 | Photo © Richard Groves. |
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Having passed under tendering from Blue Triangle to Docklands Buses on 25 March 2006, operation of route 368 has now returnde to the former company. Both companies were until recently small independents, but had been taken over by the Go Ahead group in separate deals, and it was found to be more ecomical to trade Docklands 368 with Blue Triangle's 474; the 368 is a smaller route, but Blue Triangle also took up route 364 from the same date the swap occurred, 3 November 2007. The loss of the 368 by Blue Triangle must have been a blow; at that time the company did not seem to have been having much success with TfL tendering. However, Docklands Buses was even smaller, having previously had only two TfL contracts, one of those being for just one bus!
New vehicles were obtained by Docklands, being MCV EVolution bodied Darts. I had not heard of MCV before, but it seems they took over the remains of Marshalls of Cambridge (Ely). The Evolution was only available on MAN chassis until recently. The design has some similarities to Marshall’s Capital, such as the sloping cab window – there is also unusually one along the side. The livery was surprisingly colourful given current TfL requirement for almost full red – indeed it seems this is a mistake, and is now being altered, as colour variations are now permitted at skirt level only, with no stripes or anything remotely as fancy as these buses have! Following the transfer to Blue Triangle they have duly been re-branded, hence the update to this page. They have also gained fleet numbers, and in this view ED4 (AE06 HCF) waits for passengers at the Wangey Road terminus in Chadwell Heath.
| Photo © Richard Groves. |
The 368 is one of the routes created in the 20 March 1993 Barking scheme, fusing parts of routes B2 and B3. Those routes had themselves only been created on 14 September 1991 in a short-lived attempt to provide buses in Barking with a local identity, replacing the eastern ends of routes 162 and 238 respectively. (The rest of the 162 was dealt with in the Newham scheme later in 1993, but the 238 survives).
Previously, buses from Barking on route 162/B2 had approached Mayesbrook Park from the north, and running the 368 via Ripple Road to Lodge Lane allowed it to continue along Becontree Avenue replacing the B3, and thence to a new terminal point at Chadwell Heath (the B3 ran to Becontree Heath and Marks Gate). New DW class Dennis Darts replaced the Barking Titans that had been used on the B routes, at a higher frequency.
Re-tendering saw the route, surprisingly, pass to Blue Triangle from 24 March 2001, with new Ceatano Nimbus bodied Darts. At that point the route was extended in Barking to Harts Lane, a new residential development just north of the town centre.
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