Sunday Variety

A Building With A Dark Secret?

In Sandwell Street, Walsall, you will find this anonymous industrial building well protected by security fencing and locked gates. Within its pictured closed portals are some things both special and precious.

This is the home of just part of the UK's Bus Archive.

The leaflet just touches on the stuff that is available to researchers.

Enthusiasts are invited to add to the collection.

To appreciate the scope of the Archive, the best place to search is the official web site (see below). fbb searched for London Country 1935 to 1939. The result was 177 entries!

Not surprisingly, these are all at Acton where the London Transport Archive is kept.

There is the aspiration that one day, when time and funds permit, this vast archive will be available on-line. Surely fbb will not live to see the day?

Even if, like your author, there is little likelihood of your being a user of the Archive ...

... it is well worth a browse through the on-line catalogue just to experience the scope of what is available.

You will even find a record of fbb's Isle of Wight open top bus operation!

Let Us Now Appraise Famous Women!

She is Claire Miles, the boss of Stagecoach. An on-line transport news feed has recently published an interview which makes for interesting reading.

How odd? Her favourite bus journey is the 599 run by Stagecoach in the Lake District!

Apart from an obvious plug for her employer, what else does Claire have to say?

Quite a lot!

Stagecoach is on a journey that is about to come full circle. At the wheel for this new adventure is Claire Miles. She took over as chief executive a year ago to lead a company with a turbulent past that is now a pure bus and coach operator focused solely on the UK.

Under controversial Scottish siblings Sir Brian Souter and Dame Ann Gloag, who set up the business in Perth, the company grew rapidly by snapping up rivals across the UK before expanding overseas and into trains and trams.

But all that has changed. Stagecoach has new owners after the founders sold their last shares two years ago to DWS, the former Deutsche Bank infrastructure fund. 

It is also under a new boss with a commitment to passengers and to the vital importance to communities of buses.

Careful Claire; don't mention pr*f*t and d*v*d*nds for the shareholders, expecially for the new owners!

Stagecoach has benefited from the £2 cap on single fares, introduced in January 2023 to help with the cost-of-living crisis. The scheme runs until the end of this year. 

Miles says: ‘We’d like to see an extension. There’s definite evidence it has helped to increase bus usage.’

She says: ‘If and when the £2 fare cap ends we need to plan for that in a way that’s affordable. We don’t yet know what the Government plans to do.’

You bet boss; a return to "normal" fares could presage a huge drop in passengers! And profits! 

Overall, profit grew by a third to £97.3million in the year to April 2024 as more people used buses.

Miles is sanguine about the idea of more London-style franchises. ‘Whichever model the local authority wants to go down, we’re very happy to work with them,’ Miles insists, as they ‘transition’ to a new way of running the buses. It won’t happen overnight. 

She says: ‘It’s going to take years.’

In the meantime, Stagecoach will work with local councils to smooth the transition back from private to public ownership. 

Just Like In Manchester?

This a far cry from a few years ago, when Stagecoach took the council to court in a failed bid to stop bus services being brought back under public control. ‘We don’t feel like that any more,’ says Miles breezily. 

That's because you lost!

‘We’re prepared to offer bus services in any mode that exists. What matters is the community and passengers get a great bus service.’

And Stagecoach's profits!

All Miles is looking for is ‘continuity’ and ‘support’ from Ministers for an ‘essential’ service as ‘it’s a good investment for them’.

Loyalty to Stagecoach itself varies. Miles says: ‘The brand is big in Scotland because of our heritage.’ But in other parts of the country, where routes might be carved up between several operators, ‘it is probably a lot less’.

‘What we do every day really matters. Everybody’s commitment to getting the job done – to getting people from A to B – is really brilliant,’ she says.

'That's why I'm here!'

Not to make good profits, then?

Franchises are less lucrative for Stagecoach. Last year it lost money in London – which accounts for a quarter of its £1.6billion annual turnover – due to driver shortages and a higher wage bill. It also set aside £21 million to cover ‘onerous’ contracts in the capital.

If franchising "just like London" really does "take off", then surely "just like London", Stagecoach is going to struggle to make enough money, any money, for its Investment Bank masters. Claire has a big management problem on the horizon 

As she says ...

'That's why I'm here!'

On A Celebratory Note

Railway Modeller is celebrating 75 years of publishing, only five years less than fbb's celebration of nearly 80 years living (?).

Peco has announced three celebratory models in the three scales that form the core of its rolling stock business.

N Gauge & TT120 Gauge

OOn9 Narrow Gauge

Meanwhile, just north of Axminster, on the Chard Road, Model Railway retailer Buffers ...

... is celebrating 25 years of trading with, guess what ...

... special liveried wagons in N scale from Peco and OO scale from Dapol.

Is She Playing The Keyboard?

Or simply mending a fuse? She looks well wrapped up against the cold.

Once Upon A Time

It was policy for the bigger bus companies to "get out of coaching", perceiving, probably wisely, that better profits were to be had from deregulated bus services. Some operators in the holidays market vanished without trace, like the original Shearings and Wallace Arnold.

A good few coach operators have given up the ghost as a result of Covid.

Yet GoAhead, for example, seems to be collecting smaller coach companies throughout its various operating areas.

GoAhead Brighton's existing coach brand is seen below.

Comfort in Troubling Times?

Always worth a try!

 Next Llandudno blog : Monday 16th Sept