Ex Arriva North London Gemini2's

[Richard Ratcliffe]

I noted Arriva 6305 this morning (Tunbridge Wells allocation) in the centre of Maidstone on service 7.   I’m unsure whether this has been reported but I noticed today that upon repaint from London red to Arriva corporate blue this has retained its white painted roof with (ex London) fleet number in large black lettering near the rear.  I do not believe previous imports of former London stock cascaded down to AKS retained white roofs although I stand to be corrected.   Need to look out for 6302 – 4 to see how these have been treated.

 

Also tracking on 7 today ex Essex fleet 6500.  

 

Richard Ratty

[Richard Ratcliffe]

Further to this observation about roof numbers I understand from Norman Kemp at Nu-Venture that they never do repaint the white roofs of former London vehicles when acquired and repainted in their fleet livery.   In this shot kindly provided by Norman  if you look carefully you can see the shadow of a previous London owner [NCP] and fleet number beneath its later London ID.  

 

Ratty

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[Daniel Hardcastle]

I kept the fleet numbers on 6301 (repainted by me at TW) as a nod to its former life. All subsequent repaints of the DWs at GL/TW will retain them. 

The Company livery guideline specifies that all buses delivered from new and/or repainted into the now-standard 'Journey Mark' livery must have their roofs painted white. Most notably, the 2 ex-North East Solos (1524/6) are painted allover blue, and TW repaint 1522 (former Midlands 2409) retains the interurban livery over the top. 

Whist Wayne our coachmaker was still with us at TW, we'd between us prep and paint the roofs on buses prior to a full repaint. Notably, 1657 was running around in the former green/blue 'micro-hybrid' livery with a white roof for a few weeks before turning the whole bus blue! 

Hope this helps! 

Daniel 

[Neil Gow]

I guess there's a reason for painting the roofs white. I wonder if it's purely aesthetic, or practical (cheaper?) or an attempt to reduce the load on the air conditioning (for those that have it) in the summer. I'm also a bit surprised that they (and all companies) don't apply the current fleetnumbers on the roofs of all vehicles, as it could surely be helpful for police helicopters outside of London too.

NG.

[DRH]

In London it is to reduce the heat absorbed through the roof.

DRH

[Jeremy Cooper]

It saves the original manufacturer painting costs - when ordering new buses you have to specify coloured roofs or you end up with white if you don't read the smallprint