View allAll Photos Tagged excel
Notts & Derby Excel in Derby College 'rainbow' colours leaving Heanor on the Sundays 11 to Derby. Sun 12th April 2015.
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.
Stagecoach Chesterfield Optare Excel YN51VHK 35002 seen in the town centre on the 54 to Clay Cross, 12th May
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
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the final operational example in Wellglade ownership out of a large fleet of over a hundred owned, and had already been withdrawn from service, while the Scania was a recent transfer from Nottingham depot and retained its Trent Barton Cotgrave Connection livery.
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.
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.
Another look at some gorgeous new buses now in service in Norfolk.
The introduction into service of 19 brand new Scania N250UD / Alexander Dennis Enviro400 City H42/30F buses on the First Eastern Counties Excel services A-D between Norwich and Peterborough prompted a big day out to go and see, ride and photograph them. Numbered 36901-19, the batch is registered YN69XZD/E/G/H/J-M/O/P/R-Z.
I purchased an excel day ticket for £11 on the launch day (17/02/2020) and started my journey at Peterborough Station hopping off for some photos at Wisbech, Kings Lynn, Swaffham and Dereham before finishing up at Norwich Bus Station.
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.
Excel 260 is seen arriving at Sutton-in Ashfield on the 141 service from Nottingham.
Tue 29th July 2014.
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?
February 2020 saw the introduction of 19 Scania N250UD Alexander-Dennis Enviro 400 City buses to the excel branded services A, B, C & D between Peterborough and Norwich. They are numbered 36901-919 in the fleet and have high specification interiors with the addition of Smart Vision cameras.
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.
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 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.
Goodwins Excel 23 (2809 WG, ex FD02SFK) in Altrincham bus station , 6 April 2016. It had worked in on service, but left as seen here.
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The Type 89 Lotus Excel, built from 1982 to 1992, is a front-engined, rear-wheel drive sports car designed and built by Lotus. It was based on the design of the earlier Lotus Eclat, which itself was based on the earlier Lotus Elite II.
Toyota engaged Lotus to assist with engineering work on the Supra. During this period, Toyota became a major shareholder in Lotus, later giving up their holding when General Motors bought Lotus.
Part of the deal between Lotus and Toyota included the use of many Toyota mechanical components in Lotus' cars. The original Excel (aka the Éclat Excel) used the W58 manual transmission, driveshafts, rear differential, 14x7 in alloy wheels, and door handles from the Supra Mk II, which was made from 1982 to 1986. The engine was the familiar all-aluminium, DOHC 2.2 L Lotus 912 Slant Four (which was used in the Lotus Esprit S3). During its lifetime, the Excel received two major upgrades with the introduction of the Excel SE (a 180 bhp/134 kW engine vs the standard 160 bhp/119 kW engined car) in 1985 and the Excel SA with automatic gearbox in 1986. Further facelifts in 1989 saw Citroen-derived mirrors, as featured on the Esprit, and 15 inch OZ alloy wheels to a similar pattern as the Esprit's.
According to Lotus records, only 1 Excel was manufactured to USA specification. The lack of release in the USA was due to the high emission regulations (which would hinder the car's performance), and poor sales of the car in Europe.
(Wikipedia)
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.
Trent Barton Optare Excel 264 - Y264 DRC departs Victoria bus station on the Centrelink to Broadmarsh bus station. This free service operates at 10 minute intervals and links Nottingham's two bus stations with the City Centre. 264 is covering for one of the four electric Solos allocated to the service and is my favourite Excel in the fleet.