The Story So Far
The fbbs have a soft spot for Dumfries and Galloway. Mrs fbb is a lifelong chum of Jean, who married David and set up a small livestock farm at Templand, near Lockerbie.
It was called 'Burrance' and you can find it on the map above.
They then moved to a different small holding, mainly sheep, near Carsphairn.
The property was called 'Furmiston' (lower right)
The fbbs also had a holiday at Whithorn, south of Wigtown and almost on the coast, opposite Cumbria.
Jean and David have now moved to Orkney, where they inhabit a small holding in the Island of Rousay. They are now at Innister!
Try finding that!
So fbb had plenty of opportunity to go bus hunting and tinetable collecting in Dumfries and Galloway.
The big fuss, a year or so back, was the end of Stagecoach, once the major operator in the county, successor to Western Scottish. fbb spent many a happy half hour at Whitesands bus station, Dumfries.
The demise of Stagecoach was well explained in an article in Buses Magazine.
Independent operators and the council’s DGC Buses operation will take over all tendered services after Stagecoach West Scotland announced in June that it will cease provision of both commercial and tendered bus services within Dumfries & Galloway in early August.
Earlier this year Dumfries & Galloway Council and SWestrans regional transport partnership began a tender process for services in the region. SWestrans is responsible for delivery of the local bus network, while the home-to-school transport network is the council’s statutory responsibility.
While reviewing the terms of the contracts being tendered, Stagecoach identified a liability clause that it considered to be far more than the value of the contracts on offer and as a result felt unable to agree to what it felt were disproportionate terms.
Despite working with the council and SWestrans to find a solution to this procurement issue, the liability levels required by the council have made this impossible.
As a result, the tender submissions from Stagecoach were disqualified as non-compliant.
If you are asking which operator is dominant now, the answer would be Houstons ...
... with 26 services indexed in no discernable order on the company's web site - and challenging to download!
As far as fbb can tell, printed information is sparse, if any! Bus companies generally have timetables on their website, but the challenge is to find out who that operator might be.
But Dumfries and Galloway council do have all bus timetables on their site, which ought to be better than, say, a chicken-out link to traveline.
But most timetables are anonymous. Dumfries local route 8, for example, looks like this extract on the Council site ...
... despite being a Houstons service as shown on the company list. You presume it is a tendered service.
But then so is the 101/101A /102 combo, also operated by Houstons.
It used to be Stagecoach, of course ...
... and even had its own branding for a while.
So, how come the page on the Council site has a timetable labelled SPT - Strathclyde Partnershio for Transport (i.e. Glasgow).
It is, indeed 9n the PTE site ...
... complete with a rudimentary map.
So why SPT? fbb knows not the official reason, but the 191/101A/102 does graze the SPT area (which is huge) ...
.. at places like Elvanfoot and Biggar.
The X95 between Carlisle and Edinburgh ...
... informs us in small print, right a the bottom of the table, that it is run by Borders Buses ...
.... which emerged when First pulled out of South East Scotland. Borders buses is allied to West Coast Motors ...
.... a company that operates buses widely in, guess where, the West Coast of Scotland - which includes some local routes in Glasgow city.
West Coast also has an interest in some Citylink coach routes ...
... which brings us back to Dumfries and Galloway and the ferry port of Cairnryan.
This is a joint service between Citylink ...
... and Ulsterbus offering through travel between Glasgow and Belfast.
Although it is a joint operation, coaches do not board the ferry.
Shame.
And finally we glimpse the little bit of Stagecoach that does remain serving the county.
The timetable and its route numbering are very complicated ...
... with some trips on routes 58 and 60 having 300 added to their route number. fbb finds this group of services from Stranraer to Girvan and Ayr quite baffling.
One day, when he has less to challenge his aged brain, fbb might try and unravel what is going on.
Tomorrow we look at some of those anonymous services. There are lots of them.
Baseboard Beautiful
This is how it was - a bodge ...
... with a recently added bit made of cardboard!
All ripped out!
And replaced with ...
... a proper bodge-less baseboard, thanks to the skills of No 1 son.
It's no good, that clutter will have to be sorted!
More from the BP freightliner tank wagon tomorrow.
Such excitement!
Next D & G blog : Tuesday 25th Aug
