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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the final operational example in Wellglade ownership out of a large fleet of over a hundred owned, and had already been withdrawn from service, while the Scania was a recent transfer from Nottingham depot and retained its Trent Barton Cotgrave Connection livery.
Originating with Stagecoach in the North West, this Alexander PS Type bodied Volvo B10M had passed to Excel and was seen here adjacent to Liverpool Street Station on a wet Sunday in July 2005. I think this was previously owned by Burnley & Pendle.
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
Company: Go Coastline
Fleetnumber: 8176
Registration: T876RBR
Chassis: Optare Excel
Bodywork: Optare
Location of Photo: Verne Road, West Chirton
Previous Registrations: N/A
New to: Go Northern (Fleetno: 8176)
Other Notes: N/A
Scarborough based EYMS Excel 252 (R252PRH) passes All Saints Church at Hunmanby on it's way from Scarborough to Filey on service 118 this morning under autumn colours.
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.
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.
Excel 260 is seen arriving at Sutton-in Ashfield on the 141 service from Nottingham.
Tue 29th July 2014.
If there was ever a livery that was expected for me to put on an Optare Excel... this is not it. This is absolutely not it, but I did it anyway.
A thought I had before I remade the Excel drawing was what one would look like in the current 'Mango spare' TrentBarton livery. I think it looks quite good actually, which is a credit to the Excel for still looking modern, despite being about 25 years old. It's on the Skylink Express because there's always a spare on the Skylink Express.
Given TrentBarton's current vehicle shortage, they could probably do with a few of these. Though also given their current vehicle shortage, why did they keep withdrawing Solars and transferring Eclipses to Kinchbus and Solos to TM Travel when they knew they had nothing to replace them? Now they've run out of buses and I don't see anything from N&D/TM/Kinch going back the other way on loan.
Who cares? I made a thing.
"I KNOW THIS GREAT...", TIME OUT LONDON & LONDONIST if you use my photo can you please put the credit link to my Facebook Page rather than my Flickr Account. Thank you.
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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.
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.
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?
Blackpool Transport Optare Excel T884RBR 221 seen near Blackpool North station on the 2, 29th May
All photos from this trip will appear on lukestransportphotos.smugmug.com/ over the next few days
Seen here is an example of the unloved Optare Excel integral vehicle R209 DKG, one of a number new to Cardiff in 1997. It had formerly been with Central Connect before being photographed here at a dealers in October 2009. It latterly operated with Edwards Coaches in Cardiff. Alongside it is seen Volvo B10B / Alexander M416 UNW that had been new to Yorkshire Woollen in 1994 and had latterly operated with Arriva North West. Unusually although a red band has been crudely applied to distingush it as a sold vehicle, the Arriva names have not been covered over.