It's All On Line YouTube!
Contrary to perceived opinion, fbb does not spend all his waking hours on-line. He spends some of them doing model railway 'work', quite a lot of them preparing his Christian ministry activities and the remaining hours doing normal routine domestic stuff.
But the interwebnet is so 'broken' these days that it pays to be forewarned of garbage to be avoided.
The above Routemaster look-slightly-alike is not a bus. It is a mobile workshop. The scantily clad young lady is a fake! She, as an example of the human race, is not a fake; but her tender love of the shiny green vehicle is very fake.
She stands in the same pose in the "headline teaser" of another video ...
The vehicles are genuine but not very "strange". Here us the adapted green RM ...
The buses in the "Watch It Again" YouTube 'item' are not all significantly strange for a UK reader. We do not find a VAL strange.
... whilst those who inhabit one of our former colonies 'across the pond' probably find the two storey bus a bit odd.
The German articulated DD coach is unusual but not in the least 'strange'.
OK, the Paris tour bus is strange and has featured in a previous fbb blog, so thoroughly familiar to fbb's readers with long memories.
Quite why a giant French 'agent de police' is suspended in mid air watching the vehicle is unclear.
Which leaves this. Like the ex-Routemaster, it is not a bus at all, but a commercial display and advertising van, styled in a weird futuristic manner.
Other pictures show a full van body with exhibition contents. It was never a bus!
Apparently, as an example of its strangeness, the driver has to climb steps to get to the cab.
That never happens in a any real vehicle, does it!
Anyway, from the ridiculous to the ...
... ridiculous!
Oliver Coppard's Vision For Rail
Like many before him, e.g. chum Andy who loves maps ...
Like many before him, e.g. chum Andy who loves maps ...
Olly's vision includes TWO maps, for want of a better word.
You can understand Andy's!!!
Here is the South Yorkshire current rail travel network map ...
... and what the various lines mean.
fbb has not gone beyond Doncaster for his extract (orange dot, upper right) because not much happens way out east!
So here is the Coppard wonder map for the future of tram and train.
And the rubric.
For a start, fbb does not understand it.
There is a blue line route. (under investigation) which is the old way from Sheffield to Penistone, the Woodhead route. Also new and blue is "The Old Road" between Sheffield Victoria or Rotherham and Chesterfield.
There is a tiny blue line (tram surely?) taking trams around the inner ring road and voiding the centre of the city.
Really?
There are numerous orange lines which might be trams or ludicrously expensive new trains lines. But where they actually go is beyond anything definitive in fbb's very good knowledge of the South Yorkshire geography!
So What's Does The Report Say!
Not a lot.
The above is very 'generic' and aspirational, lacking anything that isn't already being planned or at least considered.
Subsequent paragraphs are riding on the back of the Northern Powerhouse Rail scheme.
It is what the North's politicians want ...
... but will the National Government pay?
Don't hold your breath!!
Puzzle Picture
It is the old waterfront at Gosport with "Provincial" (Gosport and Fareham) buses lined up to meet the Portsmouth ferry.
======================
In tomorrow's blog we return to Bristol to investigate changes to a mini-network just north of Keynsham.
Spoiler alert : it's complicated ...
... again!
P.S. she does camper vans!
Next Frustrating Forties blog : Mon 23rd March
