Monday Variety

 Nice End to National Express?

For many a long year, Stagecoach, as successors to Tracky, have run coaches from Sheffield etc, to London. Here is Tracky on a 560 then branded Rapide.

The brand au8ppeared in 1981 and fizzled out about ten years later. It offer greater "luxury" than the standard NEx service including om-board "hostess'" staff.

A few days ago this contract came to an end, 

Correspondent Roy watched the last Stagecoach departue on route 564 ...

... which was appropriately adorned with a commemorative plaque piece of paper.

Sadly, there was no lone piper playing a traditional lament, so fbb will supply one. Unfortunately the setting looks somewhat different from Sheffield Interchange.

fbb did try to find out which company was now operating services 560 and 564. In desperation, the old man enquired of Goigle's AI service - that's Artificial Inaccuracy!

It was, as usual, just what you would expect from the technology.

Airport Bus Commitment

Looks impressive ...

Here's the unhelpful route map ...

... which may give a clue to its purpose. The blurb reveals ...

... that it is a works service rather than anything of use to air-bound travellers. Here is the full timetable.

Over the years there have been numerous attempts to provide a "proper" bus from Bournemouth to its airport ...

... including an erratic "shuttle". All have failed to attract sufficient passengers to sustain the service.

The most recent effort, again aimed at workers rather than flyers, was the 737 from Yellow Buses.

This ultimately became More Bus 737.

Readers may wonder why the route from Poole is labelled YX1. Here us the answer from More Bus ...

Yunex is probably payng More more than they will get from fares, initially at least!

Of course, our well informed readers will know all about Yunex, lessee of a new warehouse, operations centre at the airport industrial estate. 

Well, fbb didn't!

Yunex Traffic is 

a global company that builds smart traffic systems and software. 

It started as part of Siemens Mobility. It became an independent company in 2021 and was sold to the Italian group Mundys in 2022. 

The company works in over 40 countries to manage city traffic

So now you knows as does fbb?

Meanwhile, calls for reinstatement if a proper service with at least an hourly frequency keep bubbling to the surface ...

... but nobody seems keen on picking up the tab! So it will routinely be car and taxi and phooey to net zero.

Talking of which ...

Anxiously Buying Candles

Most of these news snippets are self explanatory.

Data Centres, potentially suckers of huge amounts of power ...

... are struggling, even in Slough ...

... and certainly in Essex.

Yet even before these enormous power sponges come "on stream" our Nation Grid can barely cope.

And it is happening NOW, or maybe it is better to say that it is NOT happening!

Meanwhile, deliveries of electric buses continue apace!

Have we got this net zero thing right?

An Apology

The second 'recent tank wagon arrival' item is postponed. fbb is sorry to stifle his loyal readers' excitable, nay delirious enthusiasm. Bit here is a clue to what is coming.

Or three clues!

 Next Business Failure blog : Tues 18 Aug 

Sunday Variety

 Customer Service : What A Good Idea?

How about creating an "enquiry office" so that potential passengers can wander in and find out about their local bus services. This one is announced for West Sussex.

Inside consultation ...

... or, of course, you could enquire "en plein air" ...

... if it isn't raining!

It's a wonder nobody has thought if something like this before!

And there's more!

Stagecoach has been promoting a similar service in the neighbouring county of Hampshire ...

... although there is something familiar about the services offered across the border.

Pardon?

Oh, it's just one tiny bus to deliver customer service to a combined population of about 3 million souls.

Well, you've got to start somewhere!

Customer Service : Yeovil

Yeovil Junction station is served by First's South Western Railway (SWR) business. It is some way from Yeovil.

There it is, at the village if Barwick.

SWR has not been doing so well recently.

Not that long ago, the SWR class 158 and 159 diesel units were high in the national reliability list, being maintained by a dedicated and committed team at Salisbury depot.

We now read ...

Could it be that First Rail has cut back its depot staff? Surely not! Could it be that the trains are just too old for the daily thrashing they get between Waterloo and Exeter? Maybe that as well!

Then, yet again, the service has been cut between Yeovil and Exeter.

This has happened before, and, weren't we told last time, that remedial work had stabilised the track?

Now the MP had got involved.

That's him, Adam Dance, Lib Dem. As an MP, he is, obviously, an expert on the railways. So he is campaigning for better customer service at Yeovil junction.

The station has one island platform accessed by an ancient footbridge ...

... actually half a footbridge!

Accessibility?

There is a linking bus from town to station ...

... presented on-line with slightly mystifying place names, one (above) from a community group, the other from Traveline.

Both are different in place name detail, of coirse. The operator, Somerset County Council, doesn't tell you anything!

Service 68 buses are never busy for either departures or arrivals at Yeovil Junction.

So here is the MP at work.

221,442 is not a big number by railway station standards. Axminster, fbb's 'local' rail head, manages 417,948; nearly twice as many!

So, hugely successful so far, then?

Customer Service : Chunnel Competition

Some readers may vaguely remember an fbb blog about plans for competitive services through the Channel Tunnel. Above we see a headline report.

Firstly we need to treat, with polite suspicion, the concept of "ordering" new trains. Sometimes this means that the train operator and train builder have signed an agreement to sign a contract to lease trains financed by another company for delivery in due course. 

It is the start if a long and hugely complicated process; which should begin by booking train paths from London to Paris via the tunnel.

No operator would fully commit to buying 19 hugely expensive trains without being certain they could run them.

It's complicated!

F.S. is Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane S.p.A., Italian State Railway

a k a

Trenitalia

Trenitalia France is a company wholly owned by FS, to run services in France and in competition with S N C F, the French state railway operator.

So it will be French Italian state railways that runs from the United Kingdom in competition with Eurostar, owned by French and Belgian state railways.

Good, innit?

Watch this space.

What You Have Been Waiting For!

One of the latest TWO tanks to join fbb's world famous collection is revealed here.

Lima S.p.A. (Lima Models) was an Italian manufacturing company of model railways. The company was headquartered in Vicenza for almost 50 years, from the early 1950s until the company ceased trading in 2004. Lima was a popular, affordable brand of 00 gauge and N material in the UK. . Lima partnered with various distributors and manufacturers, selling under brands such as A.H.M., Model Power, and Minitrain. Market pressures from superior Far Eastern products in the mid-1990s led to Lima merging with Rivarossi, Arnold, and Jouef. Ultimately, these consolidations failed and operations ceased in 2004. What was left if the Lima business was absorbed by Hornby.

Lima had a superior manufacturing system compared with the big UK firms and was able to produce a vast catalogue of OO models more cheaply than the UK brand leaders. Well it did until it went bust!

But the only true UK tanker that the company produced was a six wheel milk tank.

It appeared in umpteen liveries under Lima management and production continued under Hornby. Ex Lima tank wagons still appear from time to time in the Hornby catalogue.

It is quite a good model at nearly 35 years old!

For other varieties of tank wagon, Lima put UK couplings on its existing European (HO) wagons and decorated them with UK brand names.

Hence fbb's recent purchase.

It came in a box illustrated by two models that Lime never made: a LMS "Crab" and a sort-of High Speed Train. Lima did make an HST, but it didn't look like that!

From above, the Lima model (in white) sits reasonably well with a high quality UK model ...

... but the under parts are really cheap and nasty.

There are a few black blobs on the Lima; but a vast collection of "stuff" on the top grade UK model.

Although the actual tank is about the right length for a UK TEA class wagon, the white tank itself is too slim and, were the Lima model be to OO scale (4mm to the foot rather than HO's 3.5mm) the model would be at least two inches longer and thus very wrong.

But the kiddies would have loved them.

 Next Weekend Variety blog : Mon 17 Aug