Saturday Variety

What Links 'Midlands Today' ...

...  with Sheffield Supertram?

In the far off days of fbb's youth, his local BBC tv news programme adopted a new introductory caption, It was similar to the above, but the 'Midlands' area map was black and the 'Midlands Today' text was white, all on a grey background. There was no colour TV and only 505 scan lines!

fbb, wit that he was, even then, (maybe hall right, some might say) wrote to the programme, using pen, paper, envelope and Royal Mail postage stamp (how quaint!).

The gist of his witty missive was to express concern that the Midlands area of the country has been replaced with a mysterious black emptiness. The letter went on to express the view that the missing bit of UK was now in the hands if a local (w)holesaler!

Hopefully blog readers have been able to stifle their uncontrollable guffaws!

What, retrospectively, is amazing is that the letter was read out loud as the closing "funny" of the programme - and fbb never saw it!

A chum phoned to congratulate him on his first and only contribution to live television.

Supertram's (W)holesale Disruption!

Birley Wood Golf Course is quite close to Birley Lane tram stop.

Birley Lane is on Sheffield's BLUE tram route to Halfway.

It is on the east-west bit of line ...

... in the above enlargement, lower right.

Just by the Golf Course, the tram track has found a hole in one --- for giant golf balls.

Another job for fbb's (w)holesaler! But, good news folks, the local MP, Clive Betts ...

... is quickly in the job with an incisive and dynamic proposal.

fbb can help you there, Clive.

Nobody knew it was there!

fbb is pleased to be able to contribute to the democratic process for which our nation is justly proud!

The whole area was littered with mines and small industrial premises in the distant past.

Only a couple of years ago the (w)holesaler was hard at work in a nearby wooded area.

So no real surprise!

A replacement bus service is operating between Gleadless and Halfway.

Every 15 Minutes?

The news that Tricky Dicky ...

... has won paths for his services, competing with Eurostar, has prompted journos to get out their pocket calculators and work out how many passenger trains will be zooming 'Sous La Manche'!

Sadly, the press chooses not to explain that, unless there are to be request stops near the Tunnel mouths on both sides of the wet (Folkestone and Sangatte), nobody will get a 15 minute service.

And, of course, tickets will not be interavailable and only the really brave will try turning up at St Pancras and hopping on the next departure.

Cop The Speed Freaks

Network Rail and the Police are working together to nab members of the public who drive dangerously over level crossings.

The high-roof Ford Transit has cameras front and rear and a tall pole thing (aerial for real time video?) plus plenty of scary graphics.

Now you can own one for your OO gauge model railway. No 4mm-to-the-foot car driver would dare break the rules with this model on hand to keep watch!

A distinctive addition to any modern railway or emergency services collection. This British Transport Police Ford Transit represents one of the Mobile Enforcement Vans used in partnership with Network Rail to help tackle misuse at level crossings.

Finished in the striking Police and Network Rail livery, the model features detailed camera graphics, ANPR markings and distinctive roof-mounted camera equipment making it an unusual and highly detailed Transit for your collection. 

Residents of Peterville and visitors to the railway are stiffly upright ...

... and honest citizens, standing firm and utterly rigid against such irresponsible activity.

Anyway, fbb doesn't have a level crossing on his layout.

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When fbb closely examined his freightliner tanks, devoid of BP logos ...

... he was in for a shock. It was only a small shock from which the old man soon recovered. Upon close examination ...

... you can just see the line of muck which marks the edge of a 'shield' BP logo - which had all fallen off. They were not ttransfers, bur bits of printed paper stuck on. They had all fallen off.

The picture above, not one of fbb's wagons, illustrates that fbb had just one errant paper 'shield' logo in the delivery package as more evidence. And it was a small one from the end of a tank.

Anyway, fbb could never cut around something as tiny as that. The larger shields are just 8mm across, this small on only 5mm.

So fbb printed some squared shields.

But they didn't work. He couldn't cut evenly between the logos to leave a reasonable amount of square border on both.

It needed a bodge!

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 Next Variety blog : Sunday 30th Aug 

West Midlands Worrying Matters 2

 To Bring Us Up-to-date - Perhaps

With privatisation, West Midlands Travel takes on a new and dramatically innovative name which shocked bus watchers everywhere. West Midlands Travel becomes Travel West Midlands.

Then comes another new livery.

iI is not long before a new name appears on the front of this rather garish red white and blue paint job.

The lads have sold out to National Express.

In all this budgetary largesse for new paint, Coventry retains a slightly different identity.

The red stripe becomes blue, sky blue after some local sports team, fbb understands. And the red wedge also becomes sky blue.

The operator is a separate outfit, now called ...

... National Express Coventry.

Meanwhile, in Big Brother Brum, liveries are changing again. Basically it is all-over red with added red.

The West Midlands PTE did, at one stage, decide that all tendered buses should be red -  a bit like London.

It didn't last.

Then it was, and still is, a boring grey ...

... with assorted varieties of bright route branding. Or you could have route branding withiut a route number!

But the bus is electrified so that makes it all right, then.

In Coventry, guess what, the flashes of colour are sky blue ...

... or not!

... when they are red! But you do have small ...

... very small route numbers.

So that is what the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) is buying, to, so they say, ensure continuity of service for the good folk of the West Midlands.

Which is absolute nonsense!

The new "arms length" bus company, although owned by the WMCA, is not allowed, in law, to have any preferential treatmeint in the tendering process. This means that, unless there is some dodgy and illegal dealing (which there won't be), the WMCA-owned bus company could fail to win any franchises offered by its owners!

What is dafter is that National Express Bus is happily bidding for franchises in other areas.

It would be really perverse if the West Midlands owned bus company were to end up running franchised uses in West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire or Bridgwater (etc) but NOT in the West Midkands.

And There's More

The rumours are that NatEx (Bus) is losing money by the truck full, buoyed up by various deals and various monies from WMCA. These deals are designed to keep fares low and to maintain the current levels of service - all for political reasons. 

So NatEx (the Group) want out. The group has enough bother with NatEx (Coach) to keep its management awake at night.

So WMCA gets a bargain!

The reported price of £26 million, plus accepting some debt (unspecified), gets NatEx (Group) out of a hugely challengng situation and allows them to revive NatEx (Coach) with the help of their Spanish bedfellows.

Spanish Bedfellows?

NatEx (Group) renamed itself as ...

Domestically it currently operates bus and coach services under brands including National Express. The company also operates transport services including trains abroad: in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Germany, Bahrain, Morocco, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and South Korea, and long-distance coach services across Europe. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

One company in the Group is ...

ALSA (Automóviles Luarca, S.A.) is a Spanish subsidiary of the UK company Mobico Group, which operates bus and coach services in Spain and other countries across Europe, including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Ukraine. It also has operations in Morocco.

Those who know about these things tell fbb that Alsa is, effectively managing NatEx (Coach).

So perhaps, now, we can see why Nat Ex (Group) wanted to get rid of Nat Ex (Bus) almost at any price. And why WMCA has snapped up the company from the Group's Bargain Basement.

Whether it will make any difference to anything is debatable. Whether any good will come to WMCA or NatEx (Bus) as a result of the sale is equally debatable.

Watch this space!

And, yes, all this corporate .stuff hurts fbb's brain!

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But two sheets of BP logos from Fox Transfers will cost fbb £30 to provide just NINE logos. Why TWO sheets. The tanks have a logo and lettering on ine end ...

... and they are smaller than those on the sides.

So a sheet of small and a sheet if medium is required

£30 for nine transfers is £3.33 (recurring) per logo or £10 per tank which is too much for a cheap toy.

So fbb decided to make his own logos.

Yikes!

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 Next Variety blog : Sat 29 August 

West Midlands Worrying Matters 1

 How We Got Where We Are

In many ways, the West Midlands PTE ...

... was the most dynamic of the first batch of politically motivated mega areas of bus operation, created as a result of the invention of Metropolitan Counties, mega areas of municipal control.

Joining Birmingham (above) were Walsall Corporation ...

... with some strange looking buses made even stranger by adapting the body shell for one man operation. 

Then there was the innovative unique long decker with two doors and two staircases ...

... long before Mr Johnson re-invented the idea for his less than satisfactory and expensive BorisDisaster for London! 

Walsall had trolleybuses ...

... including a collection of cast-offs as here from Ipswich.

All the buses soon gained the PTE logo.

Also absorbed was West Bromwich Corporation transport ...

... with one of the most luxurious historic liveries of any UK municipality. A later livery was cheap and nasty by comparison!

West Brom soon succumbed to the Wumpty bus treatment!

The third 'W' to join the club was Wolverhampton, another historic trolleybus operator ...

... and a bus livery that was the most boring of the three conscripts!

The Baggies enjoyed some 'interesting' vehicles, including this forward entrance full fronted Guy.

Corporate County identity soon appeared ...

... by which time much of the fleet was 'tired'.

In 1972, almost before the PTE had established itself, the borders were extended to absorb Coventry.

... also soon given the new badge of ownership.

But worse was yet to come. Whilst Merseyside left North Western and Crosville untouched; Manchester remained all municipal in the early days; likewise West and South Yorkshire kept to their constituent parts: Tyne and Wear persuaded some "company" buses to adopt yellow paint: but, uniquely, WMPTE was quick to take over its batch of local Midland Red routes,

That was a ridiculously long sentence and unnecessarily so!

The absorptions was in 1973.

And, horror of horrors, the WMPTE soon got stuck in and stuck on.

Repainting followed very quickly, but it was always strange to see a lovely red D9 ...

... looking very much like a Birmingham Corporation bus. Sacrilege!

fbb will bring the story up-to-date tomorrow.

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British Petroleum All Squared

The above picture appeared in an on-line auction site. The blurb said the wagon was "very rare".

fbb is always very suspicious of such a statement, usually designed to inflate the price rather than act as a useful guide to purchasers. Maybe some keen entrepreneur had taken his logo-less wagon, applied some transfers and conned the auction site into handling a cheap toy now disguised as a rare wagon.

Yes it does happen.

Then fbb found this picture on line.

The squared logo version does hot appear on any catalogue site showing the history of this model.

But it gave fbb a jackpot idea. Why not take his un-logo wagon ...

... and apply some logos in squares! Then fbb would have a "rare" BP Freightliner tank wagon in his collection. Wowsers! 

fbb is not a cheat, and would always inforn a purchser of his duplicity, honest, yes he would. Knowing fbb's shaky hands it is highly likely that potential investors would quickly spot that the antique toy truck is a 'marriage'

And relevant decals are available from Fox Transfers.

Sounds like a plan!

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 Next West Midlands blog : Fri 28 Aug