Excel :: Fotopic.Net

Excel

6th March 2006

The story of Excel...In 1996 saw the introduction of the first excel route X94,which ran from Peterborough-Norwich every 2 hours. One year on the service was becoming more popular so the frequency was increased to hourly with the introduction of more coaches. The demand for the route increased even more over the next few years leading the route to be extended to Great Yarmouth then further to Gorleston and then in 2000 it was extended to Lowestoft. In 2002 saw the route with a complete new fleet of Plaxton paragons. The success of this was very apparent to First and therefore it used the same format of express coaches linking towns & cities to introduce three new routes in 2002 to create a network, X95 Watton/Shipdam-Lowestoft,X71/X74 Norwich-Lowestoft and X50 Norwich-Cromer. Demand for all of these routes proved very popular with passengers and very successful for First. 2005 saw First overhaul the Excel network making various improvements including renumbering routes,creating new routes and increasing frequency on the Peterborough-Lowestoft route now known as X1. At pesent the excel network in East Anglia consists of 7 routes;

(East Anglia)

X1 Peterborough-Lowestoft
X2 Norwich-Lowestoft
X3 Norwich-Watton
X4 Norwich-Thetford
X5 Norwich-Sheringham
X6 King's Lynn-Spalding

With the Excel network being such a huge success, First have now used the formula from the X94 (now X1) route to create several new routes and networks across the country,including Wales,Devon & Cornwall,Hertfordshire....At present First run 3 Excel routes in wales;

(Wales)

X1 Swansea-Bridgend
X2 Cardiff-Porthcawl
100 Cardiff-Swansea

In this collection you can see what coaches ran on the original X94 route that started off the Excel networks and a selection of other Excel coaches that run today on different routes in East Anglia and Wales.

Excel (east anglia) 1024x768 First X71/X74.jpg Buy Print	Replacement bus for Excel (east anglia) 1024x768 First X95.jpg Buy Print	Excel (east anglia) 1024x768 First X94.jpg Buy Print	Excel (east anglia) 1024x768 First_X1.jpg Buy Print
Excel (east anglia) 640x480 First X1.jpg Buy Print	Excel (east anglia) 1024x768 First_X1_.jpg Buy Print	Replacement bus for Excel (east anglia) 1024x768 First X2.jpg Buy Print	Excel (east anglia) 1024x768 First X94.jpg Buy Print
Excel (east anglia) 3072x2304 First X1.jpg Buy Print	Excel (east anglia) 3072x2304 First X5.jpg Buy Print	Excel (east anglia) 3072x2304 First X4.jpg Buy Print	Excel (east anglia) 3072x2304 First X5.jpg Buy Print