Saturday, 2 May 2026

Saturday Variety

Silly Sensational Screens

There must be some hidden YouTube regulation that compels contributors to 'headline' their carefully crafted videos with utter nonsense.

Unfortunately fbb must have missed the only news item with the headline "Supersonic Jet Falls On Superfast Train". The article will have revealed that the jet was undamaged, the pilot walked free and the high speed train was able to stop and miraculously avoid derailment. Yes, and the fuel in the plane equally miraculously did not explode.

Very likely.

The incident does not feature in the video. But pilots must be very careless as another of the same brand of plane has inpelled utself ...
... into a passing cruise liner. How careless!

Then there is this horrific incident.
Amazingly some sort of tectonic plate breach occured in exactly the same place. This spectacular earthquake caused the sea to evaporate and delivered a slough of magma across the very same road.
In a weird revelation of coincidence, many if the same vehicles were passing as both horrors occurred.

Neither of these events featured in the video.

Now, how do you transport a giant stealth bomber from airfield to maintenance depot?

Easy peasy. you build a dangerously long and wide transporter vehicle, hauled by three tractor units side by side ...
... and you run it along a five carriageway road with just two carriageways in the opposite direction. It would appear that one of the technical problem with the plane is that the wings are incapable of lifting the enormous fuselage.

will the 56 wheels be strong enough? And how does it steer?

Of course, the item being carried is a top secret UFO from the planet Zog!

That explains it!

Yeoman In Trouble
No, it's the Herefordshire bus company that seems to have been in a bit of bovver with the Traffic Commissioners.
Yeomans runs the Hereford city centre free bus service, recently under threat (Guess why? To save money! Oh, you guessed!) of Oblivion. Apparently Yeomans have failed a safety inspection.
The article is, as ever, totally speculative. It would have to be, it is the internet after all,

Readers may remember the excitement of January 2025. Another Hereford bus company, Lugg Valley Travel, was closed down completely due to failure of several safety inspections.
Readers may notice that Yeomans has a very similar livery to Lugg Valley.
Then, Yeomans shared a depot with Lugg Valley; the companies have the same director and vehicles were often 'hired' between the two operators.

But the companies were totally separate.

Of course they were.

So, when Lugg Valley lost its operator's licence last year, another company stepped in and took over operation of all of Lugg Valley's services.

Readers may be able to guess which noble and altruistic operator bravely took on Lugg Valley's routes.

Have you guessed?

Now Yeomans seems to be following the same path.

Two New Stations 
Not reported by fbb; not visited by video producer Geoff Marshall; even ignored by Bus and Train User blog a k a Roger French; two new stations have opened on an important transport link in glorious Devon.

But, somewhat delayed, fbb is on the job!

This is one of them.
And this us where it's at,
The wetlands are part of the River Axe lying between Seaton and Axmouth. But the wet land and the river are a haven for huge herds of birds. The watchers can hide ...
... or catch a tram. The Wetlands stop wasn't ...
... until the 2022 when a paved area wast created at the passing loop. 
Duly opened by the Seatonian Great and Good ...
... it is accessed by a raised boardwalk ...
.. to keep you feet dry!

There is a timetable ...
... which is better than many bus stops in the area!

The view across the wet land is delightful.

A New Model Car Kit.
fbb will tell you, tomorrow, how much of your pocket money you will need to buy one.

More tomorrow.

  Next Variety blog : Sunday 3rd May 

Friday, 1 May 2026

Transport On The Edge (2)

Consistency, What Consistency?

A quick glance at today's buses to Nether Edge may help us understand the changes that came after the withdrawal of the trams. The tram track ended in Moncrieffe Road indicated by the up arrow, far right.

Buses performed a turning loop via Montgomery Road and Moncrieffe Road. With the development of Nether Edge Hospital on Union Road an extra loop was added to confuse new recruits to the routes.

The purple line is for the inner circle service, originally numbered 8 and 9. The present 10/10a is barely recognisable from the original for most of its very mangled 'circle". The section via Nether Edge is, however part of the good old set of served roads.

The 8/9 even attracted competition in the chaos of post deregulation.
And a star artefact (?) from the archives; a leaflet cover designed by fbb!

Consistency : 61, 97, 98, 22, 56, 3, 56
Route 61 on Wolstenholm (?) Road was the first bus service replacing the trams.
The first change was a through route from Nether Edge via City to Southey Green, then on the northern boundary of Sheffield. fbb could find no pictures of a 97 or its variant 98, but from his own resources excavated this very fuzzy ex slide.
This was from a time of bus shortages (faulty track rods - they tended to snap when going round corners) when the route was in the hands of Huddersfield buses.

fbb is not 100% sure of the continuation of consistency and did not have time to unearth his copious Sheffield route records, but there followed a 22 ...
... a 56 ...
... a 3 ...
... and presently back to  56 again, just for fun!

Needless to say, these services ran to different cross-city destinations and served different stops in the city centre - all designed to provide fun and jollity to regular passengers and utter bafflement to occasional users.

Revised 97 and 98?
 
A more resent challenge to the citizens of the Steel City was spotted by a certain Mr Giles Fearnley (retired First Bus supremo) on a recent visit oop noorth.

As First no longer prints timetables to help passengers, the company has been using its electronic blinds to provide useful (?) information.
Sometimes fares info.
Intermediate locations appear ...
... sometimes legibly.
So Mr F saw, but failed to photograph (slacker) a 97 to Totley via Nether Edge!

Young Giles immediately e-mailed fbb asking "What's  going on?" He thought that the 97 and 98 (which used to run to Nether Edge remember?) had been diverted via their old route and the inner circle 10 rejoining the main drag to Totley.

fbb thought not. He consulted the Travel South Yorkshire (TSY) route nap ...
... which showed the 97/98 passing innocently by on their usual routes via the Abbeydale Road to Totley (97) and Totley Rise (98), indubitably NOT via Nether Edge.

Assuming the map is up to date (not always a given), fbb checked the timetable on the TSY web site.

No mention of Nether Edge on the front cover of TSY's non-leaflet.
But the timetable shows ...
.... Nether Edge Abbeydale Road Empire Road, a designation repeated on the computer created route map.
The full route description also complies.
As the politicians oft intone, fbb says "Let me be absolutely clear on this." The old man is quite certain tha not one of the 600,000 residents of Sheffield would ever consider these stops as being in Nether Edge.

This is an utter daftness residing only in the incompetent minds of TSY, and absorbed by equal ignorance at First Bus HQ.

And both these outputters of omnibological obfuscation wonder why they are losing passengers, year by year.

   Next Variety blog : Saturday 2nd May 

Thursday, 30 April 2026

Transport On The Edge (1)

Several Edges!

Sheffield residents and ex residents will recognise the name 'Nether Edge' as a well known suburb to the south west of the city centre. The 1758 map extract above shows a few farms dotted around fields and what we would now call market gardens. The names do suggest a hilly area, but then so is most of Sheffield.

Keep in mind that wiggly road, above, bottom left.

Note Upper Edge, Machin Bank and Cheery Tree Hill.

The latter two settlements are remembered in today's road names ...
... both of which are now classed as being in the Sheffield suburb of Nether Edge.
So the city (it wasn't a city until 1948!) grows and top executives and the wealthier middle classes need homes. Thus by the late 1800s Nether Edge is built up with substantial dwellings for some and terraces for those who would provide them with their physical needs.

The agricultural character of the area is gone for ever.
The orange block labelled 'Union Workhouse' became Nether Edge Hospital and Osborne Road appears on the older map. But the built up area seems to end quite abruptly at a slightly wobbly line running from lower left diagonally towards bottom right.

That line is Brincliffe Edge!

Here is a current map of the same area.
That slightly wobbly line has become Brincliffe Edge Road and the wiggle joining it from the bottom is the wiggle from the 1758 map at the top of this posting. It is called Archer Lane.

Brincliffe Edge Road is literally on the edge of the Edge. This Google Earth view is from above the Nether Edge suburb.

Brincliffe Edge Road runs between the wodge of trees and the houses bottom right. Below we see today's Archer Lane snaking down the hill ...
... and from the bottom looking back up the significant slope to the level of The Edge.
The Google Earth view shows Bannerdale Road, the woods obscuring Brincliffe Edge Road ...
... with a better drone view looking across and up to the summit of The Edge ...
... and allotment gardens on the lower more gentle slopes. This housing was developed progressively from 1935 with some fill-in building awaiting completion post WW2 in the 1950s.
In view of the geography, it us not surprising that public transport never got any further than Nether Edge. 

Horse drawn trams arrived in 1878.
This view is looking west on Montgomery Road, now named Moncrieffe Road. The little hut behind the tram was probably a waiting room. The view today hasn't changed much allowing for the removal of the trams ...
... and a few more cars!

And a bus stops there today.

In 1899 the tram route was electrified and operated by open top cars ...
... later upgraded to a 'proper' double deck service.
The above view is from alongside the shops, looking back towards the city centre. The hut is clearly visible.

Trams were withdrawn in 1934 as the Council deemed that a necessary upgrade would not be cost-effective.

Welcome the noisy diesel motor omnibus!

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Irish Orange - A P.S.
Should you wish to own an Irish Railways Mark 2d coach, various prices are on offer on EBay

The basic coach, as fbb's model.

The composite, the coach with the extra central door.

The most unusual vehicle, a generator coach.

Here is a generator car for real.

Irish Mark 2 generator vans (often designated as Brake Generator Vans or BGV) are 
specialized railway coaches used by Iarnród Éireann (IE) and Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) to provide 220/380V AC power to train sets. Modeled in OO gauge by Murphy Models, these carriages typically feature detailed underframes, vented windows, and orange livery..

Murphy Models also supply locomotives!

Lima also produced Orange Irish Rail coaches in the alternative livery. Advertisers tell us that these packs of three ...
... are rare. The above is on offer for ...
At £66 a coach, they are priced roughly in line with the Mark 2bs - if you really want three.

Although the real vehicles have a gauge of 5 feet 3 inches the models are built to run on standard OO and HO 16.5mm track.

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  Next Edgy blog : Friday 1st May