View allAll Photos Tagged Excel,
A shot that was taken while out for a wander with P1ay and Paki Nuttah a few weeks ago.
The viewpoint is Victoria Dock, or as it is now known "Excel Marina"…i'll always know it as the former!
Stagecoach Chesterfield Optare Excel YN51VHK 35002 seen in the town centre on the 54 to Clay Cross, 12th May
Newly delivered Optare Excel buses at Wolverhampton's Park Lane Garage in January 1999. Still serving the city, these buses look so terribly tatty and worn now.
Travel West Midlands first Optare Excel nears completion on the production line in Leeds, with Nottingham Solo 291 beyond. 12th November 1998
Notts & Derby Optare Excel 264 - Y264 DRC and Scania L94UB / Wright Solar 620 - FJ03 VWK are parked side by side in Derby depot. The Excel was the final operational example in Wellglade ownership out of a large fleet of over a hundred owned, and had already been withdrawn from service, while the Scania was a recent transfer from Nottingham depot and retained its Trent Barton Cotgrave Connection livery.
Car: Lotus Excel.
Engine: 2174cc in-line 4.
Year of manufacture: 1987.
Date of first registration in the UK: 1st August 1987.
Place of registration: Taunton.
Date of last MOT: 17th June 2023.
Mileage at last MOT: 60,018.
Date of last change of keeper: 22nd April 2022.
Number of previous keepers: 8.
Date taken: 14th May 2023.
Album: Classics in Cardiff May 2023
KaBoogie Optare Excel 2 L1180 NY03 JJF Seen at Grainger Street in the evening, working as a “Party Bus”. This particular Excel was new to Middlesbrough Council as a playbus in 2003 and has remained in the region ever since, passing onto KaBoogie in 2015 where it was converted into a “Party Bus” by Blackpool Design Coachbuilders. An article on this bus can be read here: bdc-uk.co.uk/party-bus/
08/07/2023
T-784 Cessna 560 Citation XL of the Swiss Air Force at Glasgow 2/11/21.
This aircraft was visiting in connection with the COP 26 World Climate Change Conference.
Snapped in Weston-Super-Mare sporting the bright 'excel' livery last year, Alexander Dennis Enviro 400/Trident 2 33417 WA56FTP which was new to First Devon & Cornwall for the Plymouth Park & Ride services is seen here working the X1 Direct service to Bristol.
Saturday December 18th was the first day without Arriva services in Guildford. Having picked up the contract for service 18, Safeguard placed their AEC Reliance out into service to mark their first day, as well as allocating all three Excels for the day.
On service 3 was X307 CBT, seen here on its way back from Bellfields. The Reliance duplicated this journey and wasn't far behind.
Chertsey Street, Guildford, Surrey.
7207 was one of a batch of Optare Excels delivered new to the Travel London operation. Once finished with in London service some were transferred straight to the West Midlands, whilst others went to Dundee.
This example came to the West Midlands from Dundee and entered service in may 2009. It's seen 3 months later at work on the 255 to Merry Hill.
Malta's only example of an Optare Excel descends the winding and wet hairpins north of Naxxar seemingly out of service. Never Optare's most popular model, and an awful lot of bus to push around with a little Cummins B series. Before too long on the island, the bus had gained a Leyland hub-reduction rear axle in the Maltese tradition.
All of the pictures are © copyright by P1ay "All rights are reserved" worldwide. Please do not use, copy or edit any of my photographs. However please feel free to contact with me if you are interested in using any of my images.
With my normal lens still out of commission, I am using 50mm. Using this lens you really have to think about your composition as everything is very tight and you are forced to either take a step back or forward, which I love.
I recently bought some new toys and have not had a chance to use it any of them yet. One of my new toys is a small portable up lighter and I finally got to use it. I had turned it down to the lowest brightness and it was still to brighter, it was on red but changed colour with processing.
As it was the final stages of the blue hour, I used the spilt toning to changed the highlights to blue, decreased the highlights too, increased the clarity and finally added some vignetting in lightrooms.
All of the pictures are © copyright by P1ay "All rights are reserved" worldwide. Please do not use, copy or edit any of my photographs. However please feel free to contact with me if you are interested in using any of my images.
I never noticed at the time, but the windscreen of R418HWU is smashed in this June 2009 photo.
Presumably it was taken off the road for repair after this was taken..
Also of note is the shortened route number, which should have read 503W. This was an ex London vehicle and these only had space for a 3 digit destination.
Excel 260 is seen arriving at Sutton-in Ashfield on the 141 service from Nottingham.
Tue 29th July 2014.
Now at the very end of its life and about to donate some of its mechanicals to keep 693 running, TWM Excel 687 nears completion at Optare, 12 November 1998.
Ehh look it's an Excel on stilts.
In the space of a few weeks this summer I managed to go from having no Optare model bus kits to having three. One of them was an Excel 1 metal kit, which I intended to convert into one of NCT's Excel 2s. This was one of my shortest lived model plans ever, as within a month I'd procured myself this Excel 2 resin kit.
I know I've bodged Excels out of OOC Deltas before, but I always thought that if I were to ever do an NCT Excel model, I'd want the proper kit. Never expected to have two of them, though!
Because the metal kit has the front, rear, sides and roof all as individual pieces, there isn't really a way I could mock it up for a photo, but the resin one just slides together. It's on stilts because of the things the wheels are moulded onto (it took AGES to get it to balance like this) but you can sort of see what it looks like.
Unfortunately, it's banana-shaped. The middle is noticeably higher than the front and rear, especially along the window line. The whole bodyshell is slightly warped. The idea I had to fix it was to steam the bodyshell over a pan of boiling water, and hope that it went soft enough to bend back into shape without some other part warping in the process. Now, I did that, and it looks like it's worked, but the question now is will it stay fixed or next time I get it out of the box, will it be banana shaped again?
Recently withdrawn Notts&Derby 264 Y264DRC Optare Excel L1180 at Meadow Road Bus Depot in Derby on 13 June 2018. This was the last ex trent barton Excel with the Wellglade Group.
Also out of service possibly awaiting a major repair is 791 YJ56KBF VDL SB200 Plaxton Centro ex Felix.
As is tradition, with each new 'blank' bus drawing I do, I also do a liveried up version to go along with it. There were so many choices for the Excel I could've spent hours making different liveries for it and another hour choosing which one to pick for upload. However, I didn't have hours to spare, so I did Rainbow 3 because it was basic and I could quickly and easily make all the branding parts. The red/yellow and rainbow coloured 'bow' logos I both made fairly recently, so I could use them on OMSI repaints, and they certainly came in handy here.
I have vague recollections of seeing these in town when I was taken there as a child, although as they only dipped into Victoria bus station and then left again they were never a major part of my observations, unlike NCT's which were everywhere. The one which made the biggest impact on me was when one must've been on its way to/from Manvers Street for whatever reason, and I saw it go along Parliament Street from a distance. I thought it was some kind of weird, all-orange 36 or something.
No steal plz.
Boeing 737-8Q8
cn: 29351 / ln: 1471
ff: 09-03-2004 at Renton
Aircraft ordered by ILFC for leasing to the following airlines, and they all used config Y189
25-03-2004 G-XLAH Excel Airways
06-01-2005 G-XLAH Zoom Airlines, (Subleased from XLA)
27-04-2005 G-XLAH Excel Airways, (returned)
07-11-2005 C-FTAH Sunwing Airlines, (leased from ILFC)
02-05-2006 C-FTAH Excel Airways, subleased from SWG)
02-11-2006 C-FTAH Sunwing Airlines, (returned)
02-05-2007 C-FTAH XL Airways, (subleased from SWG)
And so they conued in 2007 and 2008
23-10-2008 N164LF ILFC (returned)
19-11-2008 C-FTAH Sunwing Airlines, (leased from ILFC)
18-05-2009 OK-TVJ Travel Service, (leased from ILFC)
and so they continued from 2009 until 2014
14-10-2014 C-FTAH Sunwing Airlines, (leased from TVS), Painted in "Nexus Tours" speical clolours
15-05-2015 OK-TVJ Smartwings, (leased from AerCap)
and so they contuned until 2017
15-12-2017 C-GYQW Air Transat, (leased from TVS)
04-05-2018 OK-TVJ Smartwings
05-2019 New Lessor: Aviator Capital
22-11-2019 C-FFVJ Sunwing Airlines (Subleased from TVS)
06-04-2020 OK-TVJ Smartwings (returned)
01-12-2024 OK-TVJ Sunwing Airlines (leased from TVS) and so it goes on....
This brand new Jet was still there the next morning, with a My travel 757 at gate behind