Go North East (GNE) is another operator to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee year with a specially-liveried vehicle. It has repainted an Alexander Dennis Enviro400 to celebrate the anniversary.
The bus – a former demonstrator – will operate across GNE’s Tyne and Wear and County Durham network. It will also be centre stage of an open day to be held at Riverside depot in Gateshead on Sunday 15 May. That event will adopt a Jubilee celebratory theme and it will also help to raise funds for the Great North Air Ambulance and the Disasters Emergence Committee Ukraine Appeal.
Says GNE Managing Director Martijn Gilbert: “We are honoured to be carrying a special livery on one of our double-deckers to mark the occasion of Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee year, something that we hope will stand as a celebration of the region’s support and appreciation of the British Monarch and the many things she has done in and around the North East.
“Alongside plaques in the Metro and features in Eldon Square shopping centre marking the Queen’s visit to the region in her Silver Jubilee year in 1977, we now have a commemorative bus as a fitting travelling tribute.”
During that Silver Jubilee year, a predecessor to today’s operators in the North East marked the event with a special livery on an open-top Leyland Atlantean. That bus is currently under restoration, including back into its Silver Jubilee guise, by the North East Bus Preservation Trust, and GNE has taken the opportunity to pose it with the commemorative Enviro400.
GNE joins other operators including First Berkshire and Stagecoach South in applying commemorative liveries to mark the Platinum Jubilee year.