[Archive] Arriva North West - Speke Depot

[K101HUM]

RE: Arriva North West - Speke Depot
St Helens are currently 'bombed out', well and truly with their own fleet. Baring in mind, before the closure of Liverline, St Helens was its own unit as an operational depot with the facilities to cater for the maintenance of its own services buses and plus from others from across the region. The closure of the facility on Hawthorne Road was indeed unfortunate and has ultimately caused a somewhat cramped scenario at St Helens, in comparison to what it was before that closure of Liverline. A healthy number of vehicles from St Helens serviceable fleet visit both Green Lane and Birkenhead depots respectively for MOT. I do not know personally if St Helens do have the capabilities to perform their own MOT's, but perhaps it would be likely in such a vastly scaled depot with many an expert operating under the same roof with thousands of pounds worth of equipment and machinery ready when required. The fact is, St Helens is being pushed as far as it can be in terms of available space as a result of the closure of the Hawthorne Road facility. There really is only so much one garage and an assembled work force of highly skilled folk can achieve in an allotted time with available resources (ultimately time and space), and in my honest opinion they far perform beyond this.

2502, in all probability, is a case of which ever depot can perform the tasks required then so be it, at St Helens or a depot which can perform the same tasks. Clearly, Speke have the capabilities and time to do such the required task. With St Helens own fleet now minus (temporarily at least) 3 vehicles due to the recent unfortunate incidents referred to earlier plus with the prospect of repairing those damaged vehicles (discounting 2316 from what has been discussed) and simultaneously storing the vehicles with limited space compounded further by an influx of vehicles from other depots for storage, repair or otherwise. And to suggest it would be a waste of money to tow 2502 to Speke for required maintenance, may I illustrate 2400 made the journey from Bolton to Wrexham via the same method purely for storage until book value ticks to nil, combined with the lack of available space to store vehicles at the depot inherited from Blue Bus. The company will invest its capital where it is deemed fit, and necessary. Whether such actions are agreed with, or disagreed with by members of the following band wagon really are irrelevant!