Mercedes Citaro 

605 & 606 X438/9KON 

Warwickshire County Council has control through the tendering procedures of a number of both daytime, evening and Sunday bus services in their County. As a way of driving up vehicle standards on these contracts they tender a number of these routes in packages where they supply the low floor vehicles. One of the early packages tendered around four years ago was the one which contains the service 23 Stratford to Whichford via Shipston on Mondays to Saturday daytime, 2 Monday to Saturday workings on service 279 from Stratford to Hampton Lucy), a number of short-working journeys on service 21 from Stratford to Broadway). Also evening services on routes 25/6 from Alcester to Stratford and 28/9 from Stratford to Evesham. All of this package of work was won in 2000 by Guide Friday (now trading as Stratford Blue and part of Ensign Bus) for which Warwickshire County Council provided two brand new Mercedes Citaro 48-seater buses in October of that year painted in their green and yellow "County Links" livery. On re-tendering of the services First Wyvern were successful in winning the new contract and so the vehicles were transferred from Stratford Blue to First Wyvern. The new contracts which are only on a short term basis started on Tuesday 4th January 2005 though the buses did not arrive at Worcester for service preparation until the 7th January 2005. Johnson's of Henley in Arden operate two similar vehicles X432/3KON on the services 21 and 22 for Warwickshire County Council. Both First Wyvern vehicles entered service at Evesham during the middle of January 2005 and neither actually carry a fleet number. The ticket machines on each vehicle are coded to show the numbers in the registration mark as the fleet number. With the closure of Evesham Garage the vehicles moved to Redditch Garage. However in January 2007 the vehicles were returned to Warwickshire County Council. Warwickshire County Council moved them to Johnson's of Henley in Arden to join sister vehicles X432/3KON. The vehicles have since been withdrawn.