It's been a long time

The title of this post has many meanings. Notably the fact it's been a long time since the last post on the blog, but it can also be applied to today's post directly. Routes 160 and 180 have returned to their traditional operating after many years away at others.

Routes 160 and 180 both operate in South-East London and have recently been taken over by Stagecoach, with the 160 coming from Arriva and the 180 coming from Go Ahead. The 160 now runs out of Catford (TL) garage and the 180 runs out of Plumstead (PD) garage, but while they're new contracts both routes have links to these garages going back many years. 

T315 seen at Catford Bridge
© EastLondoner

It makes sense to talk about the routes in numerical order. Starting off with the 160, the route today operates between Sidcup Station and Catford Bridge Station. It has a very long history dating back to 1938 operating out of Catford Garage (TL) and running between Catford, St Dunstans and Welling. It managed to remain unchanged all the way to 1985 when it was extended to Bexleyheath bus garage, although in 1989 it was cut It back from Bexleyheath to Eltham. 1996 saw the route extended from Eltham to Sidcup Station, forming the same route in operation today, although the Catford terminus changed from St Dunstans to Catford garage in 2000, before changing to Catford Bridge in 2006 when the route was lost on tender to Arriva's Dartford (DT) garage. The route ended up remaining at Dartford for the next 15 years, with the last 10 years seeing it allocated with Enviro400s. 

WVL357 and 327 at Cutty Sark
© EastLondoner

Moving on to route 180, a route a lot younger than the 160 which started operation in 1951 between Catford and Woolwich, operated out of Catford (TL) garage. The route was extended to Lower Sydenham in 1953. In 1963 the route was rerouted to Abbey Wood, 1981 saw a partial Plumstead (PD) allocation introduced with it becoming the full allocation in 1981, and in 1984 the route was cut back to Catford. In 1994 the route was cut back from Abbey Wood to Thamesmead East while also being cut back to Lewisham from the other end. It was in 1998 that Plumstead (PD) lost possession of the route, at the time to Harris Bus operating out of a garage in Belvedere (BV), which the route was subsequently extended to terminate at in 2002. BV garage eventually fell out of Harris Bus' hands, passing to direct TfL operation under the banner East Thames Buses before then passing onto Go Ahead London. The base was closed in 2017 and the route moved to terminate on a stand on Anderson Way, while the main allocation was moved to Morden Wharf. The loss of the garage terminus no doubt ended up coming full circle and Stagecoach took the route back to one of its old homes at Plumstead (PD). Its most recent contract at Go Ahead saw it allocated with Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 bodied Volvo B9TLs.

The tender announcement in November 2020 which announced the move of routes 160 and 180 to Stagecoach operation also mentioned that the routes would use brand new electric buses, although the 180 would have its fleet supplemented by some spare Enviro400 bodied E40H Hybrids which were already floating around the company. It was soon announced that the bus of choice was going to be the Alexander Dennis/BYD Enviro400 EV City which had become the standard choice for most London operators. Although for this reason, RATP, Abellio and Go Ahead also had a batch of the same type on order meaning Alexander Dennis was already very busy, coupled with the time required to install electric chargers at the garages it was no surprise to hear that the 160 and 180 route had to start their contracts off using existing buses before they could be replaced by electrics, much like the situation route 173 had to deal with a year ago. Stagecoach had some spare buses lying around, but nowhere near enough. An interesting chain of events led to Stagecoach loaning out Tower Transit's Wright Eclipse Gemini 3 buses that were previously allocated to route 328. 

The loaned buses started to arrive at Catford in advance of the 160 contract, which was to start two weeks before the 180, on the 18th of September. Prior to starting service the buses started to be run in on route 199 which terminates at Catford (TL) so it made it easy to swap the buses should any issues have arisen. They were given the numbers from 80112-80136, with the last three numbers being the same code that the buses had at tower transit (e.g 80112 is Tower Transit VH38112).

80127 seen at Canada Water on the 199
© EastLondoner

11001 seen at Catford Bridge
© EastLondoner

The 18th of September saw Stagecoach resume operation on the 160 after 15 years. As expected the allocation on the route was predominantly made up out of the loaned Tower Transit buses, although a few native Stagecoach Enviro400 MMCs also were on the route. I did go out on the first day to see how the route was doing, and truth be told I wish I didn't. Traffic within Catford, coupled with the fact that buses go back to Catford garage to change their drivers meant that the service was in tatters. I ended up waiting 45 minutes for a bus to turn up, this was despite many buses actually arrived but then ended up leaving out of service to go back to the garage to change their drivers. Eventually one did turn up, but by that point I didn't have the willpower to take a ride on the route and I just ended up taking a few photos and going home. 

Service since the first day has no doubt improved, it's not taken long for Stagecoach to realise the mistakes that took place on the first day, and adapt to the challenging conditions presented on the route. I'm sure over the next couple of weeks Stagecoach will adapt to the route and hopefully manage to provide a consistently good service similar to what was provided by Arriva at Dartford (DT) for the past 15 years.

80127 seen at Catford Bridge
© EastLondoner

12361 seen in Woolwich
© EastLondoner

Route 180s takeover plan was a bit different to that which had been executed on the 160, while there were loaned Tower Transit buses available for the route, the decision was taken to keep all the loaned buses at Catford (TL) and buses were transferred from Catford alongside other garages in the Stagecoach London empire to make up the numbers at Plumstead (PD), allowing the 180 to have a fully native Stagecoach allocation. The first day on the 2nd of October saw the allocation made up out of Alexander Dennis Enviro400 bodied E40H Hybrids, with a few Alexander Dennis Enviro400 MMC bodied E40Hs too, there were also a few loaned Smart Hybrids from West Ham (WH) on the route that had LED displays, although sadly I was unable to photograph one of these buses out. Operation on the 180 for the first day was a far better display than what was presented on the 160 two weeks prior, buses were generally running as expected and apart from a breakdown in Greenwich there wasn't too much out of the ordinary. 

12360 seen at Woolwich Arsenal
© EastLondoner

Go Ahead didn't set the bar particularly high on the 180, so hopefully we can safely say that the 180 is in better hands now and will be for the next 5 (or 7) years! When the electric buses start to arrive the 180 will still be allocated a few of these E40H buses, so you don't need to be in any rush to get them! Work is underway at Catford and Plumstead garages to ensure electric buses can be charged and hopefully it won't be too long until we see the brand new buses on the roads. Once the electric buses start to settle in on the 160 and 180, the buses that currently are found on the route should be released. With the loaned Tower Transit buses returning back to Tower Transit for the temporary contract on route 733 before settling down in their more permanent home on route 135 in the summer, while the plan for the buses on the 180 isn't particularly clear yet, although they should end up returning to their own garages of Leyton, West Ham and Catford. 

12344 seen at Lewisham
© EastLondoner

It's been announced by TfL that all of their new buses will be zero emission from now on, so electrics will be the norm! Although we could see some Hydrogen technology creeping in too. Routes 160 and 180 aren't the only routes waiting for their electrics, RATP in West London have a batch of over 100 waiting to enter service on routes 65, 281, 371, 290, X140, H9 and H10. Go Ahead have some arriving in the near future for route 132, Arriva are taking delivery of some for route 319 while Abellio are expecting some for their uptake of route 63 in November. This is very exciting time to be a bus enthusiast!