THE GALLERY
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December 14th 2000 saw the end of the Wycombe Bus Company,
an operating division of City of Oxford Motor Services and part of the Go-Ahead group. The operations
have been acquired by Arriva the Shires under the operational name 'Arriva serving the Shires and Essex'.
The deal is part of an exchange between Go-Ahead and Arriva nationally, where Go-Ahead are acquiring the
Gilmoss depot and operations of Arriva Merseyside, which the OFT has forced Arriva to sell as a
consequence of its acquisition of MTL. Oxford originally acquired Wycombe Bus around 1991 when it
was part of Len Wright's BeeLine operations, which were broken up and shared amongst several buyers -
becoming Stagecoach Hants & Surrey, British Bus (now Arriva) Guildford & West Surrey, Newbury Buses
and Reading Buses. The remaining Bee Line operations ultimately went to First Group, but not before
they acquired the Slough routes of the ailing London Country North West, then under Luton & District
control. Slough and High Wycombe had one thing in common, they both had operations shared between
what was once the country area of London Transport and the former Tilling operations of Thames Valley.
Wycombe has now followed Slough in consolidating the operations under one operator, this time it is
'London Country North West' as the victor - or Arriva the Shires as that operation has now become.
Some early consolidation had taken place when Arriva acquired Motts' Yellow Bus operations and route
exchanges between the Go-Ahead company and Arriva resulted in most rural services ending up in
Arriva hands - with the notable exception of routes to Thame and Reading - and town services with
Wycombe Bus. In 2000 Wycombe Bus assumed responsibility for the Oxford - Wycombe section of
Uxbridge - Oxford service 300 from Arriva, as route 275. Now Arriva has it back. The acquisition will go some way to solving the difficulties Wycombe Bus faced with an eviction order hanging over its combined depot and Bus Station with redevelopment due in the area shortly. However, the Lincoln Road premises of Arriva are unlikely to be able to hold both fleets. Indeed, Arriva has some vehicles outstationed at Tesco in Amersham. Wycombe Bus vehicles have quickly acquired Arriva Shires & Essex fleetnames, whilst native Wycombe based vehicles still operate with little hint of Arriva ownership in Shires old blue and yellow colours, though more and more of the fleet is now acquiring Arriva corporate livery. The first 3 pages show pictures taken shortly after the acquisition and later pages are earlier photos. Future photos of buses repainted in Arriva livery will eventually appear in Arriva the Shires pages. |
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421 (originally 521) registered accordingly as N521MJO, is one of the few machines bought new by
Wycombe Bus, who have survived on Go-Ahead cast-offs from London, Oxford and Brighton. The
batch of low-floor Darts was bought for the 313 services as part of a Quality Partnership with the
local authority.
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703 (H189RWF) is one of the few survivng Mercedes passing into Arriva ownership. The Reeve Burgess bodied Mercedes 811D was new to London Buses as MTL3.
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232 (G232VWL) is on the recently enhanced 316/317 services to Maidenhead - now half hourly. The route
goes via Bourne End and parallels the Thames Trains service to Maidenhead. In recent months, forced
closure of Cookham Bridge resulted in Go-Ahead owned Wycombe Bus transferring passengers
to Go-Ahead owned Thames Trains to enable passengers to complete their journeys. Will that be as
easy to arrange in the future - not that it was easy first time round! |
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