Bewildered By Bristol Buses (4)

Thus blog has been curtailed due to a very busy domestic day! Church prayer meeting; preparation for our April leaflet for our Fellowship groups.

Beware : the above has NOT been checked for spooling misteaks.

The quiz questions will also feature in fbb's  much anticipated (?) Easter "Daily Thought" blog appendages.

Then there was making a huge pot of tomato and vegetable soup followed by preparing and cooking a complex evening meal. [Jacket spud, grated cheese, cold roast chicken, baked beans and adequate butter!]

Mrs fbb unpacked the mini choc icee on a stick as pud!

First's Forties At Fishponds Part 1

There is a pond at Fishponds. There used to be three, the remains of a quarry. One was dveloped as a Lido which was hugely popular.

It closed in the 1960s ...

... and it is now Ridgway Pond.

Fishponds had trams ...

... and a railway station.

This was on the Midland Railway route into the city, a line that was closed in the 1960s. Trains now travel via Bristol Parway station and Filton Bank.

This map extract may help.

One delight is the footpath and cycleway that now replaces the trains, with Staple Hill tunnel fully fettled and illuminated.

Although Fishponds is now a busy suburb and shopping area, there are many okder buildings still very much extant, here us the Cross Hands pub way back then ...

... and still a sentinel at the road junction today!

The Cross Hands is now called The All Inn and looks awful like this:-

No 1 son, wife and No 1 grandson lived for a while at Fishponds, often visited by the fbbs.

The main city bus services via Fishponds are numbered from 46 to 49 and are fiendishly complicated.

So here is fbb's version of "fastest finger first".

As Jeremy Clarkson might say ...

... put these bus pictures in the correct order, starting with the earliest.

Routes 48, 48A and 49

City Line 49

Route 48x

Barbie 47

A Mystery 49

Yes, fbb does know that there should be four for fastest finger First Bus, but ....

fbb will try to sort things out in tomorrow's  blog!

Yikes!

But there is one (former) First Bus that is different but easy to understand.

The above is the best that can be found. It's sister vehicle used to look like this.

The 'Fishponds' bus now has a different purposr.

It is a mobile art gallery.

More bus stuff tomorrow including a full and frank feast of First's Fishponds forties - fantastic!

  Next Bewildered blog : Weds 25 March 

Bewildered By Bristol Buses (3)

Full Of Eastern Promise

Thankfully, and unlike the offerings elsewhere in the UK, First in Bristol has always been very good with maps.

The network map for all the 'citylines east' is a little confusing, as here with the present routes ...

... because, in order to preserve the brand identity, 41, 42 and 43 are coloured maroon, whilst 44 and 45 are coloured, erm, maroon - only a slightly darker shade. Colouring the 17 maroon is also not helpful as both it and the 19 do not run to the city centre.

But, since fbb did his earlier researches, there is now a network map for the April 5th changes.

We already know, from our Keynsham konsiderations, that the 42 has been extended from its Bath Road Cherry Gardens terminus to Keynsham and on to the former Bath Bus Depot at Burnett Business Park.

But do not be deceived, eager enquirer, the 43 has travelled all the way west to the city centre and back east to Keynsham The revised 17 also goes there!

But things are made MUCH easier as First has presented its on-line users with separate maps of the different sets of services to the east.

The current 41 ...

.... is extended from Kingswood ...

... to Warmley.

But then it used to go there long ago.

Indeed in early First Bus days it ran to Cherry Gardens (see later).

Recently, the 41 has run cross-city to Avonmouth ...

... like it used to, way back.

We know about the new 42 ...

... but the new 43 is pulled out of Cherry Gardens and now runs to North Common.

Here, then, is the current 44 and 45.

And the new 44 and 45. 

Spot the difference?

There isn't any. 

The routes, at least, are unchanged on the city lines that go east..

Sigh!

Would it were that easy.

Currently, the 44 and 45 run between suburbs and City. But from April 5th, that will all change.

Currently the 43 (which will run cross city to Keynsham, replacing the 349 - pay attention all omnibological slackers!) runs via Brislington to Imperial Park.

Yes, it's  one of them!

Then we need to know that from 5th April, the 73 is withdrawn, except for a few occasional journeys.

The 43 to Imperial Park and the 73 to Hengrove are replaced by running the 44 and 45 cross city.

Of course, what the bus passengers of Bristol want is a good stable, easy to understand network!

Hmmm? 

  Next Bristol blog : Tues 24 March 

Sunday Variety (mini blog)

It's  All On Line YouTube!

Contrary to perceived opinion, fbb does not spend all his waking hours on-line. He spends some of them doing model railway  'work', quite a lot of them preparing his Christian ministry activities and the remaining hours doing normal routine domestic stuff.

But the interwebnet is so 'broken' these days that it pays to be forewarned of garbage to be avoided.

The above Routemaster look-slightly-alike is not a bus. It is a mobile workshop. The scantily clad young lady is a fake! She, as an example of the human race, is not a fake; but her tender love of the shiny green vehicle is very fake.

She stands in the same pose in the "headline teaser" of another video ...

... and another!

The vehicles are genuine but not very "strange". Here us the adapted green RM ...

... which started life as a red RML.

The buses in the "Watch It Again" YouTube 'item' are not all significantly strange for a UK reader. We do not find a VAL strange.

We are used to low height double deckers ...

... whilst those who inhabit one of our former colonies 'across the pond' probably find the two storey bus a bit odd.

The German articulated DD coach is unusual but not in the least 'strange'.

OK, the Paris tour bus is strange and has featured in a previous fbb blog, so thoroughly familiar to fbb's readers with long memories.

Quite why a giant French 'agent de police' is suspended in mid air watching the vehicle is unclear.

Which leaves this. Like the ex-Routemaster, it is not a bus at all, but a commercial display and advertising van, styled in a weird futuristic manner.

Other pictures show a full van body with exhibition contents. It was never a bus!

Apparently, as an example of its strangeness, the driver has to climb steps to get to the cab.

That never happens in a any real vehicle, does it!

Anyway, from the ridiculous to the ...

... ridiculous!

Oliver Coppard's  Vision For Rail
Like many before him, e.g. chum Andy who loves maps ...

Olly's  vision includes TWO maps, for want of a better word.

There is a noteworthy difference between Andy's Manchester rail map and Olly's effort for South Yorkshire.

You can understand Andy's!!!

Here is the South Yorkshire current rail travel network map ...

... and what the various lines mean.

fbb has not gone beyond Doncaster for his extract (orange dot, upper right) because not much happens way out east!

So here is the Coppard wonder map for the future of tram and train.

And the rubric.

For a start, fbb does not understand it.

There is a blue line route. (under investigation) which is the old way from Sheffield to Penistone, the Woodhead route. Also new and blue is "The Old Road" between Sheffield Victoria or Rotherham and Chesterfield.

There is a tiny blue line (tram surely?) taking trams around the inner ring road and voiding the centre of the city.

Really?

There are numerous orange lines which might be trams or ludicrously expensive new trains lines. But where they actually  go is beyond anything definitive in fbb's very good knowledge of the South Yorkshire geography!

So What's Does The Report Say!

Not a lot.

The above is very 'generic' and aspirational, lacking anything that isn't already being planned or at least considered.

Subsequent paragraphs are riding on the back of the Northern Powerhouse Rail scheme.

It is what the North's politicians want ...

... but will the National Government pay?

Don't  hold your breath!!

Puzzle Picture

It is the old waterfront at Gosport with "Provincial" (Gosport and Fareham) buses lined up to meet the Portsmouth ferry.

======================

In tomorrow's blog we return to Bristol to investigate changes to a mini-network just north of Keynsham.

Spoiler alert : it's complicated ...

... again!

P.S. she does camper vans!

  Next Frustrating Forties blog : Mon 23rd March