View allAll Photos Tagged Excel
Excel No 266 now based at Langley Mill, on the 'donkey' run shuttle to Heanor market leaving the garage. Mon 12th May 2014.
Optare Excel T714NOE is seen approaching Wolverhampton bus station on 24/03/09.
It looks to have been recently re-painted, which would have been welcome given how scruffy a lot of the Excels looked around this time.
The slot for the fourth Olympian on service 1 turned out to be filled in by this Excel, 216 (T216 HCW), which is (I believe) the last remaining native example in the fleet - there are others from Go-Ahead and Reading still in use. I don't know if this was just done for some variety, or if this one is about to be withdrawn as well, but it was certainly turned out nicely for the event.
173 "Gentle Giant" Ipswich Buses
YG52DGF
seen at Tower Ramparts Bus Station, Ipswich.
If green/white single deckers are your thing, then the Excels are the last gasp to sample it nowadays (as of November 2017).
June 2006
ExCel Exhibition Centre in Royal Victoria Docks, East London. It is not lit up like this anymore unfortunately.
I sometimes make these quick 'n dirty gantt charts in Excel. You can download the templates from my website.
Springfield also operated the Optare Excel on Easylink services, though these weren't part of the deal when First Manchester took control of the services in 2000.
I'm unsure where this and it's bretheren went after leaving Wigan but this one later turned up with Stagecoach, it being allocated with the rest of the groups Excels at East Midlands.
Wigan bus station is the location of R641MBV not long before the company called it a day on stage carriage work.
First Manchester inherited eleven Optare Excels from the slice of Timeline Travel that they took over [Arriva got the other slice!]. The former 218 is seen on Bolton's Moor Lane bus station having been repainted out of 'Tomato Soup' and into the livery adopted for vehicles that didn't confirm to First's standard interior, not that the travelling public would know this. The lower expanse of white would soon be wrapped in the 'Barbie Pink' fade out vinyls which cost an absolute fortune and quickly became shabby looking [even more shabby than your usual First operated vehicle that is!].
6606 would become 60145 in the new national numbering system and the bus now operates out of Wigan depot, which is currently on the 'hit list' of depots to be sold off in the big First shake up of its UK operations.
It's been about 4 years (three years at time of this photo) since I've seen an Excel and all of the ones I've seen were hatchbacks, never a sedan. And I bet the sedans are more rare than the hatchbacks. GLS must've been the highest spec.
Former Stagecoach Devon Volvo B6LE P709 BTA (31709) sits with Optare Excel P101 UNH at Wigley's scrapyard in February 2012.
These are Optare Excel liveries done for [https://www.flickr.com/photos/192780442@N06], of Bluebird 'hi-tech low floor', the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester based off their LDV van, plus half & half variants. Presumably they relate to FD02 SFN in some way, although I just kind of winged it with the front panel and other finer details.
Looking up references for Bluebird, as well as rogue images of American school buses there seemed to be Bluebird, and Blue Bus, that appeared to operate up Manchester way, but I couldn't tell if they were connected or not. Bluebird had this two-tone wavy livery for low floor buses, that was actually quite fun to draw on. I'm assuming they didn't have an Excel IRL so I just added the livery how I thought they might paint one, and the centre panel ended up light blue with black light surrounds.
The MOTGM van is red up to just under the waist rail, then cream, with a red roof. On the Excel the red roof is split with the cream half way up the panel running above the windows, so the cream is still visible enough without it being too cream, and all-red round the destination box. Similarly under the windows there's a thin cream stripe so that it's a proper window 'surround', and cream doors to get the right balance of red/cream on a vehicle with bonded glazing. In the end it looks not to dissimilar to something Barton might've had, if their Excel 2s weren't delivered in route branded liveries.
The first half-&-half is widthways with the MOTGM livery offside and the Bluebird one nearside. No idea if that's what Calum meant but, well, I did it. The MOTGM logo splits the cream from the dark blue on the front, but where the red is against the light blue it did give off a bit of a Home Bargains feel as I was making it! The offside, although you can't see it, would be more or less the mirror image of what the red and cream one looks like.
And then just to see what on earth it would look like, the other half-&-half is front half Bluebird, back half MOTGM, which certainly looks... well it looks something and I don't have the right words for it; not bad, just kinda odd. Again, the MOTGM logo comes to the rescue on the lower bodyside, and the top just has the colours curving up/down as they intersect because the Bluebird already had a curve to it. In a way it reminds me of that Arriva heritage bus with the zip, because it looks like it's being unwrapped from one livery into another.
Top right is my favourite.
Optare Excel 2 (X307 CBT) www.flickr.com/photos/138705729@N04/32846793097/in/photol...
Optare Excel 2 (X308 CBT) www.flickr.com/photos/138705729@N04/33913276768/in/photol...
Stagecoach Chesterfield Optare Excel 35006 YN51VHP is seen on route 54 today. A sad day today, for some of us at least, as it is thought to be the final day of Optare Excels running in public service with Stagecoach. However all 6 are staying and being converted to Driver Training Vehicles, so they won't be vanishing completely for a little while yet!