Saturday Variety

  F  Is For Ferry!

Pictures of Sydney Harbour will often include the well known ferries painted green and cream. They offer an extensive network of 10 routes ...

... all under the auspices of the New Soith Wales Transport Authority and thus appropriately branded.

They all operate out of Circular Quay ...

... meaning that interchange between ferry routes is very straightforward.

Services extend westbound along the Pramatta river ...

... although F3 only gets to the very end once an hour!

As we have come to expect there are full PDF timetables for every route as here for that to Manley running every 15 min seven days a week!

There are train ...

... and Light Rail connections at Circular Quay ...

The Metro is not too far away on Martin Place ...

... and there are buses nearby.

fbb thinks it is called "integrated transport"!

Maybe we should try out the idea in the UK?

Coming on Monday ...

Mr Hand Is Banned

Way back, fbb got some stick for expressing concern about the operations of City Fox in Bristol.

Then came Fox Star in Newport South Wales ...

... with buses branded as "The One".

These operations failed in various catastrophic ways. Their young entrepreneur ...

... has most recently been MD of the Transpora Group with various operations in various locations.

Things have not gone well.

The result has been a disqualification of holding an operators licence.

The background to this ban is well recorded in the public domain and fbb will leave his readers to come to their own conclusions.

One thing is certain; these failed activities do not bring any credit to the bus industry.

Gorgeous Glider Goodies from Gilmoss?
Steve Rotheram, franchise King and Mega Mayor of Merseyside ...

... has revealed the future of bus travel in the area.

He has borrowed, hired, bought (unlikely the latter!) a shiny blue Glider from Belfast and painted it yellow. Without much involvement of bus professionals he has announced that this "may" be the shape of future bus travel in Merseyside.

The above report goes on ...

Originally lined up for new routes to the Wirral Waters development in Birkenhead, young Steve is commiting the authority to run them to Liverpool's two football stadia and to the John Lennon Airport. (Who was he?)

Not everyone is over the moon with the trendy looking vehicles in Belfast.

I would like to share my experience of using the Translink G1 Glider from Glengoland West Belfast to Wellington Place City Centre.

I arrived at the bus stop to get the glider at 8.20am (March 21). The glider that arrived a few minutes later was full, with the doors opening and people literally falling out the door. There was no room for me to enter. I decided to wait for the next Glider as I had already bought my ticket. I waited 30 minutes, but at 8.50 the next Glider was cancelled.

At this stage there was a large build-up of people waiting with me. Another 20 minutes later, at 9.10am, a Glider arrived and again the doors opened with the bus at full capacity. When the doors opened there was physically no room to step on to the bus.

With no choice as we all had to get to work, we physically pushed our way on to the bus as people shouted 'There’s no room!' When we got to the next stop it was the same

Whether the fault is of the buses, the timetable or management is unclear, but there has been a stream of problems with this much vaunted bus system. Does Steve know?

Gilmoss, by the way, is a Liverpool bus depot and is here used for alliterative and literary reasons. It is not yet decided which bus company will operate these buses IF they ever materialise.

Snippets

Old Street, New Phone, High Price

So that's why TfL renamed Old Street underground station and confused tens of thousands of passengers. They did very well out of the mobile phone company that was presenting its over priced and over-spec product.

If the advertiser can afford to spend nearly half a million quid on oromoting their expensive new phone, they are charging too much for it!

Fares Freeze Failed?

Apparently this offer, which we all though was to increase passenger numbers after Covid, was actually aimed at modal shift. It was supposed to get Scots commuters out of their cars and on to the trains.

Just a little thought for the Scottish Transport Minister. To achieve modal shift is often a slow slow process and needs much more that a small fares reduction. It needs cheap comfortable park and ride sites, free parking at stations and a good network of buses for onward travel from station to workplace.

£40 million is just a drop in a very big bucket and the "experiment" had hardly had any time to have a meaningful effect.

The cancellation couldn't be because the Scottish Government finances are in a big mess and there is is desperate to save money? Or could it?

Surely travellers have not been misled by politicians?; That would never happen!

Remember This?

A while back, fbb bought an old Hornby Travelling Post Office coach. It was an awful model, largely because it was arrayed in all red plastic.

The only relief from its unrealistic rubicund regalia was the transfers and the black plastic "net" of the working mailbag flinger and catcher.

fbb painted the roof grey, the ends black ....

... and reduced the blackness of the net by a replication the red panelling underneath.

Door furniture was picked out in black and a suggestion was added of the lights which would have been turned on to show that mail was to be dropped or uplifted. 

Total cost including the paint, £22.

fbb could buy a much better model from Bachmann.

In a slightly different older livery this has just been re-released at a whopping £73

Some retailers are discounting this price as above.

Is the difference worth it?

More bits and pieces tomorrow including "Brotherliness gone for a Burton".

 Next Variety blog : Sunday 25th Aug 

Sunday Variety

A Treetise On Trees (?) Part 1

Joyce Kilmer was (a) a bloke, (b) an American, (c) a poet and (d) a bit of a one hit wonder! He is remembered for a poem about trees.

The sentiment is slushy, typically Victorian (penned in about 1900) and not very well thought of in serious poetry-loving circles.

But fbb agrees profoundly with the poet's thought. Like most wild life, the intricacy and variety of something as mundane as a "tree" in mind blowing. As well as a complex structure, most trees are big ...

... in the picture above, four times taller tjan the train that passes them by. And those trees are not particularly big.

And what do railway modellers do for trees?

Very nominal and very unrealistic 

This is a beech tree ...

... but with no scale. Here are two model beech trees ...

... and they are expensive!

They are well over thee times taller than n OO train and taller that the buildings on fbb's recreated backscene at Peterville station.

The trustees of Peterville Methodist Chapel will be rightly concerned about the damage to the church caused by tree roots and the obscuration of windows by the branches.

But fbb is loathe to spend loadsa money on well crafted trees. So a bodge is called for. That bodge is cheap Chinese imported model trees at about 50p to £1 each. Many of them are just awful. You might be forgiven for thinking that all trees in China have dayglo green foliage.

They don't.

So can the arch-bodger turn dayglo green lurid trees into something a little more realistic. We have already met the project for the back scene, with the smaller trees planted in planters.

And, in case you are wondering, thy do look a much more lurid green in reality. fbb will turn up the brightness!

More treemendous arboreal activity tomorrow.

Mayhem In Manchester

Andy Burnham (big cheese mayor of Greater M/C) wants his buses to be like those in London; i.e. heavily subsidised. badly publicised and lacking adaptation to the changing demography of the Metropolis. He has no idea how his far reaching plans can be financed!

Back in January, GoAhead North West was jubilant to win he contract to run buses in Wigan (ex Stagecoach Ex First) and Bolton (ex First).

GoAhead has already welcomed the staff from these depots as its colleagues.

It is not on record whether the employees at Wigan and Bolton want to be colleagues of staff at GoAhead. Presumably the have no choice in the matter unless they jump ship and seek employment elsewhere.

As the management has been gloating over the spreadsheets and cashflow projections, a second set of franchises has just been announced. And guess what ...

GoAhead has failed to win the biggie, namely the former Manchester Corporation Transport depot at Queens Road, which goes to ...

... Yep, Stagecoach.

GoAhead, you will remember, bought the near moribund Queens Road business from First and set about "turning it around". They claim great success, but they would say that, wouldn't they?

So boss Nigel Featham sent a tearful farewell letter to all the colleagues at Queens Road. The copy sent to fbb is a graphic image and so he cannot extract the text ...

... but it should enlarge if you wish to read it and shed a tear or two.

The important point to remember is that the bus companies have been eagerly bidding to run the existing networks. All the new whizzo plans that Andy Burnham has enthused about are yet to be taken into detailed consideration. So companies have bid without any real knowledge of what they might be operating in the Bright Burnham Bee Bus future.

Be prepared for chaos, venom spitting, arguments and confusion for Manchester's passengers when the "negotiations" begin.

But all the buses will, eventually, be yellow.

So that will make a huge difference to every man, woman and dog travelling by bus, tram and, if Burnham gets his way, train in the great city of Cottononopolis!

Good News Old News For Marston Vale

For almost since fbb can remember, thee line between Bedford and Bletchley has been operated by diesels. Once they were painted blue and grey ...

... then they acquired he bright and shiny Network SouthEasr livery.

Then the modern (well, less old) class 150s arrived ...

...and rattled to and fro in various paint jobs.

Then, joy of joy, Vivarail ex London Transport D stock arrived and great was the rejoicing thereof.

Except that they didn't work very well and trains were routinely cancelled and buses then provided an even slower service.

But things did get better until ...

Vivarail went bust and North Westen Railway (the privatised (?) company that ran the line) decided they couldn't mend them so they wouldn't run them.

"The lads" on the Isle of Wight are doing OK at running similar stock,. as are the good folk at Transport for Wales - but such a simple solution is way beyond the customer care and concern of London North Western!

But good news at last.

London North Western have found some trains in an old dusty shed somewhere and they will soon be running between Bletchley and Bedford reliably and wonderfully.

"Soon" is, possibly, an optimistic term.

They will even wear the North Western boring livery, so that's all right then.

And the shiny "new" trains?

Oh, they are aged class 150 two car diesels just like the passengers have had for many years before.

But in a different livery.

Please don't get too excited Milton Keynes and Bedford potential passengers. Nothing much will happen until at least September.

Big Excitement Yawn At Seaton

Work on turning the old Co-op into a new Oldie (whoops, Aldi) continues apace. At a very slow pace. Due to oprn at Easter 2023, Summer 2023, September 2023, January 2024 (your guess is as good as fbb's - indeed as good as Aldi's!!) we now know that it won't look like this.

The former front ot the Co-op has been extended forwards and, tada, it now has a fascia attached.

Great, innit!

And there's more ...

Trees Are Big : Scenery Is Bigger

Three uncaptioned pictures of Scotrail at work.

God willing, the fbbs will be back in Fort William in September for a Lochs and Glens holiday.

But by coach!

They will be picked up near the tram terminus at Seaton, a few yards from fbb mansions.

 Next Variety blog : Monday 26th June