Being Reunited

It's been a couple of months now since route 25 returned to Stagecoach operation, more recently sister route 425 has also moved to operation with the company to be reunited with the 25. 

© EastLondoner

Before we move onto the change the 425 has undergone, let's pay a quick re-visit to what has happened at Stagecoach and Tower Transit since the 25 changed operator. I did mention in the post that route 25 spent its last year at Tower Transit allocated with Wright StreetDeck HEV96 buses which were to move to the 262 and 473 upon the loss. 

WH31103 seen at Gallions Reach
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The StreetDecks have never been the most popular buses in London among enthusiasts, known for being completely gutless and sounding like a washing machine on its last spin cycle. So I wasn't the happiest bunny out there that they were being put onto my local route, the 262. Especially as the Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 buses that the 262 had prior were amazing vehicles, full of character and always a nice pleasure to ride on, despite being 9 years old by that point. Type-training for the 262 and 473 drivers started in Spring 2020, with the StreetDecks being seen along the routes through the day with drivers on board. The buses then started appearing in service in May 2020, a few weeks before the loss of route 25. 

WH31105 seen at Stratford
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The day the 25 was lost the 262 and 473 took up their full allocation of StreetDecks as expected. I didn't ride them for a couple of weeks due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however once restrictions were eased I did use one on the 262 on my way to Stratford, which got turned and then I also happened to get one on the 473. They manage alright along the much more suburban sections on the route, however a decent portion of the 262 is also down many more quieter roads and there's a short bit on the North Circular Road which the buses really seem to struggle with. It's not hard to see why only three batches of StreetDecks were ordered for London operation, with the other batches being the Go Ahead ones on the 44 and the Arriva ones on the 340 (which don't seem to actually do the 340 much). The Streetdecks released from the 25 also found themselves a third home on the 308, however I don't have a picture of one of those to hand sadly. 

DN33796 seen at Stratford
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Going back to the 425, I'm not going to go too much into the history of the route as I covered that in a post two years ago and not much has changed since then. The route's recent tenure at Tower Transit saw the route allocated with a mix of Alexander Dennis Enviro400 vehicles, originally ordered for the route in 2013, which were then later topped up with some B9TL-Gemini 2 buses made free from the 25, following the 425's extension to Ilford. Due to the pandemic sweeping the world, the buses that were to be allocated to route 425 were running around a month later than expected. As a result, they weren't going to be available for the first day of the route and Stagecoach had to scrape spare buses from throughout their fleet to operate it, so what would actually end up operating on the route became a lottery until the morning Stagecoach started its first day of running the service.

VN36133 seen at Ilford Broadway
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12300 seen at Ilford
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The allocation was scraped together using various buses that were stood down due to service reductions on routes due to the pandemic, with the allocation being made up out of a few spare standard Enviro400 E40H buses. Some of WH's Smart Hybrids which were fitted with LEDs, some of the 261s spare Smart Hybrids which were made spare due to the service reductions, alongside some buses which were not needed on route 25, again due to the pandemic. However due to all the short notice of gathering buses from across the fleet, not all buses ended up having their blinds programmed correctly - most notably, the existing standard E40H buses on the route were drafted in, which led to the buses displaying blank when heading towards Ilford.

Loaned from TB, 11070 is seen at Ilford Broadway
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11383 seen at Stratford Bus Station
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Like the 25 change, the 425 was also due to receive some brand new Smart Hybrid Enviro400 MMCs to be its allocation under Stagecoach. These were to be identical to the batch that was already introduced on route 25, with the only differences being some changes to the cab to prevent Coronavirus spread and red advert frames as opposed to gold advert frames. The buses started entering service during the month of August to very little fanfare, alongside the delayed examples over at Abellio for routes 285 and 270. In practice, the buses are mixed in with the batch that was delivered for route 25 due to being exactly the same specification alongside being ULEZ compliant. 

11348 seen at Ilford
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There's not much else to say about this change, other than some form of normality is slowly starting to resume again. There's a fair few interesting service changes coming up over the next few weeks so it will certainly be interesting to see them take place. Remember to keep an eye on our Tenders page for the latest information!