Top 10 Unusual Workings 2013: 10th Place

As it is 11 Days until the end of 2013. I decided to do a daily countdown of Unusual workings during this year. One post will be released each day with the last on the 30th December.

10th Place:

Route 356 34355 LV52HKG - Upper Sydenham 

It is not so often that the 356 gets a bus longer than 8.9m, but in the photo above is a 10.2m dual door Plaxton Pointer which is normally seen on routes 178, 380 and P4. It is quite rare for a longer bus to go on the route and a lot of the time they get quickly swapped for a shorter bus at Lower Sydenham Sainsbury's where the drivers changeover, I myself have seen bus swaps happen at this point before. The reason I class this working as unusual is because daily the 356 allocation is normally solid 100% 8.9m Enviro 200s or the odd 8.9m Plaxton Pointer.

The 356 is allocated 8.9m Enviro 200s (36320-36326) and operated from Catford Garage, the route started a Second Contract with Selkent on 14/09/13 and all of the fleet for the route have been refurbished from ELBG interior to Stagecoach standard interior and now have White Smart blinds, the new blinds also feature all single decker routes at Bromley Garage including the R5, R7 & R10 as do 36581-36583 for Catford routes. The fleet still contains the Esteban Civic style (Arch topped) seating and the flooring is now Stagecoach red instead of ELBG blue. The 246, 354 & 356 were all awarded to ELBG (now Stagecoach London) on the 13/09/2008 (246, 354 TB, 356 TL, 354 to TB >TL May 2012), the 246 and 354 received two year contract extensions so the fleet for those routes will not have been refurbished.

That's all for today

9th Place Out Tomorrow

Thanks for Reading! 

Feel free to Comment Below!
Robert