Lothian Buses: Edinburgh Tour

English: Edinburgh Tour is one of the various tour bus services operated by Lothian Buses. It had its origins in the 2002 acquisition and breakup of the Guide Friday group of tour operations by the competing City Sightseeing company - at the time, Lothian were a City Sightseeing franchise holder - see City Sightseeing Edinburgh - competing against a Guide Friday run Edinburgh Tour. Lothian retained both tours, replacing the elderly Guide Friday vehicles with its own buses - Olympian/RHs. At least one Routemaster was also used. These have since been replaced with Dennis Trident / Plaxton Presidents.

Olympian / RH edit

The tour was initially operated with Alexander RH bodied Olympian buses cascaded from the main fleet, converted into both partial & full open top buses. They were painted in a light green & cream livery based on the dark green/cream design previously used by Guide Friday - the Guide Friday name was also initially retained on the buses, in small red lettering.

Fully open top
Partial open top

Trident / President edit

The fleet has since been replaced with low-floor buses from the 1999 built T-reg batch (509/510) and V-reg batch (511-521, 529/530), cascaded from the main fleet and converted into open top buses. This change saw the livery refreshed with a new design, now in two tone green (a similar update occurred with the Majestic Tour). The buses use/d were/are as follows:

T-reg: 509-510
V-reg: 511-521 (521 from Majestic Tour, 512-6 since gone to World Heritage tour)
V-reg: 529/30

509-510 (partial open top) edit

No.s 509/510 have been with the Edinburgh Tour since conversion.

511-513 (partial open top) edit

No.s 511-513 were allocated to the Edinburgh Tour at conversion; 512/513 have since been repainted for use on the Edinburgh World Heritage Official Tour.

514-521 (full open top) edit

No.s 514-520 were allocated to the Edinburgh Tour at conversion; 521 joined later, being repainted out of Majestic Tour livery. 514-6 have since been repainted for use on the Edinburgh World Heritage Official Tour.