Today my travels took me to Atlas Road which is home to First's new Atlas Road Garage. The Garage opened on the 1st Of October 2011 and now runs routes; 28,31,328,N28 and N31. Five minutes down the road from Willesden Junction Garage (WJ), taking up this base was a smart move by First.
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| First London TN33189 LT52 WTE |
The Garage opened as a direct result of Crossrail construction that will take a proportion of the yard at Westbourne Park. The new Crossrail construction will allow trains to run between Maidenhead in Berkshire and Shenfield in Essex via Paddington and Central London.The route will be run with new rolling stock which is yet to be decided upon and classified but the construction of this line now means new portals have to be built in Westbourne Park with a large proportion of Westbourne Park Garage's yard being taken over.
Although this is classified as a Garage, it is actually an outstation for Westbourne Park so all drivers will clock of at Westbourne Park before parking the vehicles at this location, this may explain why Route 295 and 328 buses were present today. The opening of this garage has one advantage and one disadvantage for First in my opinion.
The advantage being; First can now bid for more work in the area such as the 272 and 440 when they come up for tender, however I think one big disadvantage is that Routes 28,31 and 328 now have a greater dead mileage to their start and end points. Especially as they cannot use Old Oak Common Lane, buses running out of service will have to travel all the way around to North Acton to join the A40 which is traffic prone in rush hour just to clear the area.
However I think the pros outweigh the cons so, heads up to First.! There was not much to see in the garage today in terms of Buses so I provided some yard shots to give viewers a first look at this garage. All photos were taken with the permission of First London's Atlas Road Garage staff. More shots are below.
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| Atlas Road Garage Yard |
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| Atlas Road Garage Yard facing the rear |
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| Atlas Road Garage Yard facing the front |
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| First London TN33189 LT52 WTE rear |
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| First London TNA33382 LK53 EZB |
3 Comments:
at: Friday, November 18, 2011 4:08:00 pm said...
TN's are boring! The other buses are better.
at: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 9:04:00 am said...
Other buses are better than these bus, as per my view. These types of buses was started in our city, but not run more than three months. It takes time to move quickly.
at: Friday, February 26, 2016 7:58:00 pm said...
R.I.P London's best operator.
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