Activity update - October 8th 2014

September proved to be a busy time for us, with work on the second edition of the Norfolk Green Fleet Handbook being completed and sent for printing. We visited King’s Lynn to photograph the loaned Volvo Olympians on their first day in service and also managed a better photograph of the Volvo B10M coach used for driver training. Less than 24 hours later the book has been proofed and was ready for press. This edition of the book was produced for the Omnibus Society’s Presidential Weekend with a Foreword included in the book by President and former Norfolk Green owner Ben Colson.
Hot on the heels of the Norfolk Green book was our first edition of the Stagecoach Oxfordshire Fleet Handbook and we would like to thank local enthusiast - and author of the Oxford & Chilterns Bus Page - Malcolm Crowe for his assistance in its production.
We are still working on the Stagecoach Cumbria & North Lancashire  and also the Stagecoach North East Fleet Handbooks. We are holding these back to allow us to include new and cascaded vehicles into these fleets.
For next year we plan a new edition of the Stagecoach East Midlands Fleet Handbook and new books covering the Stagecoach South Wales, South West, South East and South Fleets and would welcome submission of images for these books - if you can help then please make initial contact using form on  the ‘Contact Us’ page.
We are also working on an illustrated guide to the Stagecoach ‘Heritage & Preserved’ fleet. Again if you can supply any images of these vehicles we would like to hear from you. We pay £5 for each photo used and you will also get a free copy of the book in which your photo(s) appear.
Now for a moan and an apology. We have suffered from poor courier and postal service in the last month. Publication of our Stagecoach Oxfordshire Fleet Handbook was delayed by seven days after Parcelforce mis-delivered the box of books from our printer N&P Print. The printer investigated and with little hope on a swift resolution they reprinted the books and has them delivered in under 48 hours - a great example of customer service. Almost two weeks on the mis-delivered package has still not re-appeared.
Then we had a delivery of boxes, used to pack our books to Trade Customers. These were ordered on a next day delivery and were delivered at a totally unacceptable time of 22:10. When I complained to the courier he said there was no problem as it was still ‘next day’!
There have also been some intermittent problems with mail to our Royal Mail PO Box, which should get delivered with our other mail. It seems that some mail has not been delivered and may have been returned to sender. If you do get mail back please let us know, we will refund postage, send a postage paid envelope for you to re-send the mail to us. If this happens it would be useful for the original envelope with any Royal Mail comments on it to be sent to us so we can follow up in detail with Royal Mail.
Finally, we hope you find our monthly Allocation Supplement documents useful. In preparation for future titles we have started to produce these for other fleets.