Picture Archive Post 33

London United SP22 on Route 482, Heathrow Cargo Centre (29/09/13)

SP22 is one of the batch designated for Route 482, which is a relatively new route.
The history of Route 482 however stretches out back to Centrewest, interestingly.

In 1984, this was a private contract for Gate Gourmet (yeah, that company that supplies your plane food, formerly part of the Swissair group). In 1992, the route became X767 between Uxbridge and Heathrow Cargo Centre. This lasted until February 1993, when New Bharat Coaches and eventually Bharat Travel took the route on as a private staff contract. In June 2001, the route became Route 805 between Hayes and Heathrow Cargo Area via Yeading, Southall and Hatton Cross as funding became the responsibility of BAA. Due to Terminal 5 and extended popularity, an all day half hourly service was provided, albeit it ran Northolt-Heathrow Terminal 5 instead. It went from a LSP TO an LLSA (thus TfL fares were available) after a tender attempt as Route H31 did not materialise. To those who don't understand why I highlighted the word "to", the trend at that time was to turn LLSA contracts to LSP or full TfL contracts, and still is today. No LLSA contracts exist today.

From November 2004, the route ended up running Southall to Heathrow Cargo Area as Menzies dealt with the Terminal 5 area and in June 2005, the route became 435 with Centrewest (now part of First Group at the time)!

In March 2008, the 435 was renumbered 482 but runs via H32 and 203 instead of via 105 and 285 and was awarded to London United (at that time part of Transdev Group).
This is the only ever time this bus had new buses that were ordered for the route actually use the route. Bharat Travel used a numerous amount of hired Darts, one Volvo B6BLE and one Enviro 300 demonstrator, whilst the various guises of Centrewest used existing buses from their fleet.

From the 21st March 2015, this route goes back to Centrewest, for the third time in it's numerous guises. This time, this Centrewest is part of Metroline as Metroline West. The SN09Cxx batch of buses will be used, albeit refurbished(!) (no, replacing seat covers and repainting the exterior is NOT a refurbishment, Metroline West...).

SP22 is a bog standard Scania Omnicity double decker, ordered by Transdev when that was their standard double decker. These buses generally can go fast on the fast sections, or vibrate heavily otherwise. This batch of SPs will afterwards be used to help cascade and withdraw older buses in the London United fleet.

This is practically the 482 history post, and as London United bid farewell for five years (at least) a route that has been coordinating with H32 and has been under their watch as it paralleled the H32 (formerly 232/A etc) for most of it. This also brings Metroline West into Heston and Hounslow, which feels fairly odd for me as I grew up in Heston with practically London United and Tellings Golden-Miller on my doorstep (notably having the 111 being my favourite route, yeah...). Knowing how Metroline West ran the E3 and ended up leaving Chiswick, this will be interesting how 482 will be run.

This does mean Tridents on the 482 will be just substantially newer:

From this:

London United TLA8 on Route 482, Southall (20/12/14)

to this (the earlier Enviro 400 is an upgraded Trident with a new body):

Metroline West TE1727 (SN09 CEX) on Route E3, Chiswick Town Hall (CC, 20/05/14)
TE1727 appears again, yeah... These buses aren't exactly the best compared to when they were with First...

The 482 was later covered as per seen here: http://wltmauc.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/poor-eight-two-to-metroline-west.html
Oh, and it was entirely predictable. And then even then I was wrong about that. At least predictably TE1727 appeared in service!