The Best 'O' Leicester(shire) - 2

Try, Try And Try Again

It is not always the very best policy to try and compose a blog after two days, Sunday and Monday, of Fellowship meetings plus one church prayer meeting on Monday Morning. Productivity and brain activity are not alway at the highest level!

Then fbb awoke at 0400 yesterday feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed. After a hot drink lovingly prepared by Mrs fbb, he settled down to sleep and awoke at the normal time feeling he had been spat out of the mouth of a Jonah-style great fish (it wasn't a whale!).

But during the nocturnal awake-ness, the old man found a timetable for Midland Red 687 between Coalville and Hinckley. It came from a 1973 timetable book, so 52 years old.

fbb is particularly amused by the dramatically enlarged Leicester area on the GB map. Leicester has annexed Birmingham and Chester?

fbb has downloaded the timetable in two chunks to preserve readability ...

... and here is the rest of the Monday to Saturday table from Coalville.

There was a more limited Sunday service, where only 688 journeys ran all the way.

The next timetable fbb has found appeared in this blog in 2015. The blog was about Rev Teddy Boston and his railway at Cadeby. fbb did not note the operator of what had become service 159. It is likely that Roberts Coaches had, by then, taken over from Arriva. On-line records do show, however, that Arriva was receiving tender payments (a subsidy) from Leicestershire in the latter days of their operation.

Here is fbb's 2015 timetable extract.

Latterly the frequency was somewhat reduced but still requiring a two bus operation by Roberts. Maybe the timings for the hourly service were just too tight?

But we need a map ...

... to help us establish some geographical "sitz im leben". Clearly the bus services will need to deviate from the A447, but how?

Here a health warning is necessary. With no old map from Midland Red and no full route quoted on any of the timetables, fbb has needed an educated guess - and his education in matters omnibological in rural Leicestershire is somewhat sparse!

But here is the 687 together with the 688 - the latter not mentioned by chum David.

The 2015 route 159 looks like this ...

... so it is the 687 with a wiggle to pick up a bit of the 688 at Newbold Vernon. This also appears to be the route of the resurrected service, now numbered LC6.

Here is the most recent Leicestershire "map" (don't laugh!) ...

... which pays scant regard to anything that might be called geography and is thus overly blessed with obscuration. But it shows a stylised 159, despite it having been withdrawn in February 2025.

So how does the new LC6 stand in terms of service offered.

Badly.

It is a "one bus in steam" service 6 days a week but a sad comparison with the 687/688 combo. The 2025 resurrection seems to offer a very poor service with no really convenient times for workers travelling to the two terminal towns also with trips allowing too little or too much shopping time in either.

It seems designed to fail; a phrase used in one of the many on-line comments.

The service starts at the end of this month and will be operated by Centrebus ...

... from whose web site fbb has obtained the above timetable.

But lots of "LC" prefixed services have been appearing in Leicestershire, so, as they say in all good soap operas ...

...Wass Goin' On?

More tomorrow - including a glimpse of pr*nt*d t*m*t*bl*s - but please don't mention the P T words or everybody will want them.

In the meantime, locals cannot wait for their brand new poor service which replaces their old, much better service.

The queues will be "round the block" on 26th August!

 Next Best 'O' Leicester(shire) blog : Thur 7 Aug