Stagecoach Manchester

[YN05 WKE]

RE: Stagecoach Manchester and Wigan

(11/06/2016 13:59)Dentonian Wrote:  How does they saying go? "That's 2 hours of my life I won't get back". With the rains not forecast to hit until later this afternoon, I decided to go and have a look for 18440-2 in particular, and possibly do a bit of shopping as well. Mistake number one was going for the train. Not only did it start raining (very lightly) barely half way to the Station, but when I was approaching it, five drunken smoking yobs (presumably on their way to Parkife) walked straight past the Euro6 MMC that would have dropped them right behind the Parklife bus queue, and at a flat £5 fare. They proceeded to follow me into the rail station and pay the extra £2.50 to crowd onto the late running 30 year old diesel. Still, that's the "Save the Planet" generation for you! For my part, catching the train meant seeing Parklife buses on Ducie Street, rather than approaching from the back. Not that it made any difference, as nothing of interest was seen throughout the hour plus I stuck it out in the unrelenting rain - and a minority of buses went straight up Aytoun Street to Piccadilly.
FTR, Of the Rock Ferry buses above, only Ribble liveried 18156 was seen, and this was occupied solely by Stagecoach staff - possibly indicating that most RF drivers/buses would indeed only be utilised later in the day, and these were drivers learning the route.
19062 was the only non Manchester bus seen on the Shuttle itself (and even this is no stranger to the city, of course) with the other buses seen comprising Tridents 17202/45, 17519, 2x Hybrids (including 12225) and at least 22 Enviro400s drawn from MagicBus, HE & AZ fleets. My bus home passes Hyde Road depot, but the sheer number of buses entering/leaving meant no chance of seeing anything parked up. Although, ironically, one of these departing buses was Magic 17269 which was one of a pair of, then, Gillmoss buses parked at the front of HE when I passed during last year's Parklife. On that occasion, 17111/3 were also sent over, but my afternoon journey along Rochdale Road and into the city centre again only yielded Manchester's own buses and the odd, bland MSL/NW bus.

18156 was showing us route training earlier