Rare Spots ~ February '14

Welcome to the second edition of our new series, Rare Spots. This month we have exactly the same amount of photos as last month, again, all of which are mine. Remember if you see anything that you believe to be a rare allocation, please let me know!

In May last year, First in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft took delivery of eleven Darts with Caetano Slimbus bodies from Connex in Jersey via Ensign (dealer). Four are allocated to Lowestoft whilst the remaining seven are based in Yarmouth. The Yarmouth based ones regularly see service on the 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7, which are the smaller town routes linking the smaller villages around to the town centre. The first photograph this month is of 43864 EG52FGA seen exiting the Market Gates bus station working the number 8 to James Paget Hospital. This has only happened on a handful of occasions and may soon be a thing of a past thanks to the deckers being transferred in from Leicester.

Allocations at Anglianbus are also changing as we move onto our second and third photos. As mentioned before on a seperate post, the 84 which operates between Norwich and Harleston used to be solely operated by Solos but now regularly sees the likes of Streetlites, OmniCitys and MAN EcoCity's on the weekday services. One bus I hadn't seen on the route before last month though was the OmniLink. Unfortunatley it was dark at the time and the bus was earlier than I thought it was. I decided I would rather have one bad picture rather than trying to get the angles exactly right only to see it leave before I had the chance to press the shutter.

Last months post also featured Anglian's route 7 and 61, which operates between Southwold, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth and Norwich. This month saw another rare working in the form of new liveried Optare Excel 229 X229WRA. Here she is photographed on Priory Plain in the glorious spring sunshine.

Our last photo of the day is that of a Konectbus. 414 YJ55BLX is one of two Optare Tempos that were transferred from Anglianbus late last year, and it still retains their yellow livery. Because of this, Konect usually use her on services away from the city, most commonly on the 1 and 11 between Kings Lynn and Watton however I managed to capture her entering the bus station on an inbound service 4 from Swanton Morley.

I hope you enjoyed reading this edition of Rare Spots, and don't forget to send in your pics!