Here is something a little different, spotted by one of my friends at Anglian parked up outside the Beccles yard yesterday morning. It is obviously a Mercedes trolleybus, so that rules out anything new for Anglian. It is also European, probably German or Austrian judging from the two visible words if you zoom in. But it has a British registration - HMT193J -- however if you search for that it draws a total and complete blank. So can anyone shed any light on this trolleybus and what it is doing here? Many thanks to my contact at Beccles for sending the pics in.
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| Sunrise over Beccles and the mysterious Mercedes Trolleybus |
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| Where has 135 come from? |
It is now time to eat some humble pie. When I was riding First Yarmouth's recent arrival, B7tl Gemini 32348 last week I commented confidently to my travelling companions that one of the reasons it was in such good condition was because it hadn't spent several punishing years in London or been converted from double door.
So you can imagine my surprise and feelings of foolishness when Jim Long got in touch with the following picture he had found on Flickr which made my comments look rather idiotic. It turns out that 32348 started life at First Centrewest double doored, and spent several punishing years in North London before going West to Slough and Green Line operations in 2010/11. It was clearly a much better single door conversion than other examples that have found their rattly, bumpy, leaky, electronically inept way to our region over the last couple of years Many thanks, Jim. This pic was taken in 2005 by
CWG43
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| First Centrewest VNZ32348 in 2005 pic by CWG43 |
I am also reliably informed that the fleet number, currently showing 32438 will be corrected very soon!
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| 32348 in Yarmouth last week. pic (c) Cameron Robinson |
Trolley Bus looks like one of those used at the East Anglia Transport Museum? Might be that? :-)
ReplyDeleteNice try but it's right hand drive! I do know what it is now but I'll wait a bit before posting to give others a chance.
ReplyDeleteIt's late! I meant left hand drive of course!
DeleteEATM have a left hand drive trolley bus so it's a perfectly valid guess... They possibly have two
DeleteHad to do a lot of digging here, but I've got the answer. It's the prototype Mercedes-Benz O 305 GT trolleybus, built in 1982 and in service in Kaiserslautern in 1982. According to what I can find, it "went to EATM" in 1985, but it's not listed on their website. Has it ben in store? It looks as if it's in "just come out of service" mode, i.e. "conserved" rather than "restored".
ReplyDeleteCorrect in most part, Andrew. I'll fill in the gaps later as there is a little more to it than that, but well done for getting the Kaiserslautern bit - you're right - it took a lot of digging and a little nudge in the right direction.
DeleteIt's on loan to Anglian to cover for a vehicle away.
ReplyDeleteYes I was waiting for that one!!! Be nice if that was possible eh!
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