Public Transport Experience: Saturday Variety

Saturday, 22 November 2025

Saturday Variety

First Cornwall : Failure Complete

But not for much longer!

The signs have been writ large in recent months.

One : Withdrawal of all open top buses in a busy tourist area

Two : Loss of lucrative college contracts

Three : Competition from GoAhead

Four : Abandonment of route branding

Five : Service cuts

Six : Closure of St Ives bus station

And, of course, it is all the passengers fault for not travelling on First's messy-liveried buses.

So yesterday the news broke.

Even the above on-line 'box' was in poor taste. Why try to hide a close down as an 'update'? And, of course, the decision was made with a heavy heart.

"Exhaustion of all viable alternatives"? Try good management. Try customer focused good publicity. Try running routes that attract the tourists.

But you didn't, First Bus, you just messed up at every opportunity.

And, here is a big surprise as reported by the Cornwall Live web site ...

And which company will that be?

What a surprise! GoAhead will likely go ahead with their usual ahead going verve and replace the services vacated by First; following the pattern already established when First closed down in Southampton.

The County has issued a statement ...

Remember; Cornwall Council has no spare cash!

A few more thoughts.

Because there has been no sale, First will just shut the shop, there is no T U P E legislation to protect jobs. If it had been a sale, staff would have a legal right to transfer to the take-over company.

First have assured their staff that redundancy payments will be honoured whilst GoAhead are likely to be offering jobs to the locals. Currently GoAhead's Cornwall maintenance is outsourced, so there is a good chance that First's depots and engineering staff will be snapped up.

fbb's guess is that GoAhead will have been planning this for months; in a drawer in a back office somewhere the new network and timetables will ready to release.

Cornwall Council will have very little to do.

A Closure Nearby

The local freebie rag reports extensively on the demise of Pecorama in Beer. The front page headline suggests a rescue mission.

But who might rescue? There is a huge amount of expensive stuff which Peco will not want to give away ...

... and those steam powered beasties don't come cheap - all hand made in the Beer workshops. Claudine (above) was the wife of company founder Sydney Pritchard.

Let's hope that funds OR volunteers can be found to maintain the gardens.

"Snowdrift" in OO Gauge

The "British Transport" film, 'Snowdrift At Bleath Ghyll' is one of fbb's all-time favourites. It tells the tale of the rescue of a stranded goods train not far from the now-demolished Belah Viaduct.

The scenes where the snowplough carves its way through packed snow are utterly memorable.

And here is said snowplough!

Now you can buy one for your OO model railway.

It is a splendid model of the early wooden version; the later builds were in steel.

The model, from Rails of Sheffield, will cost you five pennies short of £70.

It's a wagon, innit; you need a steam loco to push it through the snow.

fbb should have made use of one when his outdoor layout ...

... suffered a meteorological event a few years ago. The present Peterville is safely tucked indoors; unless the roof caves in!

Giving St Erth A Lift

Readers may remember that, recently, Notwork Rail has replaced the iconic and attractive footbridge at St Erth station (above) ...

... with an ugly new footbridge. But it does have lifts.

Only it didn't.

Apparently the wire that brought the electric to the lifts wasn't thick enough so, if switched on, they would fuse the whole of Cornwall. In the absence of lifts, First Great Western ran a bus from one side of the station to the other; free to passengers but very costly to Notwork Rail.

Anyuway, the contractors have now installed that thicker wire, complete with a plug fitted with a 13 amp fuse, and the buses no longer run. Those in need of assistance can now travel by shiny red and grey lift.