"Andy Lord" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Mar 19, 1:13 pm, John B wrote:
Stephen Firth wrote:
NM wrote:

D/D tend to be used in cities

Unfortunately this is not true.

Wrong.

Stagecoach tend to use DD buses for
rural routes.

Not in Hampshire.

IIRC Stagecoach (and other operators) were given huge subsidies to
update their fleet within London. The buses that were replaced were
then moved all over the country to replace the ageing stock left over
from Stagecoach's various acquisitions.

Almost right, so far. London, I beleive, set a maximum age for the buses
(Routenmasters excepted) , so the contractors had to supply newish buses for
London, As you say, they then cascaded the older buses down to places like
Hampshirte, who then cascaded their buses down to places like Cornwall...

They even shipped some of them
out of the country to bolster the fleets of some of their other
operations.

Not totally: the 6-wheel Megabuses operated by stagecoach originated in Hong
Kong, where a similar "maximum age" restriction was written into the
contracts. At £2000 each for shipping these from Hong Kong, plus the cost
of fitting heaters and demisters, these were cheap buses for stagecoach's
use in UK. (they complied otherwise with UK PCV construction regs).

Hence the ex-London double-deckers cropping up all over the country.
There is quite a movement of vehicles within the larger groups, from one
part of the country to another.... nothing new there, NBC were doing it in
the 1970s, swapping ECOC FLFs with Scottish bus group VRs.

--
IanH