Sunday Variety

 GoAhead Joins The Club

"The Club" refers to he growing practice of the big bus groups' buying up small coach operators anywhere and everwhere in the country. Bearing in mind the huge bus and rail portfolios held by GoAhead, it is really hard to understand the benefits to "the bottom line" of investing peanuts in a small family run bus and coach company. But they are all at it!

Maybe Club members are so desperate to find some source of profits after the franchsing of urban bus networks and the elephant in the room of Great British Railways deplete their profit earning potential.

It is still hard to see what difference Swanbrook will make. The former family run company has a solid coach hire business with some smart motors, one with wheelchair lift at the front ...

... and one with a swirly livery replacing stripes!

The company has run a variety of tendered bus services in the past ...

But the only public service currently running is Cheltenam "local" route K.

If the on-line pictures are anything to go by, there is a big school bus contract with Churchdown Academy ...

... which is just a normal comprehensive school with pretentions!

Is it a good business move for GoAhead or merely following the trend of the other groups, just in case there's something in it!

fbb is sure that Auntie Frances would be happy to talk turkey!

Grim News in the West Midlands?

This would refer, initially, to tendered services BUT it may be a precursor to making a case for franchising.

Good News for Yorkshire?

The lovely Louise (Ms Haigh to be formal) should have been very clear in her role as the (now former) Minister of Transport.

But a careful read of the rest of the news item reveals that the story is a non-event, centred round that catch all politicians' phrase "could be".

Having removed the relatively small subsidy to keep fares capped at £2, the government is now handing out huge bags of money to all and sundry "to improve bus services throughout the country".

It all does really defy logic!

The article continues ...

So what is the motivation for this collection of contradictory coucil cash cows?

There is, as yet, no "trail blazing" in York or anywhere nearby. Louise "hopes" that franchising might happen.

The word on the street (maybe better, the word in the dusty corridors of the local authorities) is that franchsing is being filed in the far too dfficult version of the waste bin.

Hydrogen Power, Hopefilly?

And a bit more ...

But Happening (At Last) In Crawley.

Better, Surely, Is Electric?

What a surprise!

Hornby's Troubled Trainset

Did the journalist who wrote this piece really know anything about the model railway trade? His picture of a model railway was, indeed, of Hornby products ...

... which ceased production in the late 1930s.

 All Pals Together

The two besties are managers from Hornby (left) and Rapido (right). Look closely and you will see that both bosses are holding pre-production models of the same loco. It is a model of the Great Northern Railway class J13,  one of which is preserved as below.

Hornby has produced a J13 before but had just announced a newly tooled version. 

At about the same time, Rapido announced their new version of the J13. Apparently both decisions were not made in competitive mode; so the two companies are "working together" (yeah, right) to offer the enthusiastic buyer "a wide choice of versions and liveries".

So the challenge for blog readers is simple. 

Which J13 is which?

Your choice is between old Hornby, new Hornby and new Rapido. Here are four pictures to confuse out readers and baffle fbb.

Old Puzzle Pictures

The items below appeared in fbb's in-box recently. They come from and extensive series of cards (?) each offering a puzzle to the observer. They must be either just post WW2 or, more likely, from the 1930s.

Easy peasy!

 Next Vectensian Venture blog : Mon 2nd Dec