Stagecoach Sacrifice, Stop & Start

Some slightly smaller changes involving Stagecoach London have occurred over the past three months, involving two single deck services in South-East London. One has moved onto pastures anew, whilst the other has received a batch of brand new buses within the company, which have actually entered service prematurely. You don't get that often in the London bus scene. Chronologically, the loss took place first, so we're heading to the 386 to start with.

Representing the old...

The 386 runs between Blackheath Village and Woolwich, via an infamously indirect routeing which passes Greenwich, Blackheath Royal Standard, Kidbrooke and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Whilst the route is genuinely quite busy for a single deck service, providing lots of useful round-the-corner links as well as serving unique territory, an end-to-end journey can probably be achieved three times faster on the 54 service, whilst walking between Blackheath Village and the Royal Standard will still put you a good fifteen minutes ahead of the bus. Nevertheless, a peak vehicle requirement for 11 vehicles satisfies the 15 minute frequency from Monday to Saturday, with the obligatory drop to three buses per hour on Sundays and during the evening. Clocking up nine miles, the typical journey times are just over an hour during the day. Having ridden the service from end-to-end, I can tell you the 386 is one of the better single deck routes in London - the housing part in Kidbrooke is admittedly a bit dull but the rest is genuinely interesting stuff. I really like the architecture around Woolwich, whilst the greenery of Blackheath is always lovely to admire from the bus. Greenwich Town Centre is equally enjoyable, whilst the extremely steep Vanbrugh Hill is always very testing for the vehicles and my bus, 36333, was overtaken by pedestrians during the struggle! The uphill direction is towards Woolwich by the way.

Stagecoach operated the route from Plumstead (PD) garage, which is only a few minutes away from the Woolwich terminus, although during the past few months it actually moved to Catford (TL) garage as the space at its former home was required for the win of route 161. Inevitably, this resulted in a couple of odd workings, not all of them blinded...There were relatively few complaints reliability-wise and generally it seemed like the company looked after the service well. The allocation did have some level of variety, with the 9.3m ADL Enviro 200s (all 58-reg bar a 13-plate top up) being officially rostered for the service, although these frequently ended up on the 291. Since the 386 changed hands, the E200s now appear exclusively on this service. Previously, the 291 was allocated mini Dart Pointers and these could quite often be found on the 386 too, often outnumbering the E200s as the higher capacity of the latter type was favoured for the overcrowding on the 291. Unfortunately, this batch of Pointers have now been withdrawn. With the 291 joining the 386 at Go-Ahead in December, the future of the E200s also remains uncertain, although the newer top up bus is expected to re-enter service on the 193 when that route is acquired by Stagecoach. The company waved goodbye to the 386 in the early hours of Saturday 2nd June 2018, when the route experienced its first ever operator change.

When I took this photo the chance of rain was 1%. You can probably tell from the clouds that I ended up soaked.

Funnily enough, the old Enviro 200s are being replaced by the exact same type, although in fairness the Go-Ahead ones are slightly younger than their predecessors. The vast majority previously worked route 299 in North London, but when Sullivan Buses grabbed this in February, it made sense for the batch of eight vehicles to transfer to another route and as the 9.3m combination is fairly unusual, the 386 seemed perfect. During their time off, an extensive refurbishment was carried out so that the buses did actually look presentable from day one. To make up the numbers, however, a few newer 64-reg E200s made redundant from the route 100 cutback are also allocated to the 386. It'll be interesting to see those tackle the steep hill with their temperamental ZF gearboxes! As well as these two batches, a couple of rogue vehicles have appeared too, including the longer SE152 as well as SEN29, which is almost identical to the ex-299 buses but has appeared at over seven different garages over the course of a year and never seems to actually settle in anywhere. The 386 is operated out of the recently opened Morden Wharf (MG) garage under the new contract, which is a few minutes away from the Maze Hill area which the 386 passes through en route.

One of the former 100 vehicles at Woolwich.

Go-Ahead certainly had their ups and downs on the first day, with some rather promising signs at first, but there were a few occasions, particularly in the afternoon, where the operation just fell to pieces. In general though, there has been an improvement since then and whilst the occasional slip-up still happens, the new company seems to be on the right track and within a year I'm sure the service will be as rock solid as it was with Stagecoach. There's been a lack of odd workings so far and I suspect everyone is waiting for a Wrightbus Streetlite, allocated to the 286 officially, to sneak out as that does actually introduce a new type to the 386. Nevertheless, I wish Go-Ahead the best for the next five years and hopefully they continue to build on their strong foundations.

The terminus at Shirley is quite pretty.

 This is simply a case of a route being retained with the same operator and given a new batch of buses, which turns out to be 9.0m Enviro 200 MMCs with stop-start technology in the case of the 356. This service weaves its way around back roads in South-East London, but also conveniently turning up in town centres en route. In between Shirley and Upper Sydenham, points of interest include Eden Park, Elmers End, Anerley, Penge, Lower Sydenham and Forest Hill. This nine mile journey soaks up seven buses during rush hour, which caters for a 20 minute frequency from Monday to Saturday. This drops to half hourly on Sundays and in the evening. Stagecoach London operate this route from the newest garage in London, Kangley Bridge Road (KB), which opened in March as an outstation to Catford (TL) garage, which is where this route formerly ran from. Whilst the previous batch of 58-reg E200s were the only vehicles short enough at the depot, buses from Catford allocated to the 124 and 273 frequently stepped in and will presumably continue to do so. Officially, the contract renewal is on Saturday 15th September 2018, although conveniently a couple of the new E200 MMCs actually began to enter service at the end of August and the route has almost fully converted. Rather embarrassingly, one of them debuted on the 284, which is allocated much longer vehicles and therefore wasn't on the blindset, so the new bus wasn't even fully blinded for its first run out on the road. I do hope that the 356 users appreciate their new buses though and hopefully Stagecoach continue with the good performance they've shown over the years (I hope I don't regret saying this - there seems to be a curtailment at this unholy hour!) for their next contract.

Thanks for reading and stay safe!