Last updated: 30 June 2017

If you had been standing at the entrance to Fareham Bus Station in July 2003, this would have been a familiar scene. Fred York captured Plaxton bodied Dennis dart SLF no. 42131 (S631 KTP) swinging out on its way to Lee-on-the-Solent on route 34. Although branded in the then relatively new scheme of ‘gosport-fareham CONNECTION’, the bus was on a different route. Not as unusual as it seems as the chairman has his own images of similarly branded vehicles on routes 63 (Fareham to Havant), 72 (Southampton to Gosport) and 80 (Southampton to Fareham). No. 631 was one of ten Darts delivered in September 1998 in the batch (S624 KTP – S633 KTP). Others followed in January and February 1999. Would you have been witnessing a forerunner of the Eclipse introduced in 2012? The idea of the ‘CONNECTION’ was to have a good frequency on routes 82, 83, 85 and 86 between the two towns via Hoeford, Bridgemary, Brockhurst and Elson. There has always been a great demand for public transport on the main link between Gosport and Fareham and this was one of the ways that the need was met at the time. Now there are hardly any buses operating along the main road by Hoeford as all services tend to use the busway on the E1, E2, 9 and 9A routes. What will it be like in fourteen years from now?

NEW VEHICLES

ADL E200MMC (Eclipse)

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