Change Of Plan

 fbb Gives Up!

Faced with a heavy cold, a big back tooth extraction, preparing for a short holiday, Church lunch; AND preparing for Fellowship meetings which happen immediately after the holiday; fbb has abandoned his Wuhan series. The amount of research needed was just too much.

Wuhan will return later

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Back To Our Roots? Or Routes? 

In the glorious days of Sheffield trams (that's proper clanking trams, not the modern resurrection beauties), one key route was from Sheffield Lane Top (shown erroneously as Firth Park on the above diagram) ...

... to Meadowhead.

Of course, the trams just stopped in the middle of the road! Replacement buses numbered 75 were a direct substitute for greatly missed trams.

Part of the frequency was numbered 33 but did not make it to Meadowhead. We will see why below.

For the buses a little turning circle (a k a mini bus station) was constructed off the highway but close to the tram terminus.

The terminus lasted into the First Bus era.

On the map below you can trace the 33 and 75 bus routes.

The Sheffield Lane Top terminus was by the church symbol on the map above. Buses used much of the RED A6135 with a diversion via Firth Park on the ORANGE B6088.

South of the city the 33 left the main A61 GREEN ...

.... via a squiggle and continuing via Graves Park to Hemsworth. Meanwhile the 75 buses continued, like the trams, to Meadowhead. The buses turned via a side street loop.

Briefly, the 75 was extended along the GREEN outer ring road and the YELLOW local bit to Norton.

It was all change south of the city centre on 8th October 1968! (Usual fbb unreliable memory warning). A revised 75 and a new 76 were diverted away from the A61 between city centre and Woodseats.

... via the RED Abbeydale Road and up the hill to join the historic route on the YELLOW Woodseats Road at the bottom of the map. 

The 75 ran from its historic Meadowhead terminus via a new ORANGE road .at the lower end of the map below ...

... to Bradway.

The 76 ran via Greenhill almost to Bradway, then turned back to finish at Low Edges.

In a later change, the 75 moved from Bradway to Batemoor on the opposite side of the A61.

It may be that our readers are already confused. Please try to hold on to the simple fact that, despite the changes, buses still ran from Sheffield Lane Top, cross city to the Meadowhead area.

Indeed, south of the city things are still broadly the same for the 75 and 76 since the big shake up in 1968.

Above we see the 75 in KHAKI, and the 76 in RED.

But we also see lots of variations.

So what is happening?

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Off The Track!

In the good old days of fbb's youth, loco wheels had big flanges ...

... but the centre set of wheels were flangeless! That meant the 0-6-0 chassis could get round the sharp curves and pointwork without falling off the track. Here is part of an early Triang point ...

... and a Hornby Dublo point ...

... both with far deeper rails than today's equivalent. Below a Hornby Dublo (3 rail) 0-6-0 loco also with no flanges on the centre wheels.

0-6-0 locos without centre wheel flanges but with deep flanges elsewhere will run satisfactorily on old deep rail track. But what happens with modern models with all wheels enflanged?

They can get round the sharp curves because the axles can slide a little, left to right.

But if the track is not well laid they still derail! Up and down movement causes one set of wheels to jump off the track, particularly when coping with bumps and tight curves.

Which is why fbb was having problems.

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 Next 75 and 76 blog : Thursday 21st May