Mercedes Citaro 

Current vehicles of this type in the fleet 

During 2018 the decision was taken to upgrade the Worcester fleet with 13 full sized Mercedes single deckers all of which were refurbished prior to arrival at Worcester. The vehicles fall into 3 distinct batches of vehicles. The buses were destined to replace the remainder of the Enviro 300’s which were transferred to First PMT many of the Optare Solo’s and Dennis Darts at the depot.

64012-6 & 8  

A batch of eight Mercedes single deck vehicles were allocated to First Beeline in February 2003 and registered LT52WXA/B/L/N/O/P and LX03LNE/F and took the national fleet numbers 64012-9. The vehicles were allocated to the Slough depot. In October 2015 the vehicles were transferred to Southampton to join the First Southampton fleet and were reregistered OIG6942-8. 64017 was made into a driver trainer at Southampton and the remaining vehicles were transferred to Worcester depot. Before entering service all of the vehicles were refurbished by Thornton Brothers Limited of Ashington and repainted into the standard First urban livery with a Fuchsia front. 

64021 is one of three vehicles 64019/20/1 that were acquired new by First Beeline again for their Slough depot in early 2004. 64021 was withdrawn from service Slough in January 2018. Like all of the other vehicles it was sent to  The Thornton Brothers Limited of  Ashington for refurbishment and has like 64042/3/4/5 has  been painted in a special purple livery which has specifically been designed for the route 35 from Worcester City Centre to Warndon which has been branded the Nimrod route. The vehicle arrived in Worcester fully refurbished and entered service on 21st December 2018.

The remaining six vehicles were part of a batch of 18 vehicles that took the fleet numbers 64030-64048. Again these vehicles were new to First Beeline at their Slough depot and entered service there to two batches one of 10 vehicles in 2007 and a further one of eight vehicles in 2008. Like 64021 all the vehicles that were transferred to Worcester reminded in service until January 2018. On withdrawal they were all sent to Thornton Brothers Limited of  Ashington for refurbishment. The first two are in a special grey livery and are the back up vehicles for the 35 and 144 when one of the branded buses are not available for those routes. The remaining four are like 64021 painted in a special purple livery which has specifically been designed for the route 35 from Worcester City Centre to Warndon which has been branded the Nimrod route. The key issue with the vehicles was that they had spent around one year out of service and all need new sets of batteries which had to be specially ordered which delayed the vehicles entering service at Worcester. During March 2020 two more of the the vehicles from the wider batch joined the Worcester fleet to replace Streetlites that had been transferred to Leicester.