Steve's Sensatiional Service (mini blog)

Emotion Commotion

Apparently it is 'not the done thing' to take photographs at funerals, so the above is from an Undertakers' sales brochure. But last week was a bit of a roller-coaster emotionally. It was Chris's funeral on Friday; he was one of the fbb's fellowship regulars. Then as they arrived at Church they were informed that Stan, another stalwart, had died that morning.

Both were elderly and with health problems and both will be glad to be meeting their God in eternity.

fbb is reminded of a sound bite from former golfers Berhard Langer.  He said ...

When a non-believer dies he passes from life to death; when a Christian dies he passes from death to life.

But it has been busy few days, so readers will excuse mini-blogs until Wednesday 4th February.

Warrington Or St Helens?

It's is a bit of a challenge to grasp where the eastern border of Merseyside actually falls. St Helens us IN, bit Warrunton is OUt. The border is the thick dotted line in the map below.

On the right is Warrington Cheshire and on the left we have the fringes of St Helens district of Merseyside Metropolitan County. Their thick blue line is the M62.

The Council Leader in Warrington is Hans Mundry ...

... and the CEO is Sarah Smith.

She look far too jolly to be a Chief Executive! Meanwhile we all know the boss man in Merseyside ...

... Steve Rotheram, everybody's hero and favourite yellow bus fanatic. So when fbb saw this news snippets on-line we was convulsed with ecstatic excitement - well, mildly interested anyway.

And the accompanying picture was, of course, of a yellow bus!

It would appear that Steve isn't paying - or maybe is paying much less subsidy that such a new route might need.

The Omega Business Park straddles the border between the two authorities and is already bigger than the nap above shows. It has a surprisingly good service from the centre of Warrington ...

... running in a somewhat wiggly fashion via tradition town housing, Buses on route 13 run every 30 minutes Monday to Saturday ...

... with a minimalist service on Sundays. Clearly buses run at shift pattern times ...

... rather than, as would have happened in the past, to convey worshippers to their diverse ecclesiastical destinations.

So that's Warrington sorted. Now, what is Steve providing for residents of Merseyside who may wish to get to the Omega Business Park.

Already running is the 921 ...

... striking off east from St Helens. The timetable is very 'shifty' but does run seven days a week. The route is circuitous.

The route attempts to serve all the main warehouse blocks ...

... even crossing the M62 to get to Omega North.

The bus used to look like this ...

... before it was painted grey.

The 922 starts today!

It wiggles from the north ...

... via Burtonwood, Omega North, Lockheeds Road then over the M62 to its terminus. It serves much less of the collection of warehouses than the 991. Here is a view with Omega North in the foreground.

With the first set of franchising contracts due later this year it is good to see that Big Steve is already making those significant (?) improvements that the new bus broom has promised to sweep in.

Folk will be able to get to Home Bargains at any time of the day as long as it is early in the morning, briefly at lunchtime, or later in the evening.

fbb's guess is that most employees will go by car!

Sorry, it's a distribution centre, not a retail store!

Tomorrow ; a Metro and a Station.

P.S. Steve will be heartbroken, neither operator will run yellow buses!

 Next Mystery Mini blog :Mon 2nd Feb 

Confusion At Cummer-Nodd (4)

How The Mighty Are Fallen

Above is an early picture of the town centre at Cumbernauld. On that dual carriageway tunnel sat the main bus stops, located in an uninviting and gloomy wind tunnel. 

At least that's how fbb found it in the 1970s. It still is - and it is a great joy (!) if your connecting journey involves a change of direction.

Later visits saw some improvement in ambience and lighting but still with hard seats. But the bus terminal may have been OK for buses but was never great for passengers.

By the 1990s the competitive insanity in Glasgow had subsided somewhat. The dominant operator for Cumbernauld was Kelvin Central, successor to Alexander Midland.

The new livery was red with "Network" as a brand. There were timetable booklets (remember them?) ...

... later supplanted by leaflets.

Some of the complexity would be recognised in the Great Britain Bus Timetable of just over 25 years ago.

The KCB Network network was shown in three tables. Route 36 was a very basic all stops service ...

... accompanied by an X5 ...

... which included peak hour X4 and X6 variants as per the leaflets above. 

To this eight buses an hour provision, was added 40s and 50s ....

... providing the "stopping" services via Seafar and Kildrum. The latter two routes ran round the large Abronhill loop every 7/8 minutes.

There is an interesting table on First's archive of out-of-date information undated to confuse people. From 2012 we have ...

You might think M is for buses via the M8/M80, but, in fact, the M is for Moodiesburn, instead of a chunk of Motorway.

But with such opulence of operation, it will be of interest to see what First Glasgow is runnimg today.

Another out-of-date PDF leaflet ...

... suggests that today's X3 might be only every 30 minutes.

There are some maps on-line, not up-to-date, which suggest that the only First Bus service to Cumbernauld is now the X3.

Other operators' routes are printed in grey. 

So First has seen its bus operation to the town reduced from 12 buses an hour in Kelvin Central days (later bought by First) to just 2 ...

... and branding has been, as ever, inconsistent.

A more up-to-date First X3 is this ...

... which might imply a bus every 20 minutes; ony it isn't; it is three buses an hour at crackpot intervals as created by the company's £4 million so-called AI software investment. Note also that First no longer runs beyond the town centre to serve Abronhill.

But we also know that Stagecoach arrived on the Cumbernauld run and currently operates a fifteen minute X25/X25A combo ...

... although fbb cannot discover when this started. It does provide a 15 minute headway to Abronhill, just half of what it was in KCB Network days.

What your frustrated blogger does know is that there used to be a Stagecoach 28 ...

... which is still evident on-line. 

It runs no more. So it's not just First that needs to do a bit of electronic tidying up!

What fbb also knows is that in 2016 Stagecoach opened a new depot in the town.

Impressive eh?

What the above news item does not say is that Stagecoach's new depot was First's old depot, vacated a while earlier!

So First sold their shed to a competitor enabling them to compete more efficiently?

Sounds crackpot to fbb!

To restore sanity, fbb checked with Traveline Scotland; which confirms that the ONLY services between Glasgow and the now old new town are First's erratic X3 ...

... and Stagecoach's stable X25 ...

... and it's partner, the X25A.

The 25A doesn't  serve the town centre.

So in approx 30 years, local buses between Glasgow and the magnificent underground bus station have fallen from twelve buses an hour to just five.

But now comes the shock horror news.

From April, Stagecoach will close its depot in Cumbernauld and cease operating the X25/X25A. It will also end its part in a block of Citylink routes, as explained by Route One magazine.

(Click on the graphic to enlarge)

Stagecoach goes on to say that this makes the depot not viable and, in turn, that spoils the already weak Cumbernauld business.

And First will take over.

Now, if Stagecoach thinks their route is really losing money, then why would First want to take it over with no reduction in service?

One possible reason is ...

The upstart company is aiming to expand its business in Glasgow by opening a new depot in the city. First may well worry about McGills or their Midland Bluebird company deciding to invade Cumbernauld.

As McGills is better at running buses than First, the incumbent is right to be defensive.

Whatever the reasons, it looks like more confusion at Cumbernauld.

  Next Variety blog : Sunday 1st February