For the purposes of this blog, fbb is going to ignore the following services ...
10/10a - inner circle, hourly each way round
181 - very occasional service via Ringinglow
271 - Castleton : hourly for some of the day
293-5 - via Ladybower and onwards : occasional
H1 - Inter Hospital bus : Northern General
... which leaves the following shown below with their pre-virus Monday to Friday timetable extract - all still in the "timetables" section of the Travel south Yorkshire web site, of course.
51 : Gleadless - City - Lodge Moor (YELLOW)
First - every 10 minutes
52 : Woodhouse - City - Crookes and beyond (RED)
First/Stagecoach - every 5 minutes
Needless to say, TSY messes up the table with consummate skill. To every Sheffield resident old and new the stop shown as Walkley Heavygate Avenue is, was and always well be Crookes Heavygate Avenue and, to add incompetence to stupidity, First Bus stop there as well! Hence the 5 minute frequency.
120 : Halfway : City : Crimicar Lane (Fulwood) (ORANGE)
First/Stagecoach - every 5 minutes
6 : City - Millhouses Tesco (MUD PINK)
T M Travel - every 20 minutes
Many moons ago this began as a Park and Ride service 505 (same route as now, more or less) ...
... in an attempt to discourage Hospital and Uni workers clogging the place up with their cars. It ran every 30 minutes during the day and, subsequently T M Travel took the route on commercially as service 6.
Not long ago it was increased to every 20.
X2/2 : Barnsley - City - Hallamshire Hosp (PURPLE)
Stagecoach - every 30 minutes
This is a relative newcomer, being the former Barnsley 165 extended from City to the Hospital.
Which brings us neatly to some of the "traffic objectives" for these services.
The big one, in term time at least, is the University which splurges all the way from the edge of the City Centre to beyond Broomhill if you include Halls of Residence. This is an aerial view of "The Student Village located just off the Fulwood Road.
The majority of students eschew the bus services and walk to the Uni thus preserving their beer money!
Coming a close second is the collection of Hospitals that lie between Whitham Road/Western Bank and Glossop Road.
The hospitals are:-
Childrens (top right) - which saved the life of the fbb's No 3 son with quite a lot of miraculous and medically unexplained help from God.
Weston Park (top left) - on Whitham Road specialising in cancer treatment.
Dental (upper left) - on Wellesley Road, whereat fbb spent some 3½ hours in the chair early in his teaching career. It involved drilling away gums and jawbone. fbb remembers being gawped at by student dentists as the big cheese explained to them that "the patient has very big mandibles".
fbb did attempt a small protest at such a provocative and personal remark, preferring to keep his mandibles well out of sight, but, as his mouth was full of ironmongery at the time, the remark went unheeded. Indeed the "real" dentist told fbb to "shut up"!
Lest readers should be shocked a such poor dentist-patient relationships, it is salient to explain that the boss-man know fbb from their mutual student days, so conversation was somewhat lighthearted on the few occasions when fbb could communicate!
Readers may be concerned retrospectively at the patient's suffering, but the youthful fbb returned to school, spent a happy afternoon teaching French and continued his day pain free.
Hallamshire - the big slab lower centre where the fbb children all went for their eye tests.
In fbb's student and early employment days it was just the three storey block at the front, then known and the New Teaching Hospital.
It has grown a bit since!
Jessop Maternity - the square block joined to the Hallamshire by the umbilical (appropriate!) corridor.
All three of the fbb sons were born in "The Jessop" but on its old site, now the University's Music department!
When visiting his new-born plus Mrs, fbb ignored the front door ...
... but nipped in the back door and up the back staircase thus avoiding the wait for visiting time and the subsequent stampede when the flocks were released at the foot of the front stairs.
But we digress.
There is no doubt that the whole Broomhill plus University (which also has a six minute tram frequency and every 10 on 95/95a) plus hospitals have a good bus service.
But, of course, that was before the Virus.
Having over-rambled, fbb will bring the story up to date and explain the "Baffling" of the title tomorrow.
8 Minutes Of Pure Nostalgia
A chum sent fbb the link to this You Tube gem. It shows Sheffield trams from 1902 when the first bus (later numbered 51) was still eleven years away.
The ride begins near Moorfoot, passes the junction at Moorhead and ends after running down the busy High Street.
It is noteworthy in that it shows trams sporting their route letters which were short-lived on the system.
Apart for this brief period Sheffield Trams only showed destination names.
A Pretty Picture Of Pacers
The Yorkshire Post reports on these controversial little diesel units.
So that's the place to go if you want to "cop" the last Pacers which, depending on the progress of the un-lockdown, may never pace again!
And Buses magazine offered a very clever April 1st spoof which, thanys to the publication schedule, actually appeared in the second week of March. It explained how pacers were being rebuilt as normal road going buses.
For about ten seconds it had fbb fooled, but he was suspicious that the entrance door had been moved which seemed an unlikely expense for an "experiment".
Nevertheless, there IS a good idea????????
Next baffling Broomhill Blog : Wednesday 29th April
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