One of the delights of the fine City of Derby was its gorgeous Art Deco bus station. Many residents and even more bus watchers were destraught when it was demolished and replaced with a new-build. Surely, they thought it could be fettle up and retained as part of the city's character.
Its replacement may well be more efficient, less draughty and easier to clean ...... but it doesn't have "character"! And it doesn't have such a good caff as the old one!
Pre-privatisation City bus services were in the hands of Derby Corporation ...
... and most longer distance routes were operated by Trent.
From unreliable memory, there were one or two joint services which existed for historic boundary reasons.
Nowadays, for Derby Corporation read Arriva ...
,,, whilst Trent remains, albeit known more fully as TrentBarton.
Note that Trent still runs what might be called City routes to Allestree, Mickleover and Heatherton. The X38, non stop to Burton upon Trent ...
... remains a joint operation between Arriva ...
... and Trent.
But until 1967, the highlight of Derby Corporation's services was its extensive network of trolleybuses. Route 66, for example ...
... ran from Nottingham Road Creamery to Allenton.
So why is fbb interested in Shelton Lock?
One of the challenging questions facing a bus operator is how best to find the most profitable (or least unprofitable) customers. Do you try to serve every chunk of housing at, perhaps, a half hour frequency; ot will it work better to run every ten minutes along the main roads and expect people to walk.
Over the years, this challenge has been faced at Shelton Lock.
So let's go back a bit.
Back in the early 1930s we can see various communities spread out along the main road between Derby and Melbourne. There is a cluster of houses at Allenton; even fewer dwellings at Shelton Lock ...
... which is no longer with us.
The canal is now a footpath and cycleway. But just up from the Melbourne Road bridge over the former canal ...
... you might, way back, have come across the service 60 trolleybus terminus.
Trolleys had a magnificent turning circle.
Tomorrow's blog will look at what has happened to Shelton Lock, to route 60 and, equally interesting (?), what has become of the turning circle.
Immediately, we see that the area has growed a bit!
The former canal is shown by the "bridleway" green dots.
Next along the road towards Melbourne is the once-rural traditional Derbyshire village of Chellaston.
It will also enter our route development story tomorrow.
Next Shelton Lock blog : Tuesday 22nd November
The X38 is not a hangover from Derby Corporation but something Arriva hung onto after selling Burton to Midland Classic. Both operators are now based at the Derby end instead of one each end.
ReplyDeleteTo add to this, X38 started as a joint service by Trent and Stevensons, before Stevensons passed to Arriva or perhaps it’s predecessor.
Delete