Photo of the Week - Week 13:
Donnybrook's newly wrapped AX616 is seen at the Enniskerry Village terminus of Route 44 on the 30th March 2014.
The latest news in the Dublin Bus Fleet concerns the tri-sided wrap obtained by Donnybrook's AX616 for the new Spiderman 2 movie which will hit the cinema screens on Good Friday. The new tri-sided ad has become the norm, the fleet standard front being a requirement. In this case the match between the ad and the front of the bus doesn't look too bad, something which must be considered when designing a wrap for a bus. This was especially poor looking on the Oreo buses which were the last tri-sided adverts to hit the streets. They didn't last long, so AX616 may be here and gone quickly. Get it while you can, with Route 75 being its principle home from home.
A rear shot of AX616 at the Larkhill terminus of Route 44 at Glendun Road on the 30th March 2014.
As may have been noted updates have been incredibly slow this year. Things have been very busy since the turn of the year and the website has lost out. Maintaining a website is an incredibly time consuming matter, for example I've been talking about redesigning the website for years now but never seem to have the time to do it. Flickr and other photo sharing websites do make the process of photo sharing a lot easier, and much of the Dublin Bus content nowadays is on Flickr. I enjoy these pages and visit regularly, but I am still partial to websites. Every good photo has a story behind it, and a website allows the telling of this story in an easily accessible form. It is also the mainstay of the feature, a collation of photos and text describing an important event, such as those occuring through the Network Direct process. The recent closure, or "parking", of Irishbuses.com is therefore a terrible loss to the bus enthusiast community. Its feature based content was clearly the inspiration behind the concept of these pages. The word "parked" gives hope that it will return. Being one of the "original" websites, it was a great historical reference of the post-millenium bus operations. Websites take time, but Rome wasn't built in a day. Unfortunately, Rome can be destroyed and lost in one day. For the moment the website is still accessible "behind the scenes", and may well be accessible for some time on the WayBack Machine. To end this week, I'll give my favourite 5 features by IrishBuses over the years, which are still accessible as of now (March 2014):