Southern Vectis NDL652R

652 at Niton (courtesy Ben Bartram)

Colwell Bay (copyright Pete Thorley)

Yarmouth (copyright Pete Thorley)

Newport (copyright Pete Thorley)

Early days at W H Nelson (Coaches) Ltd of Wickford t/a NIBS (Nelsons Independent Bus Service)

South Green, Billericay 20th September 2000

Chelmsford station, with First Eastern National 3219 which was for a time in common preservation ownership

Ingatestone, rail replacement 28th April 2002

Wickford station, 18th May 2002 - collecting passengers for Essex Bus Enthusiasts Group visit to NIBS

Great Hayes, Lower Burnham Road (empty run back from Burnham-Southminster school service), 1st November 2002

The last two VRs at NIBS

Denyer's, Stondon Massey (with Northern Irish Bristol RE TOI2316)

David Frankton's 60th birthday surprise - 'drive a bus'

Leaving Denyer's for Norfolk, 2010

En route from Essex to Norfolk in August 2010, at the start of the long restoration

Colchester, en route to Norfolk 2010

Initial restoration work was done by John Ives in Norfolk

Quite a number of mis-matched seats had already been exchanged by then - many 'cricket stump' vinyl examples were obtained from a scrap VR in South Yorkshire and from Vectis ODL666R (thanks to Ben Bartram and Nige Harris)

There was never any intention to repaint 652 in Lowestoft Corporation colours, although a couple of people did start wondering...spare paint just happened to be around!

With a lot of work by Sue, some of the seats came up as well as the one in the bottom right. Others have been a bit more difficult, but give that 'in service' look appropriate to a 1986 repaint of a 1976 bus.