Sunday Variety

The Answer's A Lemon

 The Big Lemon , initially competing with Brighton and Hove Buses, later carved out for itself a business with wider environmental and community aims. Its areas of operation expanded to Bristol and the surrounding area.

 Today  the company starts another innovative bus service right in the centre of Bristol City. It runs from The Dings (names are strange things) into the city centre - although, perversely, "The Dings" is not mentioned on the timetable panel as such.

The timetable on Lemon's web site is, perhaps, a little clearer than the over complex presentation c/o Traveline.

The route runs seven days a week with just the first journey out not operating at weekends. It serves areas to the east of the city centre which lack a convenient and direct bus into town.

It wiggles, as does everything omnibological in Bristol, through the city centre ...

... terminating just past the former Tramway Centre on the banks of the harbour.

Generally the publicity is good, but badly let down by a poor computer generated route map.

The concept of the 61 has been well received.

 A spokesman  explained a bit more.

And the article, but not the timetable, gives the route in more detail.

So please Big Lemon, give us a proper map showing stops and road names clearly! 

 Surely you want folk to use your bus? 

Jubilation For Jess

We all know Jess, don't we?

Postman Pat

Postman Pat

Postman Pat and his black and white cat

Early in the morning

Just as day is dawning

He picks up all the postbags in his van

Postman Pat

Postman Pat

Postman Pat and his black and white cat

All the birds are singing

And the day is just beginning

Pat feels he's a really happy man

But this blog will ignore Pat's Jess and introduce its readers to this late feline Jess.

The report explains all, with one huge mistake.

Jess was not a resident of Andover Station, Jess was a cat; and therefore in full charge of Andover station!

Jess now stands safeguard at the two ticket windows making sure that passengers behave themselves.

A good and noble way of remembering such a much loved character!

Suspicious Suppression At Scarborough

The sea front services at Scarborough were once a scene of cut throat completion and aggro between operators.  Incumbent East Yorkshire (a k a Scarborough and District) tried, unsuccessfully to oust the intruders, But more and more buses joined the fray with "barkers" at the main stops cajoling the threatened public to take a ride.

Sanity returned with a strict Council brokered agreement on timetables and the amount of time allowed for loading at the busy stops.

Currently there are three "at it".

East Yorkshire has the best presentation and the newest fleet ...

... with dogged competitor Suncruiser offering an "interesting" mix of older OT conversions.

Viscount Travel is a recent contender with its "heritage" vehicles.

Their publicity shows a VR, now classed as vintage, but fbb can find no picture of the vehicle in reality. 

This bus does appear, however.

fbb, showing his needle sharp memory and acute observational skills (snigger snigger) immediately recognised the bus.

It was, of course, the open topper run for just one season by Hulleys of Baslow ...

... before Stagecoach killed off any chance of Hulleys success with its much expanded Peak Sightseer services. 

Is an ex London Trident a "vintage" bus?

It was an open topper with London United!

But on Scarborough seafront, tension has returned. Here is one of the bus stops with three separate timetable frames attached, one for each open top operator.

But Ben Gilligan the Boss of East Yorkshire is far from happy. One of his competitors ...

... yes it's Suncruiser, has slapped a poster over the top of the Beachcomber poster and route map.

A dastardly deed indeed!

Shock horror in Scarborough!

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ...

... one that readers may never have heard of.

There is just a small possibility that he is not known to any of fbb's transport enthusiast readers. But here is a brief biography.

The only translation necessary for the full and intellectual understanding of the above paragraph is to explain "gandy dancer". Gandy was a manufacturer of large agricultural tools ...

... including those in use on the railroad in the days before mechanisation.

The "dancer" refers to the songs and rhythmic body movements used by the mainly black workforce as they sought to cope with the back breaking work of keeping the track level and aligned.

A short video explains.

They would probably be called "platelayers" in the UK.

Anyway E S Dellinger left the railway and became a writer, initially of a magazine and later of the novella genre of short stories all linked to the one character, OR of single story slim paperbacks.

If the cover illustrations are anything to go by, the present publisher's nickname of "Pulp Fiction" could not be more appropriate.

The covers offer a vicarious joy in themselves. Here is just a sample.

Or maybe you would like this one.

You just have to wonder what dark deeds Kiamichi Bill gets up to as a Switcher on the Railroad.

Sadly, It Was The Wrong Size

Although it fitted the hole in the top of the cistern, the screw thread thingy on which a contraption screwed to fix it to the lid, was too small and you can't by a new screwed thingy on its own. Not only that, but the white ribbed plunger that activates the flush valve is also too small, so when it activates, it falls out. 

Useless.

So back to fbb's cobbled repair.

A generous application of abrasive liquid kitchen  cleaner and much manipulation of the plunger eased the embarrassing stickability and prevented the continuous flush problem. Nasty and bad for the water bills!

It now doesn't  stick, mostly!

A good soaking a WD40, followed by a luxurious libation of vegetable cooking oil and ...

Tada!

It seems to be working correctly.

Thus fbb adds plumbing bodging to his many few practical skills.

Talking Of Scarborough ...

How's this for a "one stop shop"!

And Talking Of Spending Money ...

This is a controller for your model railway.

Yes, you did read it right! Just under £600 to make your toy trains go.

fbb winced at the huge price of his first and only controller ...

... bought ten years ago. He shelled out a whole £45 of his precious pennies on this essential electrical equipment. Now it would cost you £53 and, no doubt more as inflation inflates.

But it does the job.

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Today and tomorrow the fbbs host their monthly Fellowship meetings c/w delicious afternoon tea. This month Mrs fbb is serving coconut and raspberry tarts.

fbb has taken on his duties as taste tester VERY seriously - well someone has to do it - and pronounces them super yummy; even though, normally, he is not at all keen on coconut!

The Biblical content of the meetings is a look at the Miracles of Mark's Gospel Chapters 4 and 5, aiming to understand how the God of Big Miracle an do similar (sometimes a bit less spectacular), miracles for each of us ...

... IF we trust His complete reliability!

To reduce pressure, Monday's and Tuesday's blogs will be a two-parter based on a recent television programme, but expanded and enhanced.

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 Next Big Train blog : Monday 2nd September 

A Gift From A Celeb (2)

A P.S. From Yesterday

fbb mentioned the "split step" as one of the SYPTE innovations. Brighton and Hove had similar on their back loaders yonks ago, but this aid to access was very new when it arrived in Sheffield. It is unfortunate that there was a lump of bus intruding into the bottom step to spoil the simplicity of the idea. Low floor buses rendered such a ruse unnecessary but they were a long time coming.

An Introduction

Peter Sephton, one of the many bosses in the PTE era was asked to write an intro to the Shades of Brown and Cream book. 

His opening paragraph does give some flavour of the overall contents.

The authors have certainly covered the aims and objectives of the politicians in their record of the innovation and development of the fleet. For fbb's taste, however, there isn't enough on the operational side of South Yorkshire PTE.

There are 18 pages of fleet lists but no network maps; not even a list of services "adopted" from Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster transport departments. Neither are there details of the county-wide route numbering system referred to by fbb in a previous blog.

The Context

The opportunity is missed to give a full location for many of the pictures. OK, there is a page about the trial of a Foden double decker ...

... but it doesn't tell you that the bus, as above, was pictured at the delightful City terminus of Ringinglow. 

Yes. It really was a terminus well within the city's boundary!

The original service 4 is seen having reversed onto its stop opposite the hexagonal "Round House".

Likewise, we are told of the experimental use of a bendybus on route 56 to Wybourn ...

... and there is even a map, but a bit of context might have helped.

Wybourn is an ex council estate quite close to the city centre.

It is still served by a route 56 but it goes a different way!

Local colour, the bus set in its operating environment, is often a significant contribution to understanding the engineering and political policies. The Wybourn experiment was not pursued. It has been served with very ordinary buses ever since.

Bendy Bent Buses!

Of you like pictures of buses that have crashed or caught fire, this is definitely the book for you.

There are also chapters on the work of the depots and the engineers therein ...

... plus a whole section about service vehicles including pictures of very venerable vehicles inherited from the Municipalities.

The Commer lorry was retained as an apprentice vehicle ...

... still in Sheffield Transport livery; but fbb remember it in use. For example, it carried the railings for the temporary departure stand on Bridge Street for the buses to Hillsborough for Sheffield Wednesday home games.

Publicity Matters

There are, fortunately for the likes of fbb, a number of examples of printed publicity.  Here is Leon Motors service to Finnnigley., an independent company which was ultimately absorbed by the PTE ...

... a leaflet for the villages to the north east of Doncaster amongst others

But there should have been more!

Also, and typical of the innovation mentioned in Peter Sephton's introduction, were the Nippers. These were routes to areas which would have ben difficult to serve with a big bus.

They were part of the County's political policy of ensuring that everyone had access to a bus service.

It was a noble but expensive aim as was the County's low fares policy which fell fould of Margaret Thatcher's "Commercialisation" and "No Subsidy" legislation.

The Politics Takes Over

Indeed, the book ends with the warning publicity put out by the PTE in protest at the forthcoming legislation.

Thus led to privatisation and deregulation and a slow but unstoppable decline in the Public Transport service for South Yorkshire. 

We are given a glimpse of the pre-privatisation "SYT" ...

... and a glimpse of another thorn in the side of the bus services, namely the Supertram.

Rails Revolution??

The PTE did not last long enough to run the trams, but, ironically, a change of operating company is happening right now. (See tomorrow's blog).

Of course, the PTE also had responsibility for local trains, but, unlike the other PTE areas, South Yorkshire only managed to ever paint one DMU in "Shades of Brown and Cream."

A railway snippet will follow tomorrow.

A Conclusion

The book is expensive but does have 420 pages to partially mitigate the cost!

If you like buses and their technology, this is an excellent and stimulating book. If you want to know where and when the buses ran, fbb recommends that you borrow someone else's copy or find a nice man like Riger French to give you theirs!

fbb suspects that, had he suggested spending £40 on a bus book to the domestic finance committee, there would have been a large number of raised eyebrows.

Perhaps NOT a book for the average enthusiast but most definitely a good buy for the engineering and vehicle specialist.

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So the three chosen disciples accompanied Jesus up the hill to experience a superhuman vision of Jesus as the Son of God, rather than Jesus the popular itinerant preacher from Nazareth,

And they were FRIGHTENED; they would have been scared witless. So they wanted to build tents for the three apparitions in human form. Weird or what?

Not weird at all. From the Mount of Olives, they could look down over the Temple and see the Festival of Tabernacles in progress. At night is was particularly glorious. It was a magnificent festival of light, of music and of worship.

For the week of the knees-up families would build huts in which to take their meals, sometimes called "booths" but, in posh terms, called "tabernacles" (OK, tents in modern parlance). The whole shebang was to remember God's salvation and guidance (pillar of fire, remember?) as they fled slavery and made their way hesitantly to the Promised Land.

It made a bit of panicky sense to build tents for the Divine threesome!

But there was more.

The Jews were the "apple of God's eye" and the apple is a "pome". The nissing four letter fruit is also a pome.

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  Next South Yorks Catch-up blog : Weds 20th Match