So Sapphire was launched last night at Walworth Castle and they were out on the road this morning.

I had a few rides on them today and can certainly say they're lovely vehicles. The leather seats we're really nice, a far nicer leather than the slippy material used in the Omnicity vehicles. The interior colours are an interesting choice, with the dark blue on the lower half of the side/front panels and then the light grey above, but they seem to work well. I was pleased to note that the wi-fi worked on 2 out of the 3 that I rode on.

I was also impressed with the cove branding which was all matching in Sapphire colours, showing a route map and other information. Each bus also has a different vinyl picture on the back of the cab wall, which provides a change to the plain white we're all used to. It is more visable than on similar projects elsewhere using double deck vehicles and I think it works better.

The next stop announcements are visually on a TV which is placed above the saloon on the bulkhead before the cab, and the audio announcements are voiced by the same woman that does the ones on the South West Trains network (I think anyway, sounds the same!). This means that the "Stopping" display is moved to the left of the cabin which appears to be a good place to have it, different to the Wright standard display too!

There were some issues with timekeeping thanks to the closure of Whessoe Road in Darlington, forcing lots of traffic onto (the already busy!) North Road corridor, and Darlington based Pulsar 1498 was seen on one journey presumably thrown on to help get buses back on time. There were unfortunately a few gaps in service and I was impressed to see some of the loadings, especially at college time this evening. The Pulsar's are only 40 seaters though, same as the Darts they've replaced. The 2+1 formation of seating does give extra standing room, though.

The new timetable produced for the new brand has to be one of the best timetables I've seen for a long time, very much like the Coastliner timetable with fare information, timetables and route map all displayed in similar fashion.

1514 seen entering Ferryhill en-route to Darlington


1520 seen at DurhamGate Business Park en-route to Durham


Rear branding as shown on 1515