Dennis Dart - Step Entrance

During  the early 1990’s Midland Red West built up a network of subsidised bus services in Shropshire which were operated from their Kidderminster Garage using a number of outstations in such places as Bishops Castle, Ludlow and Bridgnorth. These routes were initially operated by a mixture of Leyland Nationals, Leopards and Mercedes Minibuses. To meet the requirements of Shropshire County Council it was decided to purchase 14 Dennis Darts. Thirteen which were built to DPTAC standard plus a 14th built to the then new low floor standard.  To evaluate the Dennis Dart vehicle type a demonstrator vehicle M284HRH was operated during March 1995. The 13 Darts N301-13XAB were delivered in August 1995 and entered service from Kidderminster Garage in August/September 1995. As part of a total review of the Company’s operations in April 1997 the majority of the routes in Shropshire were withdrawn and Darts 301-12 were transferred to Redditch to replace the majority of the Mercedes 608 minibuses at that Garage. By August 2000 all 13 vehicles were running from Redditch Garage and to combat vandalism problems the vehicles were re-seated from DP36F to DP35F. This was done by turning the last double seat on the offside to face backwards and removing the last near-side double seat, filling the space with a single seat (taken from a withdrawn Mercedes L608D) that faces inwards. With the introduction of the 22/24 service  between Stratford and Chipping Norton Evesham Garage had a requirement for three Dennis Lances so three Redditch Darts 311-313 moved to Hereford/Kidderminster Garages in exchange for 3 Dennis Lances for Evesham Garage. The seating capacities of the Dart proved a problem at Hereford so three Dennis Darts 309/10/12 were swapped in late 2001/early 2002 for the three former Midland Red Dennis Lances (218-220) First Cymru had acquired in 1997. From January 2003 all the remaining 10 Darts from the N301-313XAB batch were reallocated to Hereford garage.