A New Breed of VW's at Alperton Garage

The 22nd of June saw many First garages handed over to new owners. Alperton Garage was one of those garages, which was handed over to Metroline.

Whilst being the owner of a garage enables you to operate newly acquired buses and routes, it also enables you to shuffle different buses in your fleet around; which is exactly what Metroline have done.

 All rights reserved by Mark Collins

Above we have the two types of Gemini 2's operated by Alperton; 62reg and 59reg VW's. Each of which appear on the 83 and not-so-oftenly on the 245 - I personally prefer the newer VW's; the blinds for once, actually look good in the sun!

With the withdrawal of VW's/VWH's from route 24, and the buses being left as surplus, Metroline decided to shuffle some buses around. It was decided that the VW's would transfer to Alperton to convert 245 to Double-Decker operation, with the Enviro 200's it replaced being moved to Perivale West to oust out the MM's in service.

The VWH's on the otherhand, shall move over to Willesden and join VWH's 1408-1419 which operate on route 52. The 5 VWH's will free 5 VW's to transfer to Brentford for operation on route E8 which will allow the OTH's to be withdrawn.

 All rights reserved by Eamonn Kentell

For a month since withdrawal of the VW's, the buses had been transferred between CELF and Perivale East to be fitted with newly specified White-on-Black blinds (the first in the Metroline fleet); with routine maintenance simultaneously taking place.

The 15th of July saw VW1372, the first of the 62reg VW's operate on route 83, as opposed to route 245. Of course; seeming that the route's allocation is VW's in was inevitable that they would appear on the route.

Since then, just over a dozen of these buses, have hit the streets on the route, and have slowly began service on route 245, alongside the older VW's.

With the entry slowly progressing, we can expect the DE's to soon be withdrawn from route 245 and possibly be refurbished before we see them on the streets of West London.

 All rights reserved by Graham Smith

 All rights reserved by Graham Smith

Thanks for Reading!

Feel free to Comment and Share!