SG iBus Forum

Even though her trial had officially ended on 30 September, reports began to surface that she was still in operation on 1 October. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity, I camped out at Clementi again in the hipes of seeing her one more time. Another bus enthusiast also spotted her out of BNDEP, although she was off service, and speculated it was on a training run, or that it was deadheading to UPDEP or ST Kinetics. Thankfully, this was proven false when, at 1735, SG5999Z pulled into Clementi a full 10 minutes ahead of schedule after completing a revenue trip on . As the passengers were disembarking, I managed to talk to the BC, and he informed me that SG5999Z would be doing one more rotation to Bedok, as per normal. Therefore, after snapping some photos, I went to wait for her to depart, intending to film her runnint towards Bedok.

Despite an early arrival, she would wait out in Clementi for her usual departure slot; in the meantime a Citaro departed as , followed by a B9TL CDGE, regular , before SG5999Z pulled into the berth exactly at 1757H. At boarding, it was observed that there were not so many passengers, in part due to the 2 buses which had departed only 10mins prior. Throughout thr journey, the bus was not veey packed; even at Orchard the bus had many seats scattered throughout the upper deck, especially at the back. Of course, at Bugis, many passengers boarded; even so, the upper deck still had seating left scattered around the rear, and one or two passengers did a double take before boarding - not surprising, as SG5999Z's Mobitec Mobi EDS is formatted to display the route information in white and bright blue, as opposed to orange for a conventional Mobitec EDS and other EDSs on other buses! At Kallang, there was a pleasent surprise as one of the usual SBS assessors who was collecting data on SG5999Z boarded her, but purely as a passenger, and she recognised me(due to me being onboard SG5999Z so many times ) and she was pleasently surprised to find me on board! Even though it has been 6 months since SG5999Z made her debut on , many passengers are surprised by the presence of a second set of staircase at the rear.

In part due to traffic congestion around the Orchard-Bugis belt, the journey time was 1hr 40mins, and throughout the trip the bus was not very packed. It was a very sad moment as she pulled into Bedok Interchange and I prepared to alight from her for what seemed to be the last time. Of course, filming up to this point, I was the last passenger on board and did not let this chance go to waste, filming the interior on SG5999Z before alighting and filming the exterior as well. It was a very sad moment as I bade goodbye to her after what might be the penultimate trip on her, with endless mileage being clocked on this bus. The photos below can, in no way, express the number of trips that I made on SG5999Z, and it is merely a representation of the final trip I made on her due to the filming of the trip.

The original, merged footage of SG5999Z can be found here: