Friday 25 December 2015

It's the Big Day at Last


 Keighley v Leeds 

Christmas Day bus services are much the same as last year. Keighley Bus Museum will be running its clutch of free routes in West Yorkshire with another free hospital link from Morley to Leeds by Black Prince.
But "nowt else", not even a bus to the airport.

 I o W versus Portsmouth & Southampton 

The Isle of Wight will have hourly services on all main routes on Christmas day, a befits the throbbing multicultural urban community that id Vectis. (?) Finding them on the web site is a challenge but you can go open top!

If you fancy a trip gorging on the beautiful Island scenery of taking in some of the many attractions, then it’s worth checking out our Island breezers page here. 

Meanwhile in the rural unpopulated backwaters across the Solent (Portsmouth and Southampton) Christmas day is profoundly bus-less.
Portsmouth
Southampton


 Edinburgh v Glasgow 


In Scotland, as previously, Edinburgh will be running approx hourly on all main City routes (map extract below):-
Lothian Transport definitely wins the prize for the best animated advert on-line. Not sure whether this will animate so go to their web site if it doesn't!

Meanwhile, travel west on the M8 and you will come to an insignificant little town founded by St Mungo ...
McGills ditto.

Why the difference between the two cities?

 By Coach to the Airports? 

There is a rumour that ...
... will be running some routes on Christmas Day. By chance fbb spotted two departures from Birmingham to Heathrow. Despite this header on the web site ...
... fbb could discover no easy way to find the routes running on 25th. Perhaps more people might use the coaches if they could find them? Or was fbb being stupid (as usual)?

There are "Airport" services today from both Oxford operators and too routes (as previously) from Stagecoach Manchester.

But asking Easybus ...
... for a booking to Gatport Airwick set fbb into an unending loop with the computer demanding details, then coming up with a blank form and demanding details again.

 Excitement at Slough  

But one town has gained a Christmas Day service for the first time in recent memory. First Bus will be running in Slough today. Yet again, the lure is business to and from Heathrow Airport. Service 75 runs hourly from 0416 to 0316 on 26th.
Service 78 also runs hourly from 0500 to 0400 on 26th.
It will be interesting to see whether other First bus companies will be brave enough to try Christmas Day services in future years.

It's all very mysterious. Thankfully fbb and family will be enjoying a mega Christmas lunch in bus-less Abergynolwyn; followed by HMQ and Dr Who.

 Festive Snippets 

One delight, forwarded from the Plymothian Transit site is this jolly little tale.
Apparently, the idea comes from America.

And finally, something really silly. Our senior Isle of Wight correspondent is pictured wearing his staff merit prize, graciously awarded by fbb to the e-mailer who sends the largest amount of junk stuff for fbb to incorporate in his blogs. The predicted demise of Scoot ferries is his exclusive work.
Actually it was the old fella's 65th Birthday last Tuesday and the fbbs felt this was an ideal gift of friendship and gratitude. What is more spooky is that he actually wore it!
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fbb wishes all his readers
a superb  CHRIST mas day
and an omnibologically
stimulating New Year
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25th
so simple - so profound

And an equally simple yet profound poem published by the Bible Society. It says it all.
Traditionally, however, fbb's "Advent" Calendar continues to the end of December; so, what's to come?

It is the remaining bits of the Christmas Story which are not very "nice" at all.
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      Next rail blog : Saturday 26th December   

7 comments:

  1. Megabus are running some routes today as well, including some sleepers tonight.

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  2. The First Berkshire bus routes (75/78) are 24 hour routes, thus there is a night service from Christmas Eve into Christmas Day, and it's just the night timetable throughout the day! That's better than even I expected. Obviously the rest of London have no bus service...

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  3. Merry Christmas FBB!

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  4. Merry Xmas (sorry, just joshing you) merry CHRISTmas FBB and thanks for many stimulating postings this year.
    When I were 'out-but a lad' in north Kent there were no Christmas day services in our part of town. but half a mile away across the great 'area divide' London Passenger ( does anyone else remember that name in daily use even though the name had been changed years before) ran a Christmas day service along its' Thameside corridor.
    I had a more senior (in terms of years)aunt who went further back and referred to London Transport Country as "The General" I'm not sure how long past 1933 that name applied to the green fleet, but I don't think it was long before it became LPTD

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    Replies
    1. One typo in all that - should of course be LPTB

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  5. One way of finding coach routes running today (Christmas Day) is to use Traveline South East, select More/Next Departures and type in Victoria Coach Station and date/time 0200 this morning. This then lists 170 departures by NatEx or Megabus during the day, of which 52 are NatEx 821 between Heathrow, VCS and Gatwick. There are 10 other NatEx 8xx series routes from VCS and just three other routes not serving London - 811 (Liverpool-Leeds), 812 (Nottingham - Bristol) and 822 (Heathrow-Gatwick direct)

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  6. You can add Wilts & Dorset (whoops I mean 'More') in Poole and Bournemouth to the list of Christmas Day operations. Only one route though. Merry Christmas fbb.

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