(28 Nov 2014, 9:32 pm)Jimmi wrote I think my interest in this hobby began as I often rode buses round my way.
When I was a kid round my way we had: Dart's, Optare Metrorider's, Optare Vectra's, Optare Delta's, Leyland Lynx's, Lowlander's and various bodied Olympians - mostly ECW Olympians. Those were the days most Arriva routes I use now are Pulsar operated.
To be honest, the reason 4852 (1998 - 2014) was my favourite bus was because I always remember when my grandad used to magically make the bus stop with his hand, he'd tell me to go and sit down while he put his card on the reader, he would make a note of the fleet number and reg and write it down. I suppose it was just one of those things he did for the sake of it.
Anyway, when my interest got serious a few years back, he told me he used to write down the fleet numbers of the buses we rode together in a little diary. He found it about a week later, and we had a good look through it.
Believe it or not, we rode 4852 over 150 times during those few years we spent together when I was little! A few honourable mentions ought to go to 4855, with 90-odd runs, and 4905, with about 75 runs. The rest were very random, but mostly the remainder of the vehicles associated with the Lime. That was just the 778, though.
We used to get a service back up which was normally a DAF. He made notes of all of these too, and we had 4864 about 70-odd times. It was always random though - although mainly a DAF, we would sometimes get a Delta or a National, the latter being very rare, and once or twice I saw a Lynx!
My grandad had been doing this well before I was born (2000), and the famous 4710 was noted down about 40-odd times!
It's one of my most prized possessions; that little notebook! It's one of the only things I can remember him by, a little leather miner's association diary with a bunch of numbers written in it. He would be 80 today.
