H is for Hampstead

What was once a rapidly growing stronghold for Arriva in the mid 2000s in North West London quickly began to collapse over the last year. Now that the Garston (GR) garage is, to the writer, sadly closed for business, several gains have been made by Metroline and London Sovereign.

Arriva 2469 at Golders Green on route H2, July 2013.

For a garage that is minutes away from the London Orbital Motorway, it was an amazement that they had for 12 years managed to operate four different bus routes that infiltrate the depths of zone 2 - and quite well service wise too.

Arriva from 2006 to 2018 were the proud custodians of routes 268 (between Finchley Road and Golders Green), the H2 and H3 (both circular services around the Hampstead Garden Suburbs and the fringes of East Finchley) and the school route 631.

Route 631 is one of few school bus routes in London to be a single decker, and more so, a 7.8m one-door single decker bus with a very low capacity. To compensate, this bus route runs every a number of trips each way over the course of an hour to allow students and staff to get to and from the school and Golders Green Station.

Route H3 runs Monday to Saturday during shopping hours every hour after 9am until 2pm however it interestingly has one bus during the morning peak. Route H3 runs through the Hampstead Garden Suburb before weaving in and out of Hampstead Heath, and the entrance of the well known Kenwood House and also running along 'Millionaires Row', a colloquial name often given to The Bishops Avenue, East Finchley.

The main service for the Hampstead Garden Suburb is the bus route H2, which for a 7.8m single decker Optare Solo bus route, may come as a surprise that it's a high frequency route. The circular service which works its way around a myriad of roads around the Garden Suburb up to Market Place and back operates every 12 minutes.

The 631, H2 and H3 operated from a pool of just a mere 5 Optare Solos that were introduced new to the route in 2006. The fleet number of one of the buses, 2468, notoriously stood out for having a consistent pattern - Abellio's 2468 (which is 8 years younger than Arriva's), Stagecoach's 12321, 12345 and Metroline's TEH1234 also were known for this. The schedule for all 3 routes saw a considerable amount of crosslinking between routes to make use of most of the buses they had available. The total PVR was 4 to run all 3 services - 3 for the H2, and 1 for the 631 and H3 (when the H3 wasn't running, the bus was a 631, and vice versa) with one maintenance vehicle.

Arriva 2468 on school route 631 when first introduced in
July 2013.

When Garston (GR) was absorbed into Arriva London, the vehicles were renumbered from 2468-2472 to OS68-72. The vehicles can't be longer than 7.8m due to the incredibly tight roads around the Garden Suburb which are incredibly difficult to navigate.

The buses by the end of the contract were beginning to show their age and were plagued with reliability problems, possibly as a result of the high mileage achieved from doing the incredibly demanding runs up and down the M1 daily which the buses weren't built for.

Taking over a route comes with its problems
Upon the latest rounds of tendering for the Hampstead Garden Suburb routes, Metroline managed to nab control of the routes again out of their flagship Cricklewood (W) garage. They took on the routes during the early summer of 2018, however suffered an issue relating to the late delivery of their custom-spec Optare Solo SR vehicles. This meant that routes 631, H2 and H3 had to continue using their existing vehicles from Arriva, which were loaned to Metroline for a number of weeks.

But due to the poor state of these vehicles, Metroline had to loan an Ellenvale Optare Solo as well temporarily in all white and LEDs, but fitted with an Oyster reader as a top up vehicle to ensure the service wasn't disrupted. It was quite interesting to see an all-white LED bus with seatbelts and high back seats!

The Ellenvale Solo, YJ67 GEK, at Golders Green on H2 duties. ©️ LBOTG

Eventually, the new Metroline Optare Solo SRs were unveiled at their annual Holloway Garage (HT) open day in the summer of 2018, kitted off with LEDs - which is not part of an ongoing trial at Stagecoach London - these are simply because conventional blinds take up too much space on what is otherwise an incredibly tiny bus. The LEDs were designed in-house by the skilled scheduling team at Metroline who have made some impressive displays - including the not in service one which shows a stream of 'ZZZs' implying the bus is sleeping.

These buses entered service with numbers OS2499-2504 in September. Here's a quick fleetlist below:

YJ68 FXA - OS2499
YJ68 FXB - OS2500
YJ68 FXF - OS2501
YJ68 FXC - OS2502
YJ68 FXE - OS2503
YJ68 FXG - OS2504

And a photo to show the new Optare Solos in action:

OS2501 entering Golders Green  ©️ LBOTG

Due to the limited availability of our bloggers, we unfortunately can't show you a photo of Metroline on the H3 at present. However, this is a good opportunity to tune into our dedicated Flickr group which has a wide array of photos from the London Bus Scene.

From Garston to Swiss Cottage
Route 268 also shifted from Garston (GR) to Cricklewood (W), using some spare Metroline Travel Enviro 200s that had come spare from routes 46 and 274 as a result of both routes getting new, more environmentally clean buses. Whilst for many years the route 268 was operated using the traditional Arriva London Wright Cadet buses, as reliability began to also not become their strong point (there's a running theme here...), some Enviro 200s released from Stagecoach's loss of route 469 were acquired in late 2015.

ENL106 on stand at Golders Green Station, August 2016.

These were given a deep clean and some new blinds and whilst they could be found on most routes, the allocators had chosen to keep them as much as possible on route 268 as the Cadets were becoming mechanically troublesome during the long dead run down the M1 every day, whereas the Enviro 200s managed these runs better.

Following the move of the route to Cricklewood (W), these ex-Stagecoach ENLs were now homeless again and shortly after had found a new life on the route 166 out of Croydon (TC) garage running between West Croydon, Bus Station and Epsom Hospital in Surrey.

Some other buses have been reblinded for the 268 as well, most notably the LK10-plated DEs that reside at Cricklewood and operate routes 232 and C11.

DE1127 seen at Golders Green Station inbetween 268 duties.

With things mostly settling down now, Metroline have managed to do themselves well on these tender wins. We can only wish them the best of luck for the next five years.

With massive thanks to London Buses: On The Go for lending us his brilliant photos. View his blog here, and you can also view his Flickr stream here.

Thanks for reading and do stay safe! Have a happy new year 2019!