Another Visit to Metroline's CELF Centre - New TE's for Route 82

As many of you know, Metroline have their own engineering centre which is called the CELF centre situated in Perivale. Opened up in September 2007, The word 'CELF' stands for Central Engineering & Logistics Facility.

Our main focus for today was to check out the 28 brand new E400's (UW 11655kgs) bound for route 82 which is operated from Potters Bar Garage (PB) situated in Hertfordshire, just North of London, as well as the rest of VW's/VWH's for the new route 52 contract.

The route was retained in March 2012, but due to companies ordering many buses for the Olympic Games, the buses were delayed - almost by a year! as the manufacture couldn't cope!

Some speculation has occurred to what route 82 would be getting. 

Seeming that more and more routes going in/out of Central London are having hybrid allocated buses on their routes, it was originally speculated that route 82 may have hybrids. This speculation was also backed up as it was announced that Metroline were planning to order E400H's - for no particular route! 

However, that isn't the case, as these diesel buses have arrived for their new allocation, and we'll just have to wait and see where those hybrids will turn up to!

These TE's will be replacing the old fleet of TPL's which have been on the route for the last 10 years. These buses have served their time, and will be sold on for use elsewhere!

The line-up of buses at CELF

These buses are almost identical to the WTA TE's which were delivered to Cricklewood in September last year.

The only differences are the shape of the side-lights, and the registrations!

The first of this new batch currently carry a '62' registration, but probably towards the end of the batch, the company will change them to '13' reg - similarly to the VWH's delivered for route 24's contract (12reg to 62reg).

Already, PB have started type-training with TE1309 (from Cricklewood). Although PB already have Enviro400's, they have the 'older dashboard', where as TE1309 features the same dashboard to the new TE's.

Here's the fleet list for the buses:

TE1420 - LK62DXM - body no. C440/1 - delivered to Potters Bar
TE1421 - LK62DXP - body no. C440/2 - delivered to Potters Bar
TE1422 - LK62DXS - body no. C440/3 - CELF: 15th February
TE1423 - LK62DXT - body no. C440/4 - CELF: 15th February
TE1424 - LK62DXX - body no. C440/5 - CELF: 15th February
TE1425 - LK62DXY - body no. C440/6 - CELF: 15th February
TE1426 - LK62DYA - body no. C440/7 - CELF: 15th February
TE1427 - LK62DYC - body no. C440/8 - CELF: 15th February
TE1428 - LK62DYD - body no. C440/9
TE1429 - LK62DYF - body no. C440/10
TE1430 - LK62DYG - body no. C440/11
TE1431 - LK62DYH - body no. C440/12
TE1432 - LK62DYN - body no. C440/13
TE1433 - LK62DYO - body no. C440/14
TE1434 - LK62DYS - body no. C440/15
TE1435 - LK62DYT - body no. C440/16
TE1436 - LK62DYY - body no. C440/17

Without further ado, enjoy the rest of the collection - I've also included other pictures from the day!

For more pictures, check out my Flickr Photostream - Click Here

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