Noo Yoik, Noo Yoik
It is very unlikely that fbb will ever travel to the Big Apple but, occasionally, public transport stuff crops up on-line which sets the old man's "leedle grey cells" jangling.
A twitterer called Matt posted a picture of a model bus he had bought, reposted on the Best Impressions Twittering site. (Do you now have to write or send an "X" and when you do are you an Xer ot an Xerer?)
Here are his pictures.
In fact, Matt went to the Grand Central station branch office and made his purchase for the equivalent of £29.
Cheap as expensive chips by UK model bus model standards.
... and 19 pages of PDF timetables.
The buses are relatively recent replacements for old models ...
... but also on the electric! Even earlier vehicles were more conventional, like this (not on the M106)..
The city sounds fun, transport-wise. fbb is really too old and definitely lacking in funding to contemplate a trip.
As with all on-line Twits, the information with the pictures is sparse. But Matt had been up the Empire State Building at night ...
... and taken some stunning pictures.
And fbb mens stunning stunning!
Matt bought his buses from one of the three New York Transit Museum shops, and that involved going into the shop and giving the man some money. How quaint!
In fact, Matt went to the Grand Central station branch office and made his purchase for the equivalent of £29.
The museum has a range of open/fun days as here under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Back to the model bus which is HO scale (1:87 instead of OO, 1:76). The M106 is a famous NY bus route serving Broadway (of Lullaby fame!) and other notable sites.
On line you can find a route map ...
The old double decker is particularly interesting as such beasts no long ply the street of the town which is, in many ways, a helluva pity!
Double deck sightseeing buses do, however, proliferate.
The subway trains (Underground to you and me) are displayed in a no longer used subway station.
There is plenty to see and plenty to climb on and explore.
Sigh!
398 - Whee! : Fine : Great
Many many moons ago Glasgow's inter station bus from Queen Street to Central was briefly operated by electric minibuses. Only it wasn't. They were a failure and spent most of their brief Glaswegian life parked up at Buchanan Bus Station.
A variety of operators and vehicles ...
A variety of operators and vehicles ...
... have appeared on this under-used service which is FREE for through rail passengers needing to cross between the two termini. It was once numbered in the Glasgow Corporation series as 98 but became 398 under the Strathclyde PTE numbering non-system.
Most recently shiny buses in Scotrail "measles" livery have been used.
The latest arrival is a "back to the future" ELECTRIC BUS. Hopefully such vehicles will actually work. Here the 398 is seen entering the 'porte cochere' on Gordon Street, the main entrance to Central.
Needless to say its environmental credentials are well displayed.
Knees Up The Knostrils?
No doubt crowds will flock to use the buses now that they are so environmentally whizzo.
fbb has travelled on this route many times, but has rarely been accompanied by more than a handful of other passengers. Whilst there are plenty of signs at both stations, details of the service are quite difficult to find unless you are an expert at negotiating Scotrail's publicity.
So off it goes, sparsely loaded, back to Queen Street.
How low can you go?
fbb has written before about his exciting (?) ride from Nottingham to Derby on Barton's fleet number 561. It was a Dennis Loline chassis with a low height body stuck on. It was doubly low. A singe deck bus would almost reach the bottom of the top deck windows.
This paste-up (although not entirely accurate) shows how low it went. 561 is on the left.
Although fbb enjoyed his ride top deck front offside, he discovered that the driver's cab protruded into the upper deck space, leaving little height for the chubby legs of your youthful and student blogger.
The bus was unique in Barton's fleet ( in anybody's fleet) but, way back then, fbb never expected to discover anything similar in the future, let alone in 2023.
But users of the brand new Yutong electric double decker ...
... now plying its trade on route 51 in Sheffield, found something rather silly on the lower deck.
Here are the rearmost two nearside "seats" - if that is what you can call them.
Definitely knees up the knostrils!
It is so good to see that the designers of new buses are taking the comfort needs of the passenger into their design thought processes.
And ignoring them!
Did You Remember?
Next Historic British Railways blog : Monday 30th Oct
The buses for the 398 aren't "new". They're existing fleet as given away by their registrations.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid that the Stonehenge picture is wrongly captioned. Surely that's the stones being moved forward for Stoneage Summer Time?
ReplyDelete