Keighley Today
By way of summary, we can see four "green" roads (plus one pink) leading out of Keighley. All four now carry branded bus routes. The A650 direction is used by the Shuttle to Bradford ...
... already mentioned and the AireLine (It's a river!) to Leeds.
We have the unbranded 62 which winds its merry way to Ilkley ...
South run the Bronte bus routes ...
Unbranded 67 ...
... also runs that way and the back way into Bradford.
Two town services also wiggle around Keighley and Worth Valley territory ...
The picture, of course, is a fake - "digitally remastered" from a 1930s print. You are supposed to think that two of the sisters are taking tea on the lawn!
... leaving the Brontes to the main road.
For those whose Eng Lit knowledge is minimal, the three Bronte sisters, all authoresses at a time when women writers were not popular with the blokes, lived with bro Bramwell and vicar daddy in the Parsonage atop the hill in Haworth.
Travelling Northwest we see two branded routes, one of which is Transdev but not Keighley.
The M4 is operated by the Burnley Bus Company and approaches via Cowling and the A6068. Under normal circumstances it works with the Keighley route to give a four buses an hour past the busy Airedale Hospital. There is an awful lot of hospital ...
... and you do wonder how outpatients find their way into this rather cluttered complex.
Ahh - there is a sign ...
... not easy to miss!!
But it is the successor to the 66 to Skipton that particularly drew fbb to write these two blogs.
There is a bit of an identity crisis here as the buses still show 66 as well as the Dalesway brand, but the map (as above) doesn't mention the route number. Neither does the list of services on the company web site.
The Shuttle still retains its historic number ...
... alternating on-screen with "the brand".
Meanwhile it is mostly Dalesway in printed material ... 
... but with a route number on the timetable itself.
fbb is not sure about the dreadfully diseased green sheep ...
... but is impressed that the canny Yorkshire NHS has recruited ducks to help in the hospital.
Obviously the NHS is going back to the good old bad old days when many doctors were quacks.
Pause for hyper-groan!
There is a small advantage in retaining a well displayed route number. If, for any reason, the branding breaks down ...
... at least there is a a recognisable number to restore confidence in the hesitant potential passenger. The sheep looks more healthy as well!
The company has also Twittered a Tease with pictures of a double decker dressed demurely for Dalesway.
So, with all the town services branded as "Jets" and consequently numbered K1 (etc, that is, of course, K for Jet??), most of the town's buses are now branded. So fbb asks his usual question. "What evidence is there that branding - even rebranding - puts more posteriors on seats and more pennies in the bank?
Keighley's boss says it does ...
... and even includes a picture of the "plain old 66" for comparison purposes.
Do people catch the brightly coloured Dalesway rather than the brown M4 to get to the Hospital and back? Doubtful? How many passengers use wifi or charge their devices from the USB? - remembering that Stagecoach has withdrawn such "essential" facilities from its services as being largely unused and costing extra money which is needed elsewhere. Do folk really rush to travel on a buses JUST because they are painted pretty colours with green sheep and NHS ducks?
What IS VERY CLEAR is that marketing effort as a complete package DOES attract passengers, as does improved frequency and discounted fares offers.
Even Ray Stenning, of Best Impressions, would agree that Creating Desire is not just a paint job - it has to encompass every part of the bus service.
Maybe for Dalesway Transdev has proved that.
Snippet
Milford Tunnel is almost invisible from nearby roads ...
... and it is not really memorable as tunnels go.
The Milford Contract for building the tunnel was let by the North Midland Railway in about October 1837 and completed by June 1840, in time for the opening of the line. The engineers for the route were George and Robert Stephenson, assisted by Frederick Swanwick. The winning contractor was David McIntosh who tendered £93,122 (equivalent to £8,524,000 in 2019) Historic England has suggested that the architect Francis Thompson may have been involved with the design of the tunnel portal, which received more special aesthetic treatment because it faced land owned by the Strutt family, who were in negotiations by the railway, and it could be readily appreciated by standing on an adjacent road bridge.
Perhaps not "readily appreciated" today! Certainly not by viewing the northern portal!
But if you are the driver of a train, you get a stunning view.
Now that IS something special which is easily missed (you cannot hang out of windows any more - except in the doors of venerable HSTs), but still doing its job 180 years later.
Then the Stephensons and their like knew how to build stuff which would last!
Next Railway Architecture blog : Friday 12th March
I see the AireLine bus is flying the Yorkshire Flag, was this on August 1st I wonder. I believe the red and blue Dalesway bus was only temporary to increase seating capacity during the pandemic and will be replaced by the Green and Yellow ones soon. Lastly the green sheep should be yellow. To celebrate the Tour de France starting in Yorkshire a few years ago a lot of yellow paint was applied to buildings (especially Public Houses) and old bicycles. Some farmers joined in by dying their sheep yellow, our lurcher could not take his eyes off them.
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