Consistency, What Consistency?
A quick glance at today's buses to Nether Edge may help us understand the changes that came after the withdrawal of the trams. The tram track ended in Moncrieffe Road indicated by the up arrow, far right.
Buses performed a turning loop via Montgomery Road and Moncrieffe Road. With the development of Nether Edge Hospital on Union Road an extra loop was added to confuse new recruits to the routes.
The purple line is for the inner circle service, originally numbered 8 and 9. The present 10/10a is barely recognisable from the original for most of its very mangled 'circle". The section via Nether Edge is, however part of the good old set of served roads.
The 8/9 even attracted competition in the chaos of post deregulation.
And a star artefact (?) from the archives; a leaflet cover designed by fbb!
Consistency : 61, 97, 98, 22, 56, 3, 56
Route 61 on Wolstenholm (?) Road was the first bus service replacing the trams.
The first change was a through route from Nether Edge via City to Southey Green, then on the northern boundary of Sheffield. fbb could find no pictures of a 97 or its variant 98, but from his own resources excavated this very fuzzy ex slide.
This was from a time of bus shortages (faulty track rods - they tended to snap when going round corners) when the route was in the hands of Huddersfield buses.
fbb is not 100% sure of the continuation of consistency and did not have time to unearth his copious Sheffield route records, but there followed a 22 ...
... a 56 ...
... a 3 ...
... and presently back to 56 again, just for fun!
Needless to say, these services ran to different cross-city destinations and served different stops in the city centre - all designed to provide fun and jollity to regular passengers and utter bafflement to occasional users.
Revised 97 and 98?
A more resent challenge to the citizens of the Steel City was spotted by a certain Mr Giles Fearnley (retired First Bus supremo) on a recent visit oop noorth.
As First no longer prints timetables to help passengers, the company has been using its electronic blinds to provide useful (?) information.
Sometimes fares info.
Intermediate locations appear ...
... sometimes legibly.
So Mr F saw, but failed to photograph (slacker) a 97 to Totley via Nether Edge!
Young Giles immediately e-mailed fbb asking "What's going on?" He thought that the 97 and 98 (which used to run to Nether Edge remember?) had been diverted via their old route and the inner circle 10 rejoining the main drag to Totley.
fbb thought not. He consulted the Travel South Yorkshire (TSY) route nap ...
... which showed the 97/98 passing innocently by on their usual routes via the Abbeydale Road to Totley (97) and Totley Rise (98), indubitably NOT via Nether Edge.
Assuming the map is up to date (not always a given), fbb checked the timetable on the TSY web site.
No mention of Nether Edge on the front cover of TSY's non-leaflet.
But the timetable shows ...
.... Nether Edge Abbeydale Road Empire Road, a designation repeated on the computer created route map.
The full route description also complies.
As the politicians oft intone, fbb says "Let me be absolutely clear on this." The old man is quite certain tha not one of the 600,000 residents of Sheffield would ever consider these stops as being in Nether Edge.
This is an utter daftness residing only in the incompetent minds of TSY, and absorbed by equal ignorance at First Bus HQ.
And both these outputters of omnibological obfuscation wonder why they are losing passengers, year by year.
Next Variety blog : Saturday 2nd May
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