Livery colours

What got you thinking?

Conway635 wrote: »

Repaints were swift, all being completed by end 2006.

...which must mean that DB throws away money on repaints if they are hurriedly repainting the entire fleet to standardise it each time they change their (not simple) livery.

Buses in Berlin have had 2 colours in about 80 years. Yellow and then a more yellow shade of yellow. The "new shade" came in about 15 years ago but you STILL see the odd old unit out and about with the previous paler shade of yellow.

There are no stripes, no complex graphics. The buses are painted in a simple distinctive livery. I really like this approach tbh (Berlin U Bahn and Tram units are the same plain yellow as they are run by the same company, the BVG).

Munich has reverted to this "simple" style as well (they use all over blue however) for their U Bahn, tram and bus units, having previously used a (still fairly simple) blue/white livery. These are simple ways to keep costs down and should be taken for granted by a bus operator that is essentially state funded.

murphaph wrote: »

...which must mean that DB throws away money on repaints if they are hurriedly repainting the entire fleet to standardise it each time they change their (not simple) livery.

.

It's an easy assumption to make, but on this issue I'm happy to reassure that DB is acting reasonably (and if you go through my posting history you will see that I am critical of their operations or decisions as often as I am supportive, so I'm not heavily biased).

The repaints take place as part of an overhaul cycle when the buses are aged 3, 6, and 9 years (with disposal assumed to take place at year 12).

Dublin's buses are used hard, and many leave the fleet having passed the million mile mark through all-day, every-day service. Consequently the buses will often have clocked up in excess of a quarter of a million miles by the time of each overhaul, at which point a comprehensive inspection and replacement is done on body frame, panels etc, and with many gleaming new unpainted panels, a trip to the paint shop is a neccessity in any case.

So when the new livery was introduced at the end of 2003, the newest three quarters of the fleet would pick up the new colours on next overhaul, while the remaining 25% were withdrawn and sold to the UK as end of life.

Repainting is done by outside contractors, all by open tender for best cost.

The reason why, in the earlier days (60s, 70s) the livery changes took much longer, is that while the overhauls in those days were even more thorough, the system for selecting vehicles for overhaul was more random, and some Atlanteans had been overhauled into orange twice while others were still running round in blue and cream and in rag order. The overall state of the fleet these days is a million times better than it was in the 1970s thanks to better vehicles, and a more systematic approach.

It is interesting that you mention buses in mainland europe as compared to Dublin. I would agree that they would see body overhaul and repaint less frequently than Irish ones, on the whole, though I'd bet mechanical/electrical schedules would be near identical.

Ireland presents a special problem for bus bodywork (rather than mechanics) due to our somewhat uneven approach to road design and repairs.

I remember talking to a chief engineer of Bombardier towards the tail end of that firm's brief life building buses for CIE in the early 1980s. By this time some 300 of the eventual 366 KD type double-deckers were on the road, and the early ones, only two years old, were already encountering problems with body frames cracking and sagging.

He pointed out that CIE had the design comissioned from FFG of Hamburg, a well respected German firm, and they had, as requested produced the designs and prototypes for "city double deck", "city single deck" etc.

However what a German engineer understood by a "city bus" was bustling back and forward along well-paved european streets, and not careering up and down Killincarrig Hill on the 84, or operating provincial routes out of Cork on roads little better than boreens. He told me that he had taken a spin on a KD on the Cork to Fountainstown service in the company of an FFG senior manager who had come to Ireland to investigate the problems being encountered, and that this one sample of the environment in which their "city buses" were operating left them both white-faced . . .

But anyway, back to the colours.

Body inspection and refurbishment, retrim and repaint, this happens every three years, whether the corporate colours are changing or not, and believe me it contributes to the overall wellbeing and efficiency of the hardware.

C635