Distinctive vehicles in the Wycombe fleet are the 3 coach bodied Olympians, originally at Bracknell for
the London - Reading express services. D824UTF is seen in standard Wycombe Bus livery, descending
Marlow Hill after a mundane school run. Indeed, the vehicles are losing their luxury fittings as the
years roll by. The original yellow Bee Line livery was replaced by the black skirted version Wycombe
version though one of the trio gained a short lived Wycombe Coach livery based on Oxford Citylink blue,
yellow and white!
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235 (G235VWL) is one of a number of Alexander bodied Olympians transferreed from Oxford to Wycombe.
Originally these dual door buses were purchased for the 280 Aylesbury-Oxford trunk service. The investment
was undermined when the lucrative Sunday, evenings and Oxford Brookes University contracts were pulled from
under Oxford, unexpectedly by the newly formed
Motts Travel Yellow Bus operation.
In a complicated deal, Yellow Bus, which competed with Wycombe Bus in High Wycombe as well as
The Shires/LDT, was acquired by The Shires leading to a rationalisation of Wycombe, Oxford and
Aylesbury services, which were carved up between Shires & City of Oxford. Thus Oxford relinquished the 280
to The Shires and the Olympians used thereon were converted to single door and transferred to Wycombe! |
One of Aylesbury & The Vale's Olympians which work the 280, G651UPP - shortly thereafter
replaced by a fleet of new Northern Counties bodied Olympians during 1998 -
more Shires vehicles
can be seen on their pages |
Perhaps not surprisingly, Oxford quickly got rid of Wycombe's Leyland National Mark Is, never having operated
any of the type itself before. It did compromise by replacing some of them with Mark 2 Nationals transferred
in from fellow subsidiary companies - Brighton & Hove in the case here, but also from the London
fleets, these were converted from dual door and some did operate for a while in LT red before repaint. The
Brighton buses are 11.6m variants, wheras the London ones are at 10.6m.
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One of the London National 2s, fleet number 391.
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Rushing into Thame on the 331/332 services from Wycombe is one of 4 early transfers from Go Ahead's
London fleets to Wycombe Bus. Fleet numbers 701-704 cover a motley group of G and H registered long
Mercedes/Reeve Burgess minis acquired piecemeal by LT and part of the very small MTL class. Shorter
MT RB Mercs all sported tail lifts for disabled services, again they too were few in number.
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