Tuesday Variety

 Another Day, North East (Re)Brand

A bit of culture from fbb! In Act 2 Scene 2, Hamlet is having one of his many moody turns and the aged Polonius hasn't got a clue as to what he is talking about. Neither have we! But method in madness can often be attributed to bus companies.

This fairly illegible tweet gives a clue as to the method in the flood of rebrandings from Go Ahead North East.

It explains the "method". There will be a core colour for each area of operation.

Yellow - Consett

Orange - Hexham

Blue - North Tyneside

Green - Gateshead

Purple - Peterlee

Red - Sunderland/South Tyne

Pink - Washington (illustrated)

X-lines and other special services stand on their own.

So Connections 4 between Heworth, Washington (PINK) ...

... and Houghton-le-Spring changes from a distinguished deep blue ...

... to pink and blue. note also the frequency; every 12 minutes at 04, 16, 28, 40, 52 but with the journey at xx28 missing from the repeat pattern. Maybe something else should slot in there, or was it an easy (but inconvenient) way to reduce the service for the duration?

Presumably Washington local services will be "Little Pinks", replacing IndiGo ...

... not coloured indigo! Indigo is a very variable colour, but basically it is made from a rich blue dye ...

...which contains just a touch of red.

It looks as if "Little Pinks" will be both little and pink!

Another Day, South West (Re)Brand

Once branded "The Mint Route", service 56 runs "the back way" to Fishponds ...

... then does a spectacular wiggle via Bromley Heath before terminating at Downend.

Currently, for what it is worth, it runs every 30 minutes Monday to Friday and hourly Saturday and Sunday.

fbb thinks that the mint vanished into its own hole in the middle sometime ago, but the service is rebranded in First Bristol's rather boring single colour style.

It is now "Citylines 5" but still in its minty green.

Like the other one-colour brands, it has a mixed up chum+nk of destinations in various odd orientations above the doors. The yellow lettering is about the only colour variation from the monotone and monotonous green.

Disappointing.

Another Day, Heathrow Livery

Arriva's Green Line 724 is currently cut to once an hour. It offers the bus enthusiast with method in his/her madness a three hour and ten minute ride from Harlow to the central bus station at the airport. It has used various versions of a Green |Line branding over the years ...

... including the occasional "foreign" motor, allocated so that passengers will stand back from the stop and let the bus sail past!

Clever plan!

But one enthusiast with computer-based artistic skills reckons a rebrand it sorely needed, so has come up with this:-

Smart, Eh? Keen bus spotters will immediately recognise that it is very similar to the Reading buses Green Line livery.

Most regular passengers (few though they be) will not notice or care!

Edinburgh Orange to Kernow Blue?

We already know that some Atlantic Coasters are being re-branded Lands End Coasters to emphasise that they serve Lands End, the purveyors of grot at the end of our green and pleasant land.

Best thing is to close your eyes to the visitor centre ...

... and feast them on the scenery.

The Twittertati are already alive with the news that a couple of orange monsters from First's competitive Edinburgh tour ...

... are making their way to Camborne via a repaint ...

... for service on the growing range of open top routes. New for 2021 is an all-year-round Dartmoor route with two journeys daily from each of Exeter and Plymouth.

Presumed route is via Yelverton, Princetown and Moretonhampstead.

You may wonder what First Bus is doing at Exeter and Plymouth but recent contract wins for college services have given them bases in both cities. An enhanced service is planned for peak summer when the colleges are closed.

More details as they are released.

A Lost Logo For A Lovely Livery

Some young whippersnapper from Scotrail posted this on "social media" asking, "does anyone know what this is?"

Well, fbb is old enough to recognise it straight away.

The trains were introduced in November 1960 and promptly started breaking down in service. Yikes! That is over 60 years ago! Double yikes!

They were quickly withdrawn and replaced by reinstated steam traction until a modification was made to cure the problem. Red faces all round, but soon the "Blue Trains" became hugely successful in attracting passengers back to rail transport.

Another "delight" was that many stations were not upgraded straight away, so you had the anachronism of slick new electric trains calling at gas-lit platforms!

But the bestest bit about the class 303s as originally delivered is that you could sit behind the driver and view the track ahead.

The logo appeared at some stations ...

... and this depot sign proudly sported the Scottish version of the double arrow some years before BR started going two ways at once!

Timetable books were also so adorned.

For a bit of personal nostalgia, you can buy a "Blue Train" logo keyring even today ...

... nice!

Tomorrow we go to a town in Germany - or is it a town in Belgium?

 Next Halle blog : Wednesday 3rd February 

Monday Variety

In A Fix About Trix?

Correspondent Peter responded in answer to fbb's query about manufacture dates for his trecently acquired bogie American tank wagon.

Peter owns the definitive volume on the history of Trix in the UK.

fbb is keeping his eyes peeled for a reasonably priced pre-owned copy!

Initially made for export only, the Texaco tanker was adapted for the UK market in 1952 as part of a range of US wagons. They remained on sale until 1959.

It used the same chassis as the bogie open wagons made with UK liveries and those from across the pond. It used a standard folded metal chassis, used for all types of bogie wagons, to which everything was fixed. The detail was crude and included a handbrake wheel, no buffers ...

... and fairly nominal ladders and access platform.

The bogies were also folded metal ...

... but with cast axle box and spring detail stuck on the outside.

The only bits of plastic are the wheels, a push fit on metal axles.

There is, of course, no comparison with today's bogie tank wagons; this version of the Trix model from Bachman in America ...

... which does suggest that the ancient Trix tanker was based on a real prototype, albeit interpreted "loosely".

Of course, a modern UK wagon is all plastic (possibly with metal wheels) ...

... but the detail is exquisite and the price, painful!

The tanker is classified TEA; which brings us to more foods and their associated models.

Jellied Eels and Pilchards

Take a trip to 105 High Street Peckham (in london - Only fools and Horses territory!) and you will still find Manze's Jellied Eel shop.

It is a firm, once with many branches, that goes back a long way - founded in 1902.

So, how about owning your very own eel and pie shop, and mobile to boot. Well you can in 1/76 scale for your model railway, or just to admire on a shelf somewhere.

You may be dejected to know that, today, a bowl of jellied eels at Manze's will cost you £7, no longer 1/6 or a littleover 7 pence.

And, no, fbb never has - and probably never will!

We all remember pilchards.

One stand-up comedian (Jasper Carrott?) used to opine that nobody ever ate pilchards, they just kept a tin or two in the cupboard for a year or so and then threw the unopened tins in the bin!

A Pilchard IS a Sardine IS a Pilchard.

So this headline in the Model Press might be of some interest.

Now, before our reader suffers visions of an open truck full of twitching, slithery and slimy Cornish sardines; relax. The wagon did not transport the little food fish, either nude or in tins or in boxes of tins.

The read Pilchard wagon was used for conveying materials (ballast, sand, gravel) to sites where track maintenance was happening. British Railways (and some of their predecessors) gave wagons names, many of them being names of fish. So here is a full sized Pilchard!

And here is a full sized pilchard ...

... or is it a sardine?

Either way, Oxford Rail is making an OO gauge Pilchard.

Rail Blue, Thai Food and Pitlochry?

Pitlochry's magnificent station ...

... used to have a good yard. It is now a car park.

The journalistic hack who penned the report had never been to Pitlochry and, clearly, knew nothing about railways.

Well, it was only The Scotsman, Scotland's most prestigious newspaper!

So what might appear there - possibly?

A startup company wants to park a couple of these adjacent to the station on a bit of track and serve Thai food therein.

They plan to go back to the original orange fabrics that we all knew and loved (?).

They have already had the vehicles painted back into the blue and grey livery and have now applied for planning permission. Somehow that seems the wrong way round. If planning permission is not granted (surely a possibility in such a sensitive area?) what do you do with a couple of huge railway carriages?

Helpful Or Not?

Will Southern's passengers know what "GX Carriages" might be?

The nonsense began when Southern OR Thameslink OR Gatwick Express OR Go Ahead/GoVia OR the Department for Transport (DaFT) decided to extend some dedicated Gatwick Express trains to/from Brighton. The nonsense is now much worse. 

Temporary suspension of Gatwick Express

From Monday 30 March (2020!), Gatwick Express services will be temporarily suspended until further notice.

This is because of a significant reduction in passengers at the airport, and to help keep other trains running for key workers getting to and from their place of work.

Southern and Thameslink are still running to and from Gatwick Airport, and will provide journey options to both London and Brighton. 

Please ensure you check journey planners before you travel for the latest information and alternative journey options.

Presumably, rather than leaving the "GX Carriages" to rot, the engineers are using the trains to spread out the maintenance load at the depots. A sensible move "for the duration" which will ease staffing requirements.

If the bosses though that the different stock would be confusing, wouldn't it be easier and clearer to say, simply, RED carriages?

Pilchard P S

Above is a model of a real Shark, below is a model of a real Mermaid!

And below ...

... is NOT a real mermaid!

American Tank Wagon PS

Thanks to correspondent Ken who sent this picture yesterday evening. It shows a few US tank wagons in use, most of them more modern and with a much longer wheelbase that that provided by Trix - more like the UK's TEA stock.

Quite a lot of other "stuff" has wandered into fbb's in- box over the past few days so ...

 Next Tuesday Variety blog : Tuesday 2nd February