get the buses into all-red livery, presumably to comply with TfL's directives. This was done rather patchily: some buses had their blue skirts repainted red, while retaining their orange/white/blue swirls for a while. I suspect that removing the vinyls required a subsequent expensive full repaint. Also during the year the remaining tip-up seats by the wheelchair space were locked out of use, again at TfL's requirement. In September East London took over route 248 from Blue Triangle. The new buses for the route were Polish-built Scania OmniCitys, but they were not ready in time. So East London scraped together spare Tridents from its fleets and sent them to Rainham. They were not enough. East London went on the second-hand market and bought eleven Tridents with East Lancs Lolyne bodies, that had started with Metrobus. These were numbered 18875-18885. They too were sent to Rainham, where a new unit was set up with its own operator's licence. The Scanias arrived in October, and the Lolynes were sent to West Ham, where they found a home on the 86. Plumstead was short of Tridents too, during the fitting of i-Bus equipment, and in October borrowed eleven 9.9m Tridents from Metroline for use on routes 53, 96, 99, 122, 177 and 472. They were given temporary Selkent numbers 18886-18896. They strayed to Bromley and Catford too during the i-Bus programme, but returned to Plumstead so that its own Tridents could fill in for late-delivered Scanias when the 51 was taken over in December from London Central. More Scanias displaced Tridents from route 106 at West Ham in December. Plumstead Tridents took over on schoolday routes 601 and 602 from the start of January 2009.
2009After a year when the Trident fleet had been strained, 2009 saw a surplus develop, as existing routes were converted to Scania OmniCitys as contract renewals specified new buses. Some of the Macquarie fleet of Tridents was now distinctly old. Early in the year, after route 51 was completed, Plumstead put Scanias onto the 177 (Peckham - Thamesmead) and the 96 (Woolwich - Bluewater).April and May saw Catford losing Trident work on the 75 and then the 54. The shock was mitigated a lttle by the loan of twenty eight Catford Tidents to Metrobus to be used on the routes until new buses arrived. Fourteen went to Croydon in April, for the 75, and fourteen to Green Street Green in May, for the 54. Also in April the East Lancs Lolynes were returned to Wealden PSV. Subsequently the younger ones were acquired by The Big Bus Company, decapitated, and used on London Sightseeing. The Metroline borrowings were also returned to Metroline at North Wembley (via a check-over at Perivale). In May the Rainham operation was rebranded as "Thameside", with a wiggly Thames logo. So by July some seventy Tridents were identified as redundant, quite apart from the Lolynes that had already gone in April. Macquarie could not just cascade them to provincial companies as Stagecoach could have done. Twenty went into the training fleet in place of DA Optare Deltas and SLW Scania Pathfinders. Another twenty went to Ensign Bus for sale. Of those that remained, contract requirements relating to the age of the fleet meant a wholesale relocation of buses between garages in mid-July. Some routes were relocated from one garage to another. In August route 205 was taken on. It had been expected (from experience) that the ordered Scanias would be late, and a temporary allocation of Tridents would be needed, but in the end the Scanias arrived and the Tridents were not needed. Nevertheless it was normal for one to be used each day. At the end of November/beginning of December there were further route re-allocations, the 69 moving to West Ham from Leyton, and the 158 from Bow to Leyton. December saw the Tridents on route 56 replaced by Scanias.
In the city, in the suburbs: 17848 on the 15 to Blackwall, Oxford Street, December 2009, 17342 on 208 passing Bromley South Station, October 2009.2010A trickle of Tridents was sold in early 2010, mostly via Ensign, but some off-lease to Caetano. Onward sales were desultory: early low-floor buses from other companies seemed to be preferred. Most of the early trainer buses were withdrawn for a while from July, although one was reinstated in August, and others in October.August saw some upheaval, when West Ham and Upton Park swapped routes 115 and 147, twenty Tridents shifting each way, short old ones towards West Ham for the 147, and long newer ones to Upton Park for the 115. The age disparity was to maintain contracted age profiles on each route. This was a process that was seen a lot during the summer, as the company tried to avoid buying new buses by juggling its increasingly elderly stock. Also in August Bromley lost Trident work to Metrobus, when the mid-day frequency between Catford and Bromley Common on route 208 was halved, as the route was altered to run end-to-end between Lewisham and Orpington, instead of as two overlapping sections. The Bromley - Catford section saw a new extension of Metrobus' route 320 instead. October saw the big news: Stagecoach was back, buying the ailing business - garages, buses and contracts - for considerably less than Macquarie had bought it for. Of course, many of the buses - Tridents and Dart SLFs mostly - were now four and a bit years older. East London had announced back in June that it was looking for a buyer, and had appointed an Administrator.
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Bus Stop
18201-18500
Macquarie
Stagecoach