The original Zap route (Leeds to York) had its origins on Blazefield's Yorkshire Coastliner services based on their Malton depot.
The frequency had grown to every 15 minutes between the two cites. Two of the four journeys missed out some of the intervening locations. It was this half-hourly service ...
This was only hourly and competed (unfavourably) with a faster and more frequent Trans Pennine train service.
Those words have turned out to be strangely prophetic as is evidenced by this announcement on Transdev's web site.
Is six months long enough to allow a service to grow? Or was business so dire that, House of Fraser style, there was no option but to "cut and run"?
Coastline Cwicker
Also just announced are peak Summer enhancements for the Coastliner services continuing from York to Scarborough (843) and Whitby (840).
We have had X40s before but pre-publicity on-line is making much of the journey time savings.
Timetables are not yet available, so it's "wait and see" for the time being.
Buses for Sheffield Launches - Again
Yesterday, outside Sheffield's French chateau style Town Hall ...
... together with an equally impressive collection of Sheffield VIPs. Both buses were adorned with a blue band with the tag line, "One City - One Service".
fbb understands that a Buses for Sheffield commemorative mug is on its way to Seaton - what excitement!
According to our on-the-spot paparazzo, nothing was said about the "Appallingly Awful" Underground style route map. Thankfully - it is best forgotten.
The only "useful" items that have appeared are reprints of the North and South route maps.
Nothing new for the travelling public.
Another Railbus
Whilst researching stuff for his railbus blog, he came across this "vehicle"!!
Its creator had built many conventional model railway layouts, but for a change, decided to develop a true"toy train set".
It is a Tomy "Pla Train" layout. The range is vast; from Thomas "horrors" ...
... to something more "Japanese". Intriguing.
But the signalbox is pure Triang Hornby.
And A Profuse Apology
fbb had intended to publicise the Three Valleys Festival (Beer and Bus Travel) ...
... but has missed the date. Put it down to aged incompetence!
T M Travel ran an extensive bus service linking a wide variety of town and country pubs many with specialist heritage beers.
It's very popular ...
... so fbb will try to get it right next year.
More stuff tomorrow!
Next soundbites blog : Sunday 10th June
Six months is about the minimum to be able to judge a route, you may not be able to tell whether you have a definite success but you can see if you have any light. From the Transdev statement it is clear that they are not seeing any regular traffic starting to come across which they need to provide a solid base of income for a service, so there is little likelihood of profit any time soon. If they had seen that regular traffic appearing they may have pushed on for a little longer to see how that growth played out.
ReplyDelete