RIP Buses Excetera

The sudden demise of Buses Excetera on 11 March 2019 meant that there were stranded school children at schools, and people were stranded across Surrey. School routes 43, 45, 617, 618, 619, 668 and regular routes 28 and 479 stopped running with immediate effect after the morning peak on the Monday. This has led to a series of emergency contracts having to be agreed, and other operators just stepping in to operate the former school routes. Routes 28 and 479 took longer to find operators, with them being found later on in the week.

Buses Excetera in their "prime", running Surrey County Council routes, including Route 516 (now 21 under Metrobus), with Edward Thomas & Sons running Route 479 on behalf of Sunray Travel, prior to the Buses Excetera takeover of the route. This was taken in 2013.
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

Buses Excetera started out as Croydon Coaches, before expanding into bus work with Surrey County Council tendered bus work and ended up one of the bus companies that picked up the pieces from the Countryliner demise.


Two operators in 2015 were still running, but by 2019 were completely gone. Buses Excetera running the 479, with Abellio Surrey in the background on Route 515.
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

Unfortunately, events have not been rosy for Buses Excetera, with their fairly recent losses in Surrey County Council tendering meaning they were left with a small stub of a network. Financial issues also loomed over the company during the latter stages of its life. September 2017 saw their Guildford town services move to Compass Travel. September 2018 saw a large amount of losses, with the 32 and 479 Sunday service moving to Stagecoach South. 318 and 866 moved to Metrobus, and 73 moved to Falcon Buses. This left BETC with the remaining school routes, and routes 28 & 479, all commercial.

These events all cumulated to the administration of Buses Excetera (Coaches Excetera is unaffected as it is a separate, independent arm) on the 11th March 2019. Surrey has turned into a very cut throat business, with multiple companies over the lifetime of this blog having succumbed to financial difficulties operating in Surrey.


Cardinal Buses TA324 on Route 617 at Epsom Clock Tower
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

The first routes to be given replacements were the school routes. As these were one bus operations, these routes found new homes pretty easily.

Routes 43, 45 were taken over by Safeguard Coaches, who currently operate town routes within Guildford. These routes serve Godalming College (43) and Rodborough School (45).


Cardinal Buses TA950 on Route 619, another affected route
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

Routes 617 and 619 were taken over by Cardinal Buses. They have previously been involved with the rescue of a very different operator in Surrey, having taken Route 557 from Abellio back in 2017, in addition to their current school work. Their scope of Tridents have expanded, to ex-Stagecoach London Tridents in addition to their ex-London United ones in fleet livery.


Route 668 was taken over by Go-Ahead London, with their commercial fleet taking over. They have a plethora of buses withdrawn from their TfL subsidiary, including E6 which was from TfL Route 196 prior to transfer to the commercial fleet. Route 618 was also taken over by GAL.
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

The commercial all-day routes however were not immediately replaced. Route 28 (Woking-Knaphill-Pirbright Fox-Guildford), the smaller operation of the two remaining all-day operations found an operator in Falcon Buses on Wednesday 13th March.


KV03ZFG on Route 73 next to SK68LZL on Route 28
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

Falcon Buses have increased their presence in Woking with their new route, having gained 73 already from BETC in tendering, as well as Route 456 (Monday-Saturday). Two slightly used Enviro 200MMCs from dealer stock were acquired for the service, both in differing lengths.
SK68LZL was formerly used by Ford in their Chariot service, having also seen use in Rail Replacement services. It is a short, 8.9m bus.


YW68OVT about to start service on the 28 at Guildford, on the first day of service.
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

YW68OVT saw prior use with Newbury & District, and is the longer one of the two buses at 10.8m.

Most of the route is covered on Sundays by Arriva Route 91 projections from Knaphill to Guildford, and is ironically more frequent than the weekday/Saturday Route 28. However, as it was the smaller operation, it was very quickly taken on as a commercial venture by Falcon Buses. As they were not directly taking over from BETC, they are currently "reviewing" the service in the coming weeks before making any timetable changes.

The main route of the bunch, 479 (Epsom-Leatherhead-Bookham-Guildford) did not see a new operator until Saturday 16th March when Arriva Southern Counties opted to step in with existing buses.


4204 leaving Epsom on the 479 on a schoolday only short journey to Howard of Effingham School
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

Route 479 has been operated by Arriva, albeit prior to Countryliner operation. The route has since gone through several operators: Countryliner, Sunray Travel and BETC between its two periods of operation by Arriva Southern Counties. All the operator changes were due to financial issues, with the company dissolving in the process. Ironically, when Countryliner went under, Quality Line also ran a free service on the 479 for a week in October 2012 alongside Sunray Travel before the Traffic Commissioner gave the licence for Route 479 to Sunray Travel. Eventually, Sunray Travel encountered problems of their own in 2013, with Edward Thomas & Sons running buses on Route 479 on behalf of Sunray before BETC took over the route.


J60ETC when BETC ran the route in 2014. Ironically, this bus is ex-Countryliner as AE06VPY.
(CC Aubrey Morandarte)

BETC expanded the route to run every 30 minutes between Bookham and Epsom with these shorts initially numbered as Route 489, before being merged with Route 479. This remained the state until demise on March 2019.


4091 on the schoolday journey towards Chipstead Valley, seen at Epsom Clock Tower
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

Arriva have taken over the route, with some support from Surrey County Council, and some Streetlites have transferred over from Northfleet to supplement the existing fleet in running Route 479. It is run under the existing timetable.

However, the week where the 479 had no bus meant that passengers between Leatherhead and Guildford had the option of the rail service, using very limited Route 478 or going via Cobham on Routes 408 and 715.


Reptons SL62REP on the only direct route between Leatherhead and Guildford during the week the 479 was not running.
(© Aubrey Morandarte)

Now, as the routes have found new homes, hopefully these homes are more stable than their prior one in BETC. In order to take these routes under such very short notice is an achievement for each of Arriva, Safeguard, Go-Ahead London, Falcon Buses and Cardinal Buses.

RIP Buses Excetera

Post by Aubrey Morandarte

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