Thursday 23 March 2017

The Right Image - Part 4

It is a lovely run from Sheffield to Buxton
Eyam Church is famous for its rector, William Mompesson, ...
... who saved much of the north of England from the plague. The bug arrived from London in a bundle of cloth and despite the high chances of death, our Will persuaded the villagers to stay put and die, rather than flee and take the plague with them.

The church has another claim to fame. It is where Giles Robin Fearnley (yes him) was Christened.

Great Hucklow is an equally lovely little village. On of its heroes was Lawrence du Garde Peach (1890 to 1974). 

He was an author and very keel on AmDram; to such an extent that he bought a disused mine building and turned it into a Theatre. Here is a programme from the 25th Anniversary ...
... showing the rather spartan premises! Inside the programme is a pictures of the stage ...
Sold to the Scouts as a residential activity centre, it was used by fbb and the Mrs for New Year Holidays for his Bible class. It is now trading independently of the scouts.
Then comes Tideswell, and equally splendid sandstone village with its magnificent church ...
... known as "The Cathedral of the Peak".

T M Travel's bus route 65 (formerly 208, formerly 84) links all these typical Peak villages. But starting on Monday 27th March, there is an intriguing change to the timetable. Certain journeys are to be operated by High Peak Buses.
It appears that, when T M Travel lost the contract for the 66 (Chesterfield to Buxton), it lost a journey which formed the first 65 bus from Buxton to Sheffield. Rather that have a very long positioning journey, T M Travel did a deal with High Peak to cover two round trips.

High Peak evolved from Trent and competing CentreBus.
A new jointly owned company was created to operate the former Trent depots; including a couple of high profile ex Trent routes.
Transpeak runs all the way from Nottingham to Manchester.
According to Sheffield correspondent John, High Peak produces an excellent timetable book; although fbb has never seen a copy. But therein are a number of routes with fares interavailable with T M Travel.

But (and we get to the point at last), for the 65 timetable change, the companies have produced an excellent joint timetable leaflet. As well at the timetable (obviously) there is an adequate but simplified map (split in two to fit the blog) ...
... details of places to visit and some sample fares.
It is folded to ⅓ of A4 and looks really good!
The leaflet exudes quality and the operators deserve to attract passengers to this long-standing (albeit renumbered) bus route.

Frankly it makes the weird collection of different designs and sizes issued by the members of the various South Yorkshire bus "partnerships" seem off-hand and amateurish. It almost looks as if they don't want to encourage passengers to travel!

Are passenger numbers in South Yorkshire growing? Interesting question.

And is this excellent leaflet available from Travel South Yorkshire enquiry desks in Sheffield - in good time for the revised arrangements form Monday coming?

It certainly wasn't on Tuesday last.

It is hard to believe that the operators have not bothered to let TSY have any. Anybody know where they are?

 Next mystery tram blog : Friday 24th March 

4 comments:

  1. Quote: Transpeak runs all the way from Nottingham to Manchester.

    Sorry 'Transpeak' hasn't reached Nottingham for donkeys years. It is not possible to travel beyond Derby, Ripley, Alfreton or Chesterfield on a through bus from Nottingham.

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  2. The loss of the 66 is not related to the change to the 65, the service used to be largely commercial & tied in with a contract to University of Derby Buxton Campus which was lost in September which I assume meant TM couldn't keep running commercially. Derbyshire County Council retendered the route recently at which point High Peak decided they could provide two return journeys commercially with the rest being retendered which TM Travel won (High Peak also bid for this work but weren't successful), however as the two companies have an existing business relationship (through the shareholdings of Wellglade for instance) we were able to agree joint ticketing on this service. There was no deal between the two operators until after the tender was awarded.

    Due to the delays of the tendering process & then agreeing the details of the interworking we only had about 2 weeks to get the timetables done (to put the timings in context even services that didn't need to have their tender revised weren't officially awarded until about a month before commencement, when council tenders are involved getting the 56-day notice is very rare), they are currently out at print at the moment and due to be delivered imminently (TM will be handling the distribution at the Sheffield end with High Peak looking after the Buxton end) though we suspect we won't get them out before Monday it should be pretty soon afterwards. The guy who designed that particular leaflet was very pleased with your positive words, there was even a little dance (though that is not a strange as it sounds from him).

    Just a point on the history of High Peak, it was a merger of TrentBarton's Dove Holes depot with the Centrebus owned Bowers Coaches operation at Chapel-en-le-Frith on a 50-50 basis. The two businesses weren't competing, Trent handled the core commercial network of the area with Bowers running mostly tendered and more marginal work around it. The Transpeak no longer runs to Nottingham, it has operated between Derby, Buxton & Manchester for a number of years since just after the merger.

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  3. Thanks for the corrections. You will not want to be bored with an excuse, but I have had a slight medical problem this week which made things a bit difficult. Must do better.

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  4. Hello, I designed the 65 leaflet for High Peak. On this occasion we missed the print deadline due to the quick turnaround of getting the service registered. We have plenty of copies of the leaflet and the High Peak guide. I'd be more than happy to post some copies to you FBB?

    Thanks for your kind words about the design though, it's much appreciated!

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