2819 YJ08 ETU Arriva NE Optare Solo on the M3 to Concord Bus Station
(Auto Setting)
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(Night Setting)
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Operating the last Arriva M2/M3 working of the evening from Washington Galleries at 23:15 to Concord before making the return journey as far as Washington Galleries before heading back to Durham for the Night

It was an E6 tonight as I saw it next to the blue bell pub

Just replys to some of the earlier postings.

8222 was fitted with a Cummins ISBe engine as a trial. IIRC 2 Optare Excels were fitted around the same time with the same engine.

As for the centenary vehicle. I think it might be a Dennis Trident / ELC.

Not sure if its just me but the GNE thread has disappeared and I can't find it by going through previous posts either

Recently Premier Bus & Coach baught an Optare Solo but does anyone know where from as it would help me loads.

Luke

Was having a chat earlier about brands or items that were around when we were younger, but are no where to be seen now. So in a bid to get other parts of the forum a bit more active, I thought I'd stick a post on here Apologies in advance if this is not the place.

Few things I thought of were -







Anyone got any others?

Feel free to post any service suggestions for the Metro

Read an article in the Sunday Mirror yesterday about further possible cuts to the BSOG which will be tied into the next budget announcement.

Also, not sure if anyone has ever seen this next website.
It contains details of operators who have used the grant to subsidise the cost of claiming smartcard, automatic vehicle locations or low carbon emission buses.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...incentives

Just getting to grips with the new Flickr design.

Obviously more orientated towards photos now but I think its become a bit too graphic heavy.

You have to click on each photo or hover now to see how many comments or the details of each photo which is a pain.

They've redesigned the App for Android as well which has slowed it down badly and made it difficult to navigate

As many of you will know, our site has recently undergone a downtime of 48 hours. Preceding this downtime, a significant proportion of our members experienced problems with the North East Buses website (as established in this thread).

Previously, our website used a free web host provider. It came to the point where, after seven months or so, we had actually accumulated so many files on our server, that things were no longer working as they should have been. Downtime was also a lot more frequent than it should have been. As such, the administration team decided that the time had come for us to upgrade to a premium hosting plan with a different hosting provider.

The transfer of our domain from one hosting provider to another unfortunately took 48 hours, and in this time, the site had to be offline both to normal members and administrators also.

A great deal of inconvenience was inevitably caused, but we're now back.
To compensate for the great deal of recent downtime (including the downtime which was planned), we would like to inform all of our members that we still have a lot of plans which we hope to roll out to you all in the coming weeks. A project which many of you will be interested in, is the conversion of the "Bygone Era". To save storage space and to make things easier to access, we are still converting all of our files into the new .pdf format rather than individual image files in multiple parts. Though we needn't "scrimp" on storage space anymore, we still firmly believe that the presentation of the "Bygone Era" is a top priority. In addition to the revamp of the Bygone Era, we are now also able to upload the remaining files we have received from our members. On last count, I was told that there were 6000 or so to be watermarked, converted, uploaded and captioned on here. A great deal of effort will go into the project, as I'm sure you will understand. The result will be brilliant and I ensure you it will be worth the wait.
We still have a lot more plans for future, but the main focus for the moment is to get back on track, and to ensure that very little downtime is caused in the future with our new hosting provider. Details will follow of future updates, but for now, they're secret

I'd like to thank all of our members for the patience that they had during the offline time, and it is my pleasure to welcome you all back. I apologise once more for the inconvenience caused, but I can guarantee it was worth the wait (as you'll find out over the coming weeks)!
A few "bugs" may still exist on the site following the transfer, and the appearance of a few things may change every now and again while we try to replicate some of the styling we lost during the transfer. Unfortunately, all avatars that were previously uploaded to our server were lost during the transfer, and as such, members who previously had an avatar are required to re-upload their avatars if they would wish to do so. If you spot any further mistakes, bugs or odd-balls, feel free to PM one of the administration team or reply to this thread below, and they would be delighted to amend the error.

Many thanks once more, and welcome back to North East Buses.
Dan, on behalf of site management.