Horrors At Harlow (2)

Arriva Holds On!

It ought to have been oh so simple - but it wasn't! Remember that London's green buses (known as the "Country Area") were transferred to the National Bus Company. For the privatisation bargain basement sale the operation was then split into four geographical areas plus the separate Green Line network.

Harlow found itself in the hands of London Country North East.

The bloc was sold 22 April 1988 to the AJS Group, which split the company into two from January 1989, County Bus & Coach and Sovereign Bus & Coach.  

AJS was Alan Stevenson, for whom one Giles Fearnley toiled away. Much of the AJS empire became Blazefield Holdings - but not all of the AJS chunk of London Country.

County was sold to its management in 1990 and eventually became Arriva East Herts & Essex, part of Arriva Shires & Essex. The Grays garage was transferred to Arriva Southern Counties in 2002. Sovereign was sold to the Blazefield Group in 1991. These operations are also now part of Arriva Shires & Essex, except for the St Albans depot which was sold to Centrebus but then passed to Uno, with the operation transferred to Hatfield.

So, simply speaking, Arriva arrived in Harlow and soon faced the continuing chaos of crazy competitive challenges on every part of its networks in and from the town.

Note, in passing, Arriva's oft expressed determination to show their passengers where the bus was going!

As we all know, "Service" is a small village just outside Bishops Stortford.

So to counter the onslaught, Arriva has this jackpot idea. They would transfer their Harlow operation to Tellings Golden Miller (TGM) a company they had just bought. TGM would produce a good quality route map of the town network (split by fbb into two chunks) , Below we have east of the town centre and ...

... west thereof.

There would be an exciting new brand name ...

...and a contact number which was the same as that of Arriva! Well, you wouldn't want to add extra cost by having local Harlow people answering enquires about buses to Staple Tye and Potter Street. That would never do.

But what was more dramatic was that routes would have route branding (shock horror) and each route would have buses painted in a different colour. So here is a red route 1 ...

... and a blue route 2/3 - a both ways round "lollipop"!

Of course it didn't work! "The lads" at Fourth Avenue ...

... couldn't manage to get the right colours on the right routes, so the numbers were peeled off and your local bus would become a multi-coloured swap shop of vehicles. An on-line video shows a selection with just a small "Network Harlow" above the doors. The video shows he fun and games at Harlow bus station.

There were also Arriva buses but without fleet names ...

... and an occasional intruder in TGM colours!

Eventually a sort-of common sense prevailed and one paint scheme was adopted for the whole Harlow fleet. It was actually quite smart (for Arriva!).

But, for unpublished reasons, (the TMT policy - Too Much Trouble) everything reverted to plain Arriva.

Arriva is not renowned for stickability in branding (TMT policy again). Some may remember this ...

... or the "SX" brand ...

... ot even this.

They are all historic variants for today's 508/509/510 from Harlow to Stansted Airport.

You might even have seen one of these en route to the airport ...

... but the above livery was, briefly, used on the 724 Harlow to Heathrow which used to be proudly Green Line ...

... although, nowadays, seemingly anything with a wheel at each corner will do.

Heathrow via Stansted, anyone?

Well, it's only a bus route, innit!

And so ...

... we stride purposely forward to the here and now. 

Tomorrow we will see how Arriva is serving the good folk of Harlow later this month.

It is not a pretty sight!

 Next Harlow blog : Thursday 13th April 

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END OF PART ONE

The Lord himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

Luke was planning his Gospel part two which the Bible Editors have titled "he Acts of the Apostles", so he sort-of summarises Jesus' appearances. Unfortunately illustrators have this strange idea that Jesus wore white, maybe to emphasise his resurrection in an artistic but inaccurate convention. 

But the message of the passage was of terrifying impossibility!

They were terrified, thinking that they were seeing a ghost.

But he said to them, “Why are you alarmed? Why are these doubts coming up in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet, and see that it is I myself. Feel me, and you will know, for a ghost doesn't have flesh and bones, as you can see I have.”

He said this and showed them his hands and his feet. They still could not believe, they were so full of joy and wonder; so he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of cooked fish, which he took and ate in their presence.

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “This is what is written: the Messiah must suffer and must rise from death three days later, and in his name the message about repentance and the forgiveness of sins must be preached to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And I myself will send upon you what my Father has promised. But you must wait in the city until the power from above comes down upon you.”

That's the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday a few weeks hence.

But we see again the humanity of the Divine Jesus in his Resurrection. "The bloke" was definitely alive and enjoyed some fish.

No chips.

Of course it is impossible. It was God wot done it and God is, by definition, God of the impossible.

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