Salt Road 2019

[TimBrown]

Now they over 18 month's in how are these refurbished buses firing up? 69436 was on evening 44"s Saturday and the smell of diesel in the saloon and blue smoke out the back was very noticeable.

That's worrying -- -- bus operators have got enough problems to cope with, without adding (more) technological ones !!

No matter how you refurbish buses to look almost new, we must remember that the 'Salt Road' Volvo's are nearly ten years old and probably have at least 300,000 miles on the clock. Knowing the way First Bus running cards are arranged, I reckon many of these buses are working 6 or 7 days on the trot anything from 12 to 18 hours per day, mainly on the arduous 144 in and out of Birmingham so only to be expected that major/minor mechanical defects happen from time to time. My guess would be that the ex-Bristol examples had a much harder life working the very hilly City services than the ex-Wells buses. In the past, Nationals and Leopards used to suffer from water leaks, oil leaks, fuel leaks, blown engines and knackered gearboxes not to mention accident damage and interior vandalism - it's a hard life being a bus (and bus driver!).