First South Yorkshire

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First South Yorkshire is a large bus operator in South Yorkshire, England. As a division of FirstGroup the company's official name is Mainline who operated it between 1989 and 1998, following the takeover of South Yorkshire Transport (SYT).

[edit] History

Mainline started as a trade name for the main routes, starting in Sheffield in 1989, buses traded with Sheffield Mainline in a bright red and yellow livery, replacing the beige/red livery used before, it was followed by Doncaster Mainline in a silver grey and red livery relieved by a light yellow band, and finally Rotherham Mainline, whose buses ran in blue and yellow. In 1992 they all merged together and used Mainline as the fleetname, the livery based on the former Sheffield Mainline red and yellow, but silver and blue bands were added. Mainline operated most bus services in South Yorkshire over that time (thanks in the main to the former monopoly position of SYT), though other operators such as Leon Motors, Wilfreda Beehive, Andrew's of Sheffield and Yorkshire Terrier operated some services. The company was generally popular with passengers, and boasted an extensive network with low fares and modern vehicles. Mainline was sold to its employees in 1993, though not long after Stagecoach bought a 20% stake in the company. This had to be sold off in 1995, at which point the newly created FirstBus took the 20%.

Mainline was taken over by First Group in 1998, and became First Mainline. The livery became just red and yellow, a reminiscence of the original 1989 Sheffield mainline livery. The name was altered again to First South Yorkshire. Since about 2000, vehicles began being repainted in First Group corporate livery (nicknamed "Barbie"). The service levels currently seen are lower than those in Mainline days, however fares have increased and there has been little investment in new vehicles^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Fleet

Although in recent times there have been very few new buses invested. First received a large batch of Volvo B10BLEs in 1999 as well as a number of Volvo B7Ls and B7TLs between 2002-2004; most of these were however allocated to Sheffield routes, whilst Doncaster received secondhand buses cascaded from London. The newest buses in the fleet are 10 Volvo B7TLs/Wright Eclipse Gemini which entered service during summer 2006. Twenty B9/Wright double-decker buses are due to upgrade the X78 route in January 2007. Ten will be based at Rotherham Midland Road depot and ten will be based at Doncaster depot. The peak vehicle requirement is eighteen vehicles for route X78 and two will be kept as spares ^{[citation needed]}. Dennis Dominators were the main double deckers in the fleet with over 300 at one time. These have steadly been withdrawn and the last ran in service on 26 July 2006.