Better Late Than Never (2)

Leicester Mercury's Little Secret

The 21T starts its travels at Haymarket bus station (Leicester) and sets off in almost a straight line in a North Easterly direction. Barkby Road passes under the Midland Main line ...

... which suggests that the 21T or its successors will never have double deck bus!

It meets the Outer Circle route 40 ...

... which uses Thurmaston Lane ...

... with 21T crossing over to Humberstone Lane. Hitherto the 21T has run in joyous contentedness with service 21, 

but here they part company.

The 21T will join Barkby Thorpe Lane on the right ...

... passing newer housing on its left and open country on the right. Eventually the beginnings of Thorpebury come into view.

The estate is much as you would expect ...

... with varied properties well laid out.

Again there may well have been more development since Streetview viewed.

Just off this junction is the lavish bus turn round, seen below before any bus came to turn round ...

... but seen later with bus and stop all ready for, apparently, very few passengers,

But it is being paid for by the developers and does offer a very generous two buses and hour Monday to Saturday and hourly in Sunday.

Unfortunately, and so far unexplained, many of the journeys are not at a fixed half hourly interval, probably because Centrebus is cleverly interworking the 21T with other routes and the timings don't quite fit. 

This is a pity because nothing is more off-putting than a timetable which runs at a published unreliability sequence. People forget that the times are "odd" and then blame the company for not running reliably.

Publicity is all part of the joint "Leicester Buses" brand ...

... and the leaflet is excellent with full timetable, full map (as above) and selected fares information.

Apart from the silly frequency bits, the whole thing is very well done and deserves to succeed. Sadly these routes subsidised heavily by a developer often collapse into a drastically reduced frequency or disappear completely when the money runs out.

There is plenty of development to come at Thorpebury,, housing which will, eventually, need far better services than that provided today. The question is whether Joe Thorpebury-Public will have bought cars, thus abandoning the opportunity of taking the bus.

Whoever coughs up the subsidy, it does need to remain in place until a proper service can justify itself commercially. That may take several years and a hefty cash bag of pennies.

So, Leicester Mercury's little secret is what?

The on-line and printed news item was dated 5th October 2025.

The service had started on 26th August 2025! So better late than never with your news gathering, Leicester Mercury!

To make matters worse, the paper had already carried a piece about the new service on Wednesday 5th September!

In journalistic terms, the repeat not-new news is called a space filler.

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Trials & Tribulations for Tanks

The benefit of setting up the giant fbb tank wagon display turns out to be something of a challenge. The problem is, not how best to arrange the models; the problem is that you realise there are more missing than you thought. 

fbb was checking which supplier had supplied this TEA bogie tank wagon.

fbb could not, immediately, find the box so he searched on-line. There was the green one supplied by Revolution Trains.  Or maybe it was Rapido Trains?  They had a green one as well. There was also a picture of the Rapido Trains model in unpainted form.

Every teensy weensy detail was exactly the same. To all intents and purposes they were the same wagon. So fbb emailed the very kind man at Revolutions Trains. He is called "Mike", most likely Mike Hale ...

... seen on the left with the bearded Ben Ando on the right. Not sure who the guy in the middle might be but he does make some great rail journeys.

Apparently the first production batch of these delightfully complex models had been shared by Rapido and Revolution. One wagon, two joint suppliers. 

This was confirmed by a picture of the underbelly of fbb's wagon ...

... which clearly showed both brands moulded thereupon.

But the nice man from the Revolution added that his company, and it alone, had supplied a second batch with no involvement of Rapido. The second batch included a green one! So how do you tell the difference? Do the second batch  models only have "Revolution" on their belly?

If so, surely it counts as a different supplier of the same design of wagon for fbb's collecting purposes. It is not just Chancellor Rachel that has self-imposed fiscal rules.

fbb awaits a second reply from the nice man at Revolution to see if the old man needs to buy himself a tank wagon Christmas present. They are expensive!

More to follow, surely.

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 Next Holiday Camp blog : Weds 22nd Oct