It's All On Line - But It Isn't
Hulley's of Baslow shocked the omnibological world when the company announced ir "courageous" two-hourly service between Sheffield and Manchester via the A57 Snake Pass from 25th October. As is to be expected, Hulley's Book of the Face has been redolent with inspiring details under the generic heading of "Not Long To Go Now".
A Glossop-centred timetable has appeared, omitting the coordinated hourly service between Sheffield and Ladybower Inn, integrated with the current two-hourly route 275, renumbered 257 from 25th inst (actually 26th; no 257 service on Sundays).
Also included on this version is the courageous news that national railcard holders can travel at the young persons' fare ...
... so definitely a pop at the half hourly Nationalised Railway service into Manchester Piccadilly.
Good Social Media publicity, eh?
As is to be expected, the Derbyshire timetable site has the full works ...
... as does the ever-resourceful GoTimetable Sheffield.
fbb actually typed it all out by hand in the absence of any downloadable computer-compatible content and the technical people did a quick upload.
But were passenger to be so foolish as to turn to Travel South Yorkshire, they would find this encouraging notice at the head of the "changes" page.
Hulley's X57 publicity was revealed to the world at large well before 28th September! So zilch for the good folk of Sheffield.
In passing, the X71 runs to Alton Towers; but Travel South Yorkshire insist on keeping that a secret.
What is ludicrously baffling is that as of yesterday morning at 1100 there was not a smidgen of information about the X57 ON HULLEY'S OWN WEB SITE.
Crackers!
We are given the X71 to Alton Towers (which ends soon) ...
... and we might even spot the inconsistency!
Saturdays! If you didn't spot it.
It's All On Line - But It Shouldn't Be!
Hulleys web site should be an example to all operators, large or small. Its timetables are easy to find from the home page (a rarity on many web sites!) as is other useful information for the unwary traveller ...
... including a "Where to Catch Your Bus In Bakewell" map - hardly a difficult search job in reality.
It's All On Line - But It Shouldn't Be?
Even better, we may excitedly cry, is a downloadable "timetable book".
The routes are fully colour coded ...
... and with each route timetable comes a clear route map; and not one of those awful derivatives, either!
This would be a truly wonderful, even more wonderfuller if it were available in printed form - it might be, but the web site makes no mention of such a luxury -
if the whole thing were not hopelessly out of date!
Here is the downloadable 275 ...
... and the current reality -
completely different.
And Hulley's offer us the wondrous X71 to almost everywhere in North Derbyshire ...
... which never actually operated due to "lockdown"! The current service is shown above and, again, it is
completely different.
Even the humble M17, a tendered Sheffield local route ...
... is different from that offered by Travel South Yorkshire.
Knowing the efficiency of TSY (!!!) it would be unwise to offer a definitive view on what actually operated on a Saturday!
It could be that other timetables in this virtual volume ...
... are equally wrong.
But why is it there?
Beyond belief!
From The Twitterati
To Gladden The Heart 1
The Jacobite powering round the Glenfinnan Viaduct on its way from Fort William to Mallaig as autumnal tones begin to usurp the summer's green. (Almost poetic!)
To Gladden The Heart 2
Some excellent rear end publicity from Transdev Yorkshire Coastliner; so much better than advertising baked beanz or similar!
To Sadden the Heart 1
An indication of the success of the Government "Terrify The Public" policy as applied to Public Transport. This is the Trav-o-lator leading to/from the Jubilee line platforms at Waterloo Station. It is never the busiest part of the Underground infrastructure but fbb has NEVER seen it almost totally empty.
To Sadden The Heart 2
The very very end of an era. Although the line to Weymouth Quay has been mothballed/suspended pending closure/retained for an unlikely tram route/closed completely and utterly etc for many years ...
... the track remained. But the King Street crossing, leading to Commercial Road ...
... has been removed, presumably for some non-railway purpose. fbb thinks that the rest will remain until it gets in the way of something. But it used to be such fun to watch in the Summer ...
... especially when the Orange Army had to manhandle badly parked vehicles out of the way of a very effective mobile car crusher!
More Publicity Good & Bad blog : Thurs 8th Oct
Re Weymouth, the whole line is being removed. https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18771956.road-closures-weymouth-harbour-railway-roadworks-start/
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure exactly when I looked, but I had no trouble in finding the Manchester timetables on Hulley's website yesterday. It was the first thing I saw when I opened the site.
ReplyDeleteAs of 11am today, the X56/57 timetable is on Hulley's site, but not where you might expect. Looking on my phone, the obvious thing to do is to tap on the Timetables button, but they are not on the Timetables page. Instead, I eventually found them by deciding to see if there was any clues on the homepage. Going back to the Timetables button, then scrolling down, I eventually saw an X56/57 headline but nothing more. Then continuing past some Manchester blurb and buttons to destination information, I eventually came across buttons for the X56/57 timetable and map. The whole experience was somewhat disconcerting and confusing to say the least, and I had been close to giving up looking. And to conclude, the timetable has to be viewed only as a downloaded PDF, and has been given a forgettable filename of random letters and numbers, rather than something more helpful such as x5657times.pdf!
ReplyDeleteThe weymouth scenes remind me so much of similar scenes I witnessed in Ipswich about 5 years ago, when the long-disused level crossing at Stoke Bridge and adjacent lines at Wherry Quay were removed. Possibly the last passenger train (on a line which was freight-only anyway) was the "Orwell Docker" in 1989: https://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/photos/890513_1.jpg. The very last loco to stand on the rails was this little Peckett in 2012 en route to the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway (yes, they did unload it from the lorry but it arrived about 2 hours late!): https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.1456549.1343060600!/image/3858163512.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/3858163512.jpg
ReplyDeleteThe April travel guide probably shouldn't still be on the website but seeing as the webmaster has not received a subsequent version that is most likely why it remain.
ReplyDeleteA new travel guide was planned but has been decided to hold of until early next year as there's a few more changes end of this month and possibly some more to come especially if teething problems come to light with the timings on X56 and SnakeX57.
The April guide book that's online was printed but several thousand copies were binned when they swiftly became useless when Covid came about.
The X56/SnakeX57 composite timetbable is designed for the Glossop area and had been shared online as well as the full composite timetable with 257 journeys, as DCC version. In fact, they have compiled theirs from the one submitted to them.