From The Archives

The Disappearing Terminus

The A621 runs from Sheffield to Bakewell and, for countless generations City trams, then buses had their terminus at Millhouses.

The original Millhouses tram terminus was at the crossroads formed by Millhouses Lane, Archer Road, Abbeydale Road and Abbeydale Road South. Despite the alluring red dot on the modern map extract, there is nothing left of Millhouses and Ecclesall Station ...

... except a road name ...

... and a view of the remaining two tracks from the Archer Road overbridge.

Likewise the tram terminus ...

... is barely recognisable from a similar angle today. Millhouses Post Office is still roughly on the same site!

Th only extant property, albeit with a front piece removed is now the Scale restaurant on the far side of Archer Road.

Later, trams were extended to Beauchief and Abbey Lane and Millhouses gained a terminal loop (see Terminus Road on the map extract above.)

Trams turned right from the outbound track and performed a half-circle clockwise, passing the Terminus Road shops on their left before standing at a substantial shelter (with toilets, of course) at the apex of the junction with the city-bound track.

Here is another shot looking away from City of a tram trundling round to pick up passengers from the shelter.

The Millhouses/Beauchief service was Sheffield last tram route and a little known feature of the terminus above was needed when a couple of works tram services were changed over to bus operation whilst the Millhouses loop was still in use. They ran to Terminus Road and picked up at the bottom of Hartington Avenue ...

... for journeys across the city to the steel works. The loop ended roughly where the cars are parked.

When the trams disappeared, buses continued to the use the loop (service 24 Millhouses, City, Tinsley Highgate) but, in another quirk, they operated anti-clockwise - in the opposite direction to the trams.

Eventually the loop was disused and closed off, even for buses.

And you wouldn't expect Sheffield City Council to leave that nice piece of land untouched, would you?

Of course not!

Blocks of flats full the site today ...

... and Terminus Road has lost many of its "real" shops.

Indeed the reason for its name is now obliterated from history with not a peep of evidence of trams and buses looping through their bit of exclusive greenery.

A simple solitary bus stop has replaced shelter (and toilets!), a sad memorial to the happier days of trams and buses in the City.

Sigh!

 Next weekend assortment : Saturday 9th November 

Another Day, Another Collapse

Thomas Cook, Mothercare, YourBus and more all offer an guarded insight into some of the difficulties of running a business. It is all very simple - there comes a point at which a trading business runs out of money. The company may have assets and might even have a reasonable balance sheet BUT, if there is insufficient cash to pay the bills and nobody will lend you any more, the end is inevitable.

So comes news of a small coaching company calling in the receivers on 31st October.

Collingtree is a delightful Northamptonshire sandstone village ...

... with its equally delightful church.

It lies just outside the southern border of Northampton.

It even has a bus service (of sorts) and a shiny shelter.

Service 86 used to be operated by stagecoach (hence the flag) but under local authority cutbacks is hardly adequate for any of the locations which is serves exclusively.

But just down the road from the bus shelter is the HQ of a small coach company.

But the correct note should read "was" the headquarters! 

The company web site was still extant a couple of days ago, and here we read a potted history of the family-run operation.

Smart coaches with comfortable interiors - ideal for their business model.

The web site lists a wide range of day tours ...

... with seasonal festivities featuring highly in the December programme. 

Private Hire is also available and Northampton correspondent Alan notes that about four times a year  "seniors" outings have been successfully arranged for his group.

But then comes the newspaper report.

Ten jobs lost and school contracts to be re-organised - a familiar story.

There will be 60 people who have lost some money - maybe not huge sums but a loss anyway but there will be many many more who were looking forward to their Christmas outing and who now will be disappointed.

What went wrong? fbb does not know (neither does Alan) but, on way or another, the company will have run out of money.

Bigger collapses will hit the national headlines, but your heart much go out to the folk who have struggled with this decision and, ultimately, have had to bow to the inevitable.

And a not so happy Christmas to all involved?

 Micawbet blog : Something'll Turn Up : 8/11/19 

Time To Read An Improving Book (2)

fbb has been leafing through Keith Shayshutts excellent recently published book ...

... giving a review based of geography of the activities of this iconic West of England operator. Of course, competition features regularly in its pages which seen Western National in the hands of First Group becoming dominant by the end of the chosen decade. This includes the arrival of Truronian ...

... and the survival, blooded and terminally wounded, of a vicious and self-destructive bus war with Plympouth City Bus. It all got very personal!

Western Greyhound was beginning to creep into contention by the end of the nineties and became a real threat in the following decade.

First Bus bought Truronian for far too much money

First Bus capitulated in Plymouth and gave the remnants to Stagecoach

First Bus stepped in to take over much of Greyhound when it went belly up

But it is the smaller battles and takeovers that fascinated fbb as they were revealed area by area. He had never heard of Wheal Briton! It took your ancient author a good few minutes to understand the company's printed timetable.

Where are buses in the other direction?

In fact they are all shown on the one timetable. Starting from Camborne you read down to Truro...

... then follow the arrow and read up for the next trip from Truro to Camborne, and so on to the end of the day. Obviously it is a "one bus in steam" service "competing" with a much more frequent Western National (WN) route.  WN responded with a somewhat half hearted X1 at similar times.

Wheal Briton lasted from 1995 to 1998.

Was this service (numbered 139) unique in charging MORE to schoolchildren (75p) ...

... than for adults (50p)

One of the outstations covered in this excellent volume was that at Splatt (where's thatt?).

There are several Splatts in the West Country but this one is near Launceston. It even had a railway station on the line to Padstow.

Because it was at Splatt, the station was called Tresmeer (?) but the building, much modernised, is still extant as a private dwelling.

Likewise the Western National bus outstation at Splatt was also a private dwelling.

It was the driver's house!

At least one of the Splatts achieved some notoriety back in the days of the development of Xephos, the failed national database and journey planner. In demonstrating its speed and sophistication, fbb would search for a journey from ...

Splatt to Splott

... the latter being a suburb of Cardiff. As an aside, another amusing journey was from ...

Moscow to New York

... the Moscow in question being in Ayrshire and the New York being south of Whitley Bay on the recently rebranded Coast and Cobalt 310 which featured in a recent blog.

For the record, the sainted Traveline struggles with Splatt to Splott ...

... but copes admirably with Moscow to New York with journeys as fast as four and a half hours. Readers with time on their hands and a great desire for self-inflicted stress may wish to enjoy some of the results!!

But back to Keith's book.

It costs £19.50 (worth every penny, says fbb who admits to receiving a complimentary copy but would have happily bought it) but if your Public Transport interests even remotely impinge on the operation of buses rather than a nostalgic wallowing in photos of Leyland Nationals with large roof pod (or small, or none), you will, like fbb, be impressed with this volume.

It is absolutely jam-packed with good stuff - most definitely an "improving book"!

An excellent pre-Christmas Christmas present and far more enjoyable than socks! Available via EBay (post free) and from selelcted retailers.

  Another One Gone blog : Thursday 7th November 

Time To Read An Improving Book (1)

There is not a lot on-line about author, and occasional correspondent with fbb, Keith Shayshutt. In 2010 he won an "unsung hero" award for his work in the development department at TrentBarton. fbb would suspect that Keith might find this historical event some thing of an embarrassment - unsung heroes like to remain unsung!

Equally embarrassing might well be the photo accompanying the citation ...

... the Beloved El Presidente of the Glorious People's Republic of Ollianstan! But the text that accompanies the picture does reveal that Keith is a life-long dedicated bus man - and it shows in his recently published book.

Western National in the 1990s ...

... is something out of the ordinary. fbb was surprised and delighted when Keith offered him a gratis copy but, until it arrived he remained politely suspicious. So many bus books that appear these days are simply "albums", a collection of mildly interesting pictures perhaps with a slightly extended caption here and there.

David takes up the story in his Foreword.

The idea for this book was originally to be a photograph album of the decade of growth throughout the 1990s. It was not until I started writing the captions that I realised from my sketchy notes that I actually had quite an amount of operational detail. This led to further research ...

fbb is so glad it did!

The book begins with a potted history of Western National which itself is both revealing and helpful. There is a paean of praise for the Mercedes 608D midibus ...

... then follows a brief (fortunately) review of the fleet.

Chapter 6 forms the bulk of the book and it too is refreshingly "different". An "academic" coverage of this period might choose to do everything in date order - that would be logical - but Keith bases his history of the company's operations round a geographical framework.

Each one of the blue dots on the map above is a depot or an outstation, each of which is covered in turn. The Penzance section shows a picture of the former depot ...

... now completely unrecognisable as a LIDL supermarket!

A typical page compares the old, infrequent, big bus service with the much improved Merceded midibus Hopper frequency.

Whether enough revenue accrued from the increased frequency and thus increased costs is a matter of some historic debate, but maybe that discussion might need a narrative continuing on for another decade or so.

The 10 group comes with an excellent map, typical of all those in the book credited to Rob Bennett of GRM Mapping.

Thirty years on, the burgeoning frequencies have faded almost as quickly as they came. Service 10 became A17 in the great Cornwall re-branding but it had already been much simplified. Today's A17 provides a half hourly service to Heamoor with the full route proceeding via Newbridge (as route 10 above) and St Just before terminating at the Boscaswell Estate.

The map shows how "simple" the new service is - and how many small communities have no bus or a very long walk!

This review will continue tomorrow with a weird up and down bus timetable. ????

fbb's Obsession Continues

According to Mrs fbb, her hubby is in need of some therapy because of his obsession with OO gauge tank wagon models, an uncontrollable craze began when a chum send his a really old and battered Hornby Dublo 3-rail version from the very early 1950s.

Apart from a change of couplings the design had not altered since the wagon was introduced in 1938.

When Dublo realised that their competitors were offering better detailed models using plastic, the company introduced their SD6 range of so called super detailed wagons.

But they ran on the standard and very crude underframe with solid brake rigging. In the euphoria of the not very super detailed stuff, the tank wagon was totally unchanged. Even the two rail version used identical tooling as that from 1938.

But the SD6 range did introduce a completely new design - the chlorine tanker.

It rode on a new undercarriage with open brake rigging! fbb has been trying to buy one on EBay. Did you know that EBay sellers bid against themselves to force the price up? Oh yes!

fbb soon realised what was happening and stopped playing the "auction" game. He only buys fixed price stuff - no auction. But a Chlorine wagon never appeared EXCEPT on auction. Bummer.

fbb lost four auctions with either a silly high price (£15) or rapidly escalating sellers' bids. He was about to give up and put in one last LOW bid of just a fiver.

And won.

Your excited blogger, still obsessed, will report when it arrives in a few days.

It's like an early Christmas!

 Next book review blog : Wednesday 6th December