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| Photographer / Copyright: Ray Monk Images should not be reused without permission. Date added to site:29/01/20 | ||
| Details: As was mentioned last month, the Twickenham garage of RATP no longer operates any TfL bus routes but it does now host the ten MAN minibuses used on the 'Slide Ealing' demand-responsive network, as well as undertaking some engineering work on buses from other garages. Reported at the garage on Christmas day 2019 were five new Dacia Sandero cars in white livery with RATP branding and fleetnumbers in the range D75101 to D75105. It was presumed that these were being stored pending allocation, rather than for use there. Another five were delivered a week later, taking the fleetnumbers to D75110. Ray visited on the 11th January 2020 and photographed D75104 surrounded by several others. One of the minibuses is also just visible. The choice of fleetnumbers is interesting. When RATP undertook its renumbering exercise in 2016, medium-sized vehicles (vans and minibuses) got numbers in the 700xx range, while the smallest cars and vans went into a 750xx series. The 700xx series seems to have been dropped soon afterwards, with all new support vehicles getting 750xx numbers. Numbers up to 75074 are known about, many being allocated to anonymous cars and vans. When the Slide Ealing minibuses appeared they were given the numbers M75091 to M75100, which seemed odd. Apart from the fact that earlier minibuses were in the 700xx series, what about the numbers between 75075 and 75090? It is possible that these were allocated to other vehicles which we do not know about. Anyway, the numbers on the new Dacia cars have followed on from the minibuses. Who would have thought we would see Ds and Ms on the streets of London in the 2020s! | ||
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