• Last week, following Liverpool Football Club's winning of the European Cup, Arriva NW&W were enlisted to provide vehicles and drivers for the homecoming parade on the evening of Thursday 26th May.  Vehicles used were Arriva's only remaining Atlanteans, open toppers 3980 GKA 449L (MTL No 1449) as the press bus and 3981 OLV 551M (MTL No 1551) as the team bus. 3980 was in kept in Arriva livery (although it has been repainted!), whilst 3981 has its front painted into Arriva livery, and its sides in red, but largely covered in banners, having been in Southport Corporation livery.  Karl Sutton was able to photograph 3981 OLV 551M [photo] around the Anfield area, which was very very packed, going from the footage on BBC News 24!

• Around 1 million people took to the streets of Liverpool to view the parade, some hanging off almost lampposts, rooftops etc just to get a better view.  The area around Lime Street was one of the most crowed areas, and (luckily?) for some of the visitors, GTL Volvo B6/Alexander Dash 7282 L448 LWA 'JAKE' became stranded just after leaving Queen Square (exactly how is unclear, probably just the volume of people made it impossible to move forward safely), but going from this [photo] from the BBC Liverpool website, some people put this to good use.  The bus reportedly got back to Gillmoss with a slightly dented roof, but was otherwise undamaged and returned to service the very next morning!

• As reported a number of weeks ago, Arriva's new hybrid Optare Solos have now settled down well on the S2/S3 (Liverpool City Circulars), and Dave Root was able to photograph two vehicles on the route those being Optare Solo 0654 MX05 MKL [photo] and 'native' Neoplan N4009 0601 M301 YBG [photo] showing its now out of date route 2 branding!  Further photos today are from GTL, who have just acquired a number of ex Metroline (one time MTL London) Dennis Dart/Northern Counties Paladin II (see the GTL Fleetlist for more details), some of which arrived a green/cream livery as they had been used by Ensignbus, as seen on 7138 L102 HHV [photo] and duly repainted into GTL livery, as seen on 7143 L119 HHV [photo], which as can be seen is named 'JAMES'.  Another recent repaint and rename, is of Volvo B6/Alexander Dash 7293 L701 FWO 'PADDY JOE' [photo], which as can be seen has its name much lower than they are usually positioned!  All the above GTL photos are taken at Gillmoss depot by Karl Sutton.

• North West Travel now has at least one ex Norbus Dart MPD V898 DNB and white Optare Solo W84 NDW [photo] seen by Neil Hilton.  As can also be seen here [photo] is has an unusual rear destination box which is below the position it would usually be in, whilst is also appears to be devoid of all the usually legal lettering on the rear!  Neil has also been able to get some rare Cumfybus photos, including one of their only Dennis Dart/Plaxton Pointer K580 MGT [photo], Optare Excel TIL 2099 [photo] and soon to be reregistered Volvo B10M N40 SLK [photo]

• Now, competition time! One lucky reader of the Merseyside Dennis Dart Website WILL win a £5 Amazon.co.uk voucher on our ever so easy prize draw, and you could also win tickets to the Glastonbury Festival courtesy of National Express!

To enter, all you need to do is enter the National Express competition, which is a national competition to win tickets to Glastonbury. Everyone who enters the National Express competition via this site can then enter our own competition to win the £5 Amazon voucher, and all you need to do to enter each is to enter your email address on each site - I can vouch also that National Express won't send you loads of spam for entering your address on their site, and I certainly won't send any for entering on this site!

First, click on the National Express banner below, click onto the large Glastonbury piece on the right of the page, and simply enter your email address into the box that should pop-up.  Should you win this and you don't intend to go, you could always just sell them on ebay anyway!

Once you've done that, you can enter our own competition! This is even easier, all you need to do is enter your name and email address into the boxes below!

You may enter the competitions as many times as you like using different email addresses, so long as you enter BOTH competitions each time but using the same email address for each set of entries.  So long as you do enter both each time, you will significantly increase your chance of winning the £5 Amazon.co.uk voucher.  An additional separate competition page will be added shortly too.  This competition will run for until 30/06/2005 with the winner announced on Friday 01/07/2005!

• I traveled on new Halton Transport Dart 51 PN05 SYG this morning, and can confirm they they are near identical to the previous delivery, bar that they have Alexander Dennis builders plates, and a Dennis badge on the steering wheel!  The speedometers have no badge at all!  Of note too is that Halton Transport's legal lettering has been slightly amended recently, the legal lettering now referring to the company as Halton Borough Transport Ltd, rather than D J Cunningham, as Dave, the former MD retired in March, his successor being Chris Adams.

• Arriva NW&W have today received another two Optare Solos, this time Optare Solo Slimline 7.2M models, B23F, for Chester garage, 0620 YK05 CAA and 0621 YK05 CAE.  These are to replace two Mercedes Sprinter/Koch that had been used on the Deeside Shuttle services.  Of note too is that the Aleros in use at Chester are all being converted to automatic transmission, as when built only manual was available.

• Following the announcement in February by Arriva NW&W that they intend to have all main routes out of Liverpool low floor by 2008, and the remainder by 2011, more buses are on order for the area.  So far reported are 3 Scania Omnicities, which are due in July for Speke depot, to operate on the 500 (Liverpool Airport Express).  It is unclear at the moment if these are to run alongside Selwyns service (though if they did, Selwyns would have to register there one commercially, as it is currently a Merseytravel contract), as Arriva's route is to be a commercial service.  The buses are expected to be in a special livery for the route, but in Arriva corporate style.

• It is also reported that a number of low floor double deck buses (finally!), have been ordered, again for Speke garage, for the 86 and these are expected to arrive in January 2006.   The 82 and 79 (diagrams that aren't already Le bus in the case of the 79), are also expected to get new buses, possibly low floor double deckers too.  As for the 79C, most likely would just be new/newer low floor buses.

• Apparently there is currently a 1 year lead time for buses bodied by Wrightbus as they are so popular, so this could result in some interesting types being ordered for Arriva NW&W!  On a similar note, is has already been reported that Arriva Midlands have had to order further Dart/Pointers, as they couldn't get DAF/Wrights built in time!  Only yesterday too, I read somewhere IIRC that one of the councils in Wales is to purchase some new Optare Tempos and lease these to Arriva for certain quality contracts, so yet another type may yet enter the fleet!

• Since the last update, two operators on Merseyside have ceased to trade, those being Norbus (sad, as they'd just got their two BioBus Dart MPDs going!), and Tanner Travel (who had also just bought several Wright Crusader Darts from Blue Bus) - Those lists are now removed from the site, but thanks to Andy Rigby, Derrick Ball Travel, Ellisons Travel (no relation to Jennifer btw!), George Ashton Travel, & Town Lynx are all added!

• Another fleetlist updated today is the Aintree Coachline list, kindly updated and 'adopted' by Mark Haldon (apologies for spelling adopted incorrectly almost every time yesterday too btw!), whilst I've added the two new Solos to the Arriva list and updated the info on the Merseytravel Solos, I'll put a proper update in that list at the weekend.  Next fleetlists update should now be this weekend, the news updated in around 2-4 weeks!

• Welcome back (again!), to the Merseyside Dennis Dart Website!  Thank you to all the visitors in the past 4½ years, as we've just passed the 100,000 mark on the page counter!

• As has become evident, I've not been able to dedicate as much of my time of late to working on this website, as I had done during University, thus this week with the help and ideas of some of the readers of this site, we came up with the idea of 'adopt a fleetlist'!  The basic idea, as noted last week in the guestbook, is that ant reader can request to adopt a particular fleetlist that isn't already adopted, I will then send them the source code for that list, they can edit it using either Notepad (or Dreamweaver if you have it!), and send it back updated!  This way, the site continues as it was (or even better, as on the first set up updates, four new lists have already been added).  So far Mark Haldon, Andy Rigby and Karl Sutton have taken on some lists, some of which are already online, see the fleetlists section for more details!

• I have decided that as a minimum I'll permanently keep the Arriva NW&W fleetlist (as its a myPHP database on the server, thus searchable, I have to kept this anyway), along with Halton Transport and Supertravel, simply as I really like these ones!  From this point on, I plan to update the fleetlists each weekend (or every other weekend, depending on how many lists need doing), and update the news around about once a month.  There will however be a second news update tomorrow, with some actual news, possibly along with further fleetlist updates!

• Finally let me that all those who have already adopted some fleetlists so far and updated them in record time (I'm really please how they did them so fast, accurately, and without code errors!), and if anyone else likes a particular company/list, check the fleetlist page to see which are still available then email me!

• News WILL be updated properly tomorrow!

• As mentioned in the guestbook a few weeks back, I have now reinstated the photographs and articles sections of the website by popular demand.

• Now for some news! The first Optare Solos that Arriva North West and Wales have operated are begriming to arrive at Bootle depot, for use on Merseytravel routes 2 & 3.  These Solos, owed by Merseytravel have been delivered were registered by Optare with 54 reg Yorkshire registrations, and although were initially expected to be re-registered with local 54 plates, they may now get 05 plates if they do not enter service until March.  Pictured in Arriva Midlands Cannock depot, pictured by Dom is YJ54 UBE (not sure on fleetnumber, one of 0651 - 0656), front view [photo] and rear view [photo] showing all the branding - Interestingly, the rear has full Arriva serving Merseyside logos!

• Friday February 18th marks the fifth anniversary of Arriva's purchase of MTL Services and so before that date I intend to write an additional article on all the changes to the fleet that have happened in the last five years.  Arriva themselves are expected to make an announcement sometime this month too, rumoured to be news of another large vehicle order, though what this will entail we shall see!

• Liverpool City Centre already has two different alternate fuel vehicles, in addition to the forthcoming Solos, these being BioBus Dart MPDs, operated by Norbus.  The two vehicles are W772 URP and W363 ABD.  Whilst W363 ABD was an existing Norbus vehicle that has been converted, W772 URP appears to have been re-registered at some point, as no records show this bus as new - If anyone does know its original identity please let me know!  The two buses are in an overall greeny/blue livery with Norbus BioBus logos, and rooftop branding reading 'This bus does 725 miles to the acre'.  Although I've not yet traveled on either since conversion to run on BioDiesel (which, I believe is a bi-product of vegetable oil, again if anyone really does know, please correct me!), they do sound almost the same as a normal Euro 2 Dart MPD, just sounding a little sharper.

• Finally, Supertravel now have a third Optare Solo, this time an 8.5M model, registered MX54 KYJ, which I noted on the evening of January 26th on the 174 (Belle Vale - Penny Lane).  Much like the two longer Solos (which incidentally now usually reside on the extended 165 (Belle Vale Circular), this one doesn't have a visible fleetnumber!

• Fleetlists should be updated very soon!

• GTL Glenvale Transport have continued to expand its fleets of both Dennis Dart/Alexander Dash and Volvo B6/Alexander Dash.  All of the new arrivals are originally from various Stagecoach fleets, although some are arriving via different operators, and due to the rate of these arriving, many are entering service in their former operators liveries!  One of the most traveled buses to arrive at Gillmoss is Volvo B6/Alexander Dash 7288 M343 NOD, which was last used in service by Stagecoach Devon, but was new to Citybus, Hong Kong as its 1301 GJ 155.  Seen here in Gillmoss depot [photo] by Karl Sutton, with Stagecoach logos removed (although fleetnumber 30700 is still showing!), it can be seen that this bus also has air conditioning and tinted, double glazed bonded windows, so is quite unique in the GTL fleet!  It has since been repainted red and named 'MICHA'.  For anyone who was trying to find chassis/body number details, they are as follows:

Vo B6-50 05715 • Ar AM121/9422/1 • B39F • 03/95

• All of the recently delivered buses have come via Ensignbus, some of which had been used by Ensign, and so have arrive and are entering service in its green/cream livery, an example of which is Volvo B6 7203 L453 YAC [photo] seen being prepared for service at Gillmoss, with its GTL fleetnumber and fleetnames applied.  Other liveries on the streets of Merseyside with GTL include original Stagecoach, new Stagecoach and a white with purple skirt livery!  Prior to these new arrivals, during November, GTL hired three Scania N113/Alexander PS, 903 F903 JRG, 904 F904 JRG & 909 F909 JRG - These too ran in Stagecoach livery with GTL logos, as seen here 903 [photo] although they were apparently rather unreliable, so didn't see a lot of use!

• Further GTL news is of Titan 2703 OHV 703Y which had sadly been subject to an arson attack has been skillfully brought back to service by the team at GTL, including a full interior repaint by our very own Karl Sutton!  Seen here in Gillmoss with its new apt name FIRECRACKER [photo], the superb standard of work can also be seen in these interior shots, lower deck [photo] and upper deck [photo], which shows even the seat frames were all painted!  The GTL fleetlist will be fully updated this week with details of all the new arrivals, withdrawals, repaints and renames!

• Arriva Merseyside St Helens depot has now had its VDL SB120CS/Wright Cadet running for a few months on the 89, but another St Helens based operator now has some of the type.  Nip On Transport now have two of these, MV54 AOC & MV54 AOD, both of which are in fleet livery.  These arrived at the depot in overall white and had then had the red added, one of which (not sure which as reg plate was removed!) was seen by Neil Hilton, [photo] shortly after application of the paint.  One thing of note here is that it has a DAF-Bus, not a VDL-BUS badge, along with the older front lights which suggests that these were stock build vehicles, probably from Arriva Bus & Coach!

• Supertravel are beginning to buy further vehicles, with a new, but as yet unidentified, Van Hool bodied coach being seen in the locality with Home James fleetnames.  It is also reported, although not confirmed, that they intend to update their service fleet too, and replace the older Darts with newer examples of the type.  One rarely photographed bus within the Supertravel fleet that Neil Hilton saw over the holidays is 050 Y942 GEU [photo], its Renault Master/Rohill Harrier which only ever operates the 265 (Halewood - St Helens) - I have traveled on this bus once or twice before, although I never had a camera, and am very glad that Supertravel only have the one!  They aren't too bad, when compared to old van derived minibuses, they are very accessible, although the Darts and Solos that Supertravel have are much nicer!

More news and fleetlists updates will be made soon!

• Once again, this update has been heavily delayed due to my work commitments, but the Merseyside Dennis Dart Website does go on, now in its fourth year!  I am working shorter shifts than I have been since September, so am having a well deserved rest and catch up of work for the site!!! - I am still looking for a full time job as I have now completed Uni, so anyone who would be willing to take me on in an IT role, (or with any good ideas on getting a job) please get in contact!!!

• Due to the reduced amount of time I now have to work on the site, some of the sections of the site have been removed, those including the articles and sadly the photographs section.  Neither have been updated for over a year now and I sadly don't have the time to sort them all.  Some photographs will continue to be added to the site though, but via the news sections.  The actual pages for the photographs and articles currently remain online if anyone wants to view them before they are removed!

• Many new buses have appeared in Merseyside since September, almost all of which are VDL SB120CS/Wright Cadet, some with Arriva (at both St Helens and Crewe) and two with Nip On Transport in St Helens.  Details of these will be added to the fleetlists section very shortly.

• GTL have continued to purchase yet more Volvo B6/Alexander Dash, and have so many now that they reached fleetnumber 7299 so have continued using number 7201 and onwards, so are now duplicates with the earlier vehicles in the Plaxton Pointer B6s that are now with Arriva.

• Arriva are also due a number of Hybrid Optare Solos for use on routes 2 and 3 (Liverpool City Circulars).  These are reportedly to be in a mainly white livery, with green and blue relief.  These buses will remain owned by Merseytravel, simply operated by Arriva, and are expected before the end of January.

• Arriva Volvo Olympian 3301 N301 CKB has just came back from refurbishment at Arriva Bootle and now sports Arriva moquette on its seats (in place of the original MTL pattern), a repainted interior and a full external repaint.  Assumedly it also has a new LED destination display, although this is as yet to be confirmed!

• More news will be added over the next few days, along with many many fleetlist updates which themselves will contain many news snippets from the last four months!  Fleetlists will be updated during this evening and again tomorrow!