View allAll Photos Tagged Excel
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.
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the final operational example in Wellglade ownership out of a large fleet of over a hundred owned, and had already been withdrawn from service, while the Scania was a recent transfer from Nottingham depot and retained its Trent Barton Cotgrave Connection livery.
Travel West Midlands first Optare Excel nears completion on the production line in Leeds, with Nottingham Solo 291 beyond. 12th November 1998
Safeguard of Guildford operate 3 Optare Excel. One of which was bought new whilst the other 2 started life with Tillingbourne of Cranleigh. One of the latter 2 X308CBT is seen on Stoke Rd 05/06/23 at 13:44.
Excel 260 is seen arriving at Sutton-in Ashfield on the 141 service from Nottingham.
Tue 29th July 2014.
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.
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.
Pilkingtons Optare Excel S289RAG seen passing through Accrington Town Centre, 29th May
All photos from this trip will appear on lukestransportphotos.smugmug.com/ over the next few days
William Fox-Pitt has the kind of famous name one sees in this sport; we've seen members of the royal family here too.
Fox-Pitt does not rest on the name, though I suspect he does rely on the money. He won his third Rolex Kentucky this year. The Rolex is one of a few five-star three-day events in the world.
Here he's jumping Trekehner on Seacookie, but he won on a different horse in 2014. It's not uncommon to qualify two horses.
Fun fact: Fox-Pitt is 196 cm tall.
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?
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.
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.
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
Sorry it took so long [https://www.flickr.com/photos/184730175@N04], but here's an Enviro 400 in First's Excel livery for some services around the Bristol area. Unfortunately I don't have all the branding for it, but did manage to get some decent 'Excel' logos. The bumpers, door and windows aren't quite the same, but this is meant to be one of the newer breeds of Enviro 400 with the later headlight design and E40D chassis (hence lack of n/s grille). In the end it does look a bit like a hybrid between pre and post-facelift versions.
Looking at photos, it appears First have a variety of E400s branded for Excel with different lengths and chassis types that vary in age and background. I was pleasantly surprised by the variety, as I expected a large operator like First to have a dreary batch of identical vehicles in the same brand... still I doubt the average passenger would notice the differences between all the E400s, which is the best of both worlds I suppose; uniformity for the passenger and variety for the enthusiast.
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
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.
National Express Travel West Midlands Optare Excel 416. R416HWU in Lichfield Street, Wolverhampton on the 15th April 2009.
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.