| Delivered to London United in May 2012 was a batch of nine Ford Transit vans with fleetnumbers FT1 to FT9 (changed to FT70001 to FT70009 in 2016). Each of the eight garages then in use was allocated one of the vans for use by the engineers, while the ninth was assigned to the company headquarters. Hounslow garage had FT8 but this was withdrawn in 2018, perhaps as a result of accident damage. It was evidently repairable however, as the van has since been relicensed with a new owner. To replace FT8, a string of unmarked silver vans have been based at Hounslow, including CX18PNO and MV68XBD. More recently, vans in the livery of Thrifty vehicle rental have been used, including Ford Transit Custom van WT19RVM, seen in the garage on 5th April 2020. Perhaps, once the COVID-19 situation has passed, RATP will buy a batch of new vans to service their expanded operations. If so, it will be interesting to see what fleetnumbers they get. Under the 2016 scheme, mid-sized vans and minibuses were numbered in the 700xx series, while small vans and cars were in the 750xx series. It is believed that some of the unmarked vans operated over the past couple of years were allocated fleetnumbers in the ST750xx range, while the MAN minibuses for the Slide Ealing scheme were assigned M75091 to M75100. This suggests that the 700xx series is no longer used. |
| Photographer: |
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Photo ID: |
6270 |
| Photo date: |
05/04/2020 |
Size: |
Regular |
| Subject/s: |
RATP Hire WT19RVM
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| Location/s: |
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| Tags: |
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| Date added: |
27/04/2020 |
