Posted by Michael Grimes
on October 16, 2009, 9:09 pm, in reply to "Question for Dr Grimes!!!"
90.177.204.59
You have a fair point. However 1268 is gone elsewhere I understand and she was our first choice. I have no idea where 1269 is. Do you know and we will look at her.
Interestingly 1267 is not the best machine we have and in fact is a candidate for providing spares for the rest of the fleet. Up to this everything has a plan in the overall scheme of things and 1267 is the first that would not be missed. On the other hand we understand she did the Tiger farewell as 1270 was not available.
We particularly need her seats - if we do not keep her - for our Leopard 1982. We will await the final deliveries of the TL11 N type before making any decisions. 1267 is a particularly slow machine and took over 7 hours from Belfast to Cork instead of the usual just under six.
1288 has arrived since and she is a superb machine so she will definitely stay in one piece.
If I stray too far in this posting the board owners will probably slaughter me for going into preserved vehicles but I would argue that these are not preserved in the traditional sense but are being kept operational, only in a new depot which is a sub of Ballymena. On the other hand our Leopards and RE's are definitely preserved.
Just for the record the following is the current operational Tiger fleet with notes why they are being kept operational. We try and have twins of everything in a batch of 100 in case of an accident fifty years hence.
340 First Tiger
385 Second 3xx and a good one. Twin to 340.
400 First 4xx
434 An excellent 4xx twin to 400.
460 An Express Tiger.
468 An Express Tiger twin to 460.
598 The only Van Hool TL 11 Coach Tiger.
1000 The first 10xx
1003 An excellent 10xx Tiger twin to 1003.
1034 An excellent 10xx.
1122 An excellent Portglenone machine.
1131 A later express Tiger.
1143 Twin to 1122 and another superb Ballymena.
1200 First 12xx.
1267 No particular reason.
1274 Superb Portglenone machine.
1288 A really first class bus.
1299 Last N TL 11 Tiger
2609 An excellent Gardner.
2610 Maybe a spares provider for Gardners.
2620 An excellent Gardner and twin to 2609.
2624 An excellent Gardner.
2629 Twin to 2624.
We hope to start with 13xx N Volvo shortly and will probably acquire one or two more 12xx to provide backup for the other 23 machines. We plan to have the machines operational for at least one hundred years and in 2104 spares will be hard to get so we are planning now.
Finally we and Ulsterbus are very proud of our achievement in keeping so many of a fleet operational well beyond their normal life span. These machines have less than 25% of their lifes done so far which is more than can be said for me, alas! Unless I am greatly mistaken, no other operators fleet of one model has been saved to such an extent.
I think that is something we can all be proud of and out of our entire fleet our only mechanical problems are one sticky airvalve on 434 and an injector on 1267 which is some tribute to the way Ulsterbus maintain their vehicles.
Hope this goes someway to answering your question Mark.
Michael Grimes
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