(13 Oct 2017, 5:54 pm)RBZ 5459 wrote It's for the Special Events fleet, which I hope isn't anything strenuous.... would of thought they would have held out for more Omnidekkas for standardisation. Still 9 04 plates, 10 54 plates, 5 05 plates, 10 55 plates and 4 06 plates on N94UD down in Brighton apparently, if that Brighton low emission zone thingy is still planned they'll be wanting some of them away surely.

Also, for those in the know - what does the special events fleet entail?

Brighton & Hove do plan on binning off most of their remaining Scania OmniDekkas over the next few years, but I'll doubt we'll see many more (if any at all) migrating north. There are a small number of the same type (55-reg) being offered around the Group at present from Metrobus, but I'm doubtful that any other operating company will want them. Similar examples (albeit a few years older) were offered around the Group from Go South Coast, and there were no takers which resulted in Ensign taking most of them (indeed, here in the North East, Stagecarriage have taken a couple of them). They were great low-value replacements for the elderly and fairly reliable Dennis Tridents in the fleet, but they're still fairly old, expensive to maintain, and the work that has to be done on them to bring them up to 'Go North East standard' is expensive. I doubt we'll see anything more than the current examples in the fleet being tarted up with a re-trim, handpoles repainted, etc.

With regards to 3983 - the repaint doesn't coincide with it forming part of the company's Special Events fleet but is relevant (it's been on the cards for a while now - this one wasn't repainted unlike all of the other dual-door Volvo B7 in the summer of 2016). It's just a promotional livery, as stated above already and on the news page. Should be branded up soon, as well as the two promotional Night Bus double-decks (pencilled in for next week - so best to get your photos of them in base colours this weekend, if anyone is interested).

The Special Events fleet is exactly what it says on the tin really - a fleet of buses which are readily available for Special Events. There was a small amount of detail on the news page at the time about what the Special Events fleet was (which you can see an example of for 3983 here). Whilst the loss of Nexus Miscellaneous Contracts resulted in the loss of daily work for these vehicles (which was unfortunate), they also saw use on various contracts on weekends, school holidays, etc, which I'd imagine bring in a fair amount of money to the company. This includes the likes of Metro Replacement (planned and adhoc/emergency), Sunderland Airshow Park & Ride services, Great North Run Baggage Buses and shuttle buses, and similar. Go North East are retaining these vehicles in the fleet to operate said contracts, and as they're now readily available during the day on weekdays, it allows Go North East to bid for other contracts which require buses at this time. A good example would be the Sunderland Illuminations 101 service in operation over the next few weeks. The three coaches in the Special Events fleet (with Driver Training 7114 as a fourth, if required) are mainly used on Rail Replacement and Private Hire contracts (the number of which Go North East has operated has rapidly increased over the last few months). You may have noticed Arriva jumping on the Rail Replacement bandwagon recently too - one could argue that if it's a Northern contract, it's going back into the same DB pot, so probably likely to become more frequent where coaches and tachographed vehicles don't have to be used...