Goodbye to Southampton City Bus

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Over the years we’ve seen buses of various colours in carnations and ownerships jostling for space up the Shirley road. On Saturday though that all came to an hour although that all came to an end as First Southampton run its last buses under the City Red brand.

I have not had much opportunity to go down and take a ride on some of the last red buses to run in the city, however last Wednesday I took what opportunity I had to get down one last time.

Over the years I actually remember the days of Southampton City Bus although the Corporation that came before it was something that was just a little bit before my time. I remember going down on one of those old Explorer bus tickets where you scratched off the date to validate it, and I kind of enjoyed riding around on those old battered Atlantean’s.

So one of the first pictures in this rambling tangent is how First Southampton honoured the history of the Red brand.

A history of Southampton City Transport through to First Southampton featured on many, if not most City Red buses.

How things have changed though. I find myself reminiscing when I’m not really a great fan of the Wrightbus Streetlites that grace some of the souths towns and cities. Give me some variety any day of the week. You’ve heard it first, that I kind of reminisce about buses run by Southampton Mini Link and Xelabus.

Sorry – You wanted pictures of buses!

So some of the plan that I had was to go all Fred York for the day and try and get some pictures of buses with boozers. It was a kind of inspiration on The Provincial Society’s Facebook page recently, when a regular feature of Fred on Friday threw up a picture of a First Provincial (now of course First Solent) Pointer Dart outside The Wiltshire Lamb in Gosport. I had a number of pubs that I wanted to try and get with buses as they looked like they could be quite photogenic, however at the same time I knew that I would probably end up then wanting to have a beer in some of them.

This first picture though was out in Thornhill. 63060 is outside The Hinkler pub in Hinkler Road, although the pub at this time of the morning was closed. Service 3 is being replaced with Bluestar service 19 over a slightly amended route serving Maybush Corner out west of Shirley. It was the only one that really came out of any good; certainly with a red bus anyway!

To be fair, what I had planned to be the start of a busy day photographing buses did not go well. I got off the train at Southampton Airport Parkway because I had not really had the chance to sample a UniLink service outside the city centre. The plan was to head to Portswood to grab a few shots of City Red service 7 buses outside The Mitre Lounge and The Gordon Arms. Unfortunately I had not checked out the fact that there were substantial roadworks in the area and so most outbound buses were diverted via the A335.

The Mitre Lounge also was not the best place for pictures at 9am. The sun was not quite in the right place, so this is 47689 pictured outside the Waitrose in Portswood on it’s inbound service.

Heading towards the Standing Order pub for a bite of lunch, I caught up with 35212 (SL16 RFX) crept up behind me at Holyrood Church in the south of the City Centre. I had only hung around originally as I knew that the Go South Coast QuayConnect liveried Enviro 400 City was in the area and had completely missed this recent ex-Bristol StreetDeck tracking. The Wright StreetDecks have not been in Southampton for long, having only moved south about a year ago if memory serves.

Various sources suggest that these StreetDecks will now head east to the First Solent brand at Hoeford to join others that moved from Bristol (Hengrove) to Hoeford last summer. To be fair, I prefer the First Solent livery on the StreetDecks than I do the City Red livery, the white interjection on the red just seems…. off.

Wandering through Bitterne, half an hour in the centre by the shops offered a few blue, red and other coloured buses as you can see. The lack of public trackers on Xelabus vehicles, and the need to give your phone number to RYGO (which in itself is a bit of a data protection nightmare – why would you have over nonsectarian data like your phone number to track a bus) means that you never know what is going to show up on services like the Bitterne Hoppa.

The Bitterne Hoppa was operated by First Southampton up until 2016; at which point I think it was run maybe by another operator before passing to Xelabus, although my memory on that is as Hazy as it is after a can of Hazy Jane. Editors Note: Triple Hazy from Brewdog is a tad strong, but very tasty.

Finally, outside the St Boniface Catholic Church in Shirley, we see the passing of multiple buses. An unidentified ex-Bristol StreetDeck appears in the background while Bluestar 1603 runs towards Romsey on service 4, and First City Red SN14 FF* is operating on the short lived extension to service 8 for the City and Hedge End.

I wished to have stayed longer, however unwell children at home on half term and being on a day off between working shifts meant that I had to cut my afternoon short and head back to Southampton Central railway station for a train home.

I am going to miss the passing of red buses, although you should never say never, that someone will not revive the Southampton City Bus name, or indeed an iconic red Enviro 200 or Dart SLF. For now though, there are very few red buses running through the city, until a City Sightseeing operation begins or Gareth Blair gets 401 out for a trip around the city.