15 years of the Invicta Newsgroup - Arriva
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Derek Jones
Sep 16, 2021, 3:40:48 PM9/16/21
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The years 2006 to 2021 as far as Arriva is concerned can only be summed up as a period of continual retrenchment, from the closure of Sittingbourne outstation in July 2006 (its workings being transferred to Sheerness, just a few weeks before the Invicta Newsgroup was launched) and Hawkhurst depot and bus station in 2008, through to its withdrawal of most of its activity on the Isle of Sheppey this year. We also witnessed the closure of Tenterden outstation in May 2009 after Arriva lost the contracts for then separately-numbered 297 (Tunbridge Wells to Tenterden) and 295 (Tenterden to Ashford via the route of the current Stagecoach 2A), these passing at that stage to Nu-Venture (Mondays to Fridays), Kent Top Travel (Saturdays and evenings), and the 295 only to Stagecoach (Sundays). Some other services in the Weald area south of Maidstone were lost after other tender rounds.
Arriva was of course taken over by Deutsche Bahn AG in 2010, and as our own correspondent DBJ has described in an informative article in the September 2021 issue of Buses magazine, its UK bus operations form a fairly small part of a large European conglomerate, and members will have their own views as to whether the impact of the takeover (not just in Kent but elsewhere) has really been in the best interests of the UK Bus business or its passengers.
Fleet turnover has sometimes been down to internal requirements of the group, with new vehicles arriving but subsequently being moved elsewhere in the country, most notably eleven Volvo B5LH/Wrightbus hybrid double-decks 7001-11 which arrived in 2013 but moved to the north-west of England in 2017, to be replaced in Kent by a similar number of slightly older Wrightbus DB300 deckers numbered in the range 4450-4471 and more conventionally-fuelled.
Amongst several managerial reorganisations, Arriva Medway Towns was wound up and Gillingham and Swale operations absorbed into the renamed Arriva Kent & Surrey in 2013, while Arriva Kent Thameside surrendered Dartford-based TfL services to Arriva London with the garage and vehicles involved in 2016.
Other changes to the fleet have involved replacement of branded vehicles for particular groups of routes in Gravesend and Dartford including Fastrack and 480/490, together with Sapphire on the 101 corridor. Otherwise the branding concept has fallen out of favour in Arriva territory, with isolated examples having been repainted into standard livery (in the case of the 281 in Tunbridge Wells) or disposed of (Sapphire vehicles on the 700). Nevertheless significant livery variations still exist locally, ranging from former Max-branded single-deckers transferred from Surrey to the dinosaur-effect Maidstone Park & Ride, and a few surviving pre-2009 livery buses with a greater area of the off-white paint shade known as "stone".
Here is a small selection of subjects covered by Invicta group members:
Derek J
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