Double Deck Vehicles

40519/20  YN08MKP/O  

42564/5 - K123/6URP 

42625/6 -  BJ14KTC & BJ14KTA

40633/4  LJ04LFV/GA

As part of the deal to purchase Midland Classic 2 Wrights bodied double deckers joined the Diamond Bus fleet. These vehicles are on VDL chassis’  and they both started life with Arriva  in their London red bus operation. 40633 had the Arriva fleet number DW82 and 40634 had the DW87 number. Both joined the Midland Classic fleet in 2008 and were soon painted in their Red and yellow livery and were fitted with electronic destination blinds. Unlike the newer ADL double deckers both have retained their dual door arrangement. In common with many operators of dual door vehicles the centre doors are only used as an emergency exit.  

40635-40 LK04NNL/F/E & LK54FWO/L/R

As part of the deal to purchase Midland Classic  six Plaxton President bodied double deckers joined the Diamond Bus fleet. These vehicles are on Volvo chassis and are like ones acquired by Rotala back in 2013 when they purchased the Redditch operations from First Group. Unlike the previous ones these started life with Metroline though again in  London on red bus contracts in London. They joined the Midland Classic fleet in 2020 for use on school related services though like all the double deckers in the fleet do see service on other services. All the vehicles entered service in all over red livery with the Midland Classic branding added. They were soon painted in their Red and yellow livery and were fitted with electronic destination blinds. Unlike the newer ADL double deckers both have retained their dual door arrangement. In common with many operators of dual door vehicles the centre doors are only used as an emergency exit.    

40725/6 -  MX20HVJ & MX20 HVK 

Back in August 2019 Rotala purchased the Bolton bus depot from First Group for £5.3M. Unusually, it did not purchase most of the vehicles instead agreeing short term leasing agreements for the buses. For the double deckers this was for just over 12 months. The Rotala plan was to replace all of these vehicles with brand new Streetdeck vehicles manufactured by Wrightsbus. Since then the company has taken delivery of 143 new vehicles plus a nearly new demonstrator vehicle. The vast majority of the vehicles have been allocated to the Bolton depot but the opportunity has also been taken to upgrade vehicles at the Preston depot. In late April 2022 it was announced that Rotala would be purchasing the bus operations of Johnson’s of Henley in Arden. Some of the services they acquired needed double deck vehicles and so 2 Streetdecks were transferred from the Bolton depot over the weekend of the 30th April/1st May 2022 initially going to the Tividale depot where they were used on a rail replacement service and the 002. Within days the vehicles had moved to Redditch ready to be used on former Johnson services.   When the Midland Classic operations were purchased and with reduction in vehicles requirements at Redditch following loss of much of the Johnson's bus operation to Stagecoach the two Streetdecks were transferred to Burton on Trent so that double deck vehicles that meet the Euro VI requirement could be used on the Amazon contract. which runs from Birmingham City Centre.

40844/5 -  YJ70EWD & YJ70 EWC  

As part of the deal to purchase the bus operations of Johnson's Coaches in April 2022 two Optare double deckers joined the Diamond Bus fleet from Johnson's. These vehicles had joined the Johnson's fleeting 2020 from dealer stock to partly replace some earlier double deckers that were sold to Bournemouth Transport. The 2 vehicles are built with full coach seating as Johnson's used them not only on bus services but private hire and rail replacement services