Daring Doings in Doncaster's Dunscroft [4]

Along the Main Road to Thorne

Thorne Colliery (at Moorends) was opened in stages from 1925; but had operation issues including shaft water, war time crises and maintenance trouble, causing the pit to be non-productive for much of its lifespan.

Production ended in 1958 due to geological problems. Unsuccessful proposals to restart production were made in the 1980s, when weird looking new headgear was built ...

... and 1990s, and in 2004 the pit pumps were turned off and the headgear demolished.

Back in fbb's student or immediately post-student days, he remembers a bus trip to Thorne. On the road through to Moorends, there used to be a chippy at the the end of every side road; and opposite each fried food emporium was a pub. The rides out and back were on one of the independent companies that plied the roads in the area. These independents also conveyed ex Thorne miners to work at nearby collieries.

With the county-wide PTE renumbering series, it needed four route numbers to explain variations via Brickyards ...

... (long since closed and cleared but replaced in part by a golf course) ...

... and via the wobble at Thorne, known as "South Common Estate". 185s which missed South Common Estate and Hatfied Woodhouse were generally positioning journeys from depot to Moorends in the early morning.

Most of the first section of route is Doncaster suburban, passing Wheatley to the west, Wheatley Hills to the east then off into more rural communities. Hatfield is notable because the main road route stops are here ...

... for many years separate from buses via Barnby Dun and Stainforth. In 1985, just prior to the shambles of privatisation and deregulation, the 185 to 188 routes ran every 15 minutes. Time rolls on by and in 2014 its simplified replacement is an 88 (with deleted 100) running only half hourly ...

... and extended every hour to Goole.

88A (and, previously, journeys numbered 186) was used for journeys via Lindholme (dotted on the above map) which will feature later in this series.

The change from Sunday 26th January is thus a lot simpler than First or Travel South Yorkshire make it. The 88 is NOT "withdrawn", for example ...

... and the X8 is NOT "new".

The route is renumbered X8, runs "Limited Stop" between Doncaster and Dunsville and no longer extends to Goole.

Buses still run every 30 minutes ...

... but the limited stoppiness means that the journey is a whole 3 minutes faster. Wow! fbb guesses that scheduling of the route can now be self-contained with ten minutes "layover" in every two-hour round trip.

We will meet the replacement service to Goole in the next blog in this series, due early next week. In the meantime enjoy an Aerofilms picture of "Moorends Colliery Village" soon after it was built by the colliery owners in 1928.

Terminating buses still run in a one-way loop via the "village".

"The Winning Post" is no longer a pub but serves as a Community Centre.

Oddly, when Google viewed the street, there was still a winning post at "The Winning Post".

The pub was very much a local highlight as well as the historic name of the bus terminus! "Round the back" was a magnificent "concert hall" where "turns" would, from time to time, entertain the evening drinkers.

How things have changed ...

Hey ho. Don't get maudlin, fbb. Life moves on.

 Next bus blog : Saturday 24th January