Heritage bus hits the road in Aberdeenshire
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Local bus operator, Stagecoach, has unveiled a special heritage bus that will serve communities across Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire.
The bus now looks exactly as the Leopard and Tiger buses used locally in the mid 1980s.
At that time the company was operated by Northern Scottish Omibuses trading as Bluebird Northern.
Stagecoach then bought the company in March 1991.
The team at the Stagecoach Tullos depot in Aberdeen is responsible for the transformation which took three weeks to complete.
The engineers got to work on the bus at the beginning of April 2021 drawing up the design before carrying out the priming, painting and final signwriting on the bus.
The bus was painted carefully by hand and the finishing signwriting touches also completed by hand.
The heritage livery features the original Bluebird logo which many bus drivers of the 80s and 90s had proudly tattooed on their arms.
Peter Knight, managing director for Stagecoach Bluebird said: “I’m really proud of how our Engineers have worked together to restore this bus to how it would have looked in the 1980s.
"I know many of our customers will remember travelling on the original Bluebird Northern buses and hope when they see the bus on the road it brings back fond memories of keeping connected by bus.”
The heritage bus operated the first service trips on services 4, 5 and 6 connecting Aberdeen city centre to Countesswells and Westhill and will be seen around the north-east in weeks to come.
