What A Hat-trick

Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time. Most of the time that happens purely by chance. Today was such a day. There I was at Tower Ramparts in Ipswich waiting for the X1 to come in and I look up to see a monster bearing down on me in the shape of Suffolk Norse's Tri-axle Dennis Dragon M686 TDB. Managed to get a pic of it in the nick of time and was feeling pleased with myself when glory be one of Norse's new E400's comes along with to crown the trio an Olympian behind. All full of school kids blissfully unaware of how lucky they were!

I have done some research on the Dennis Dragon. I assumed from the name it was built for the Hong Kong market, and it appears initially I was right as they were designed for the Kowloom Motor Bus (HK) and Chinese Motor Bus - the Chinese models were called Condors as in 1982, when these vehicles were derived from the Dennis Dominator, to call it the same as the HK models would not have gone down well. But M686 TDB was not built for either HK or China. It is one of 20 built for Stagecoach in Kenya in 1996. They didn't last long in Africa and by 2000 they were all in Manchester operating Magic Bus services and later Megabus. M686 TDB was numbered 15186 and was sold to Ensign in 2010. Really good to see a bus with so much history and I bet none of her young passengers today realised where their transport originated from.

Suffolk Norse ex Stagecoach Kenya Dennis Dragon M686 TDB passing Tower Ramparts in Ipswich

Suffolk Norse new E400 YX63 ZXJ passing Tower Ramparts in Ipswich

Norse ex Dublin Olympian R397 LHK in Ipswich