New Station At High Wycombe?

A Work In Progress ...

... with a swish and big new footbridge being craned in!

Its a slightly odd station with a huge gap between the two platforms ...

... which is being oreserved in the rebuild. You might wonder why the tracks are not being re-aligned, then you could have a smlaller (and cheaper!) footbridge.  Maybe parts of the atation are being retained; ot maybe it is cheaper to leave well alone. But there used to be two through "roads" in the gap.

The station has/had a selelction of traditional signs on the platforms; one from British Railways era ...

... and one replete with buckets of nostalgia.

Sweet!

But this picture of the new High Wycombe station might well be a tad misleading.

Maybe that logo is a new design for Great British Railways?

Perhaps fbb's tease will explain itself if the old bloke explains that the railway in question links High Wycombe with the Airport, continuing via Redcliffe (a suburb of Bristol), a junction at Bayswater (London) and on to Perth (Scotland)!

We are, of course, in the Antipodes!

But technically we are not!

The antipode of London is where a straight line drawn through the centre of the earth pops out on the other side. The Antipode of London is in the very wet Pacific Ocean well to the south of New Zealand. The Antipode of Australia (a very big pode!) includes hefty chunks of France, Spain and Morocco.

But we tend to be sloppy and call the whole hugeness of Aus and New Z the "Antipodean" nations.

So, for a couple of blogs we go to Perth, capital of Western Australia ...

... where we find the urban area stretched out along the coast.

What guided your inquisitive blogger to a location pretty much as far from fbb mansions at Seaton as you could go was news of a new railway line's opening. A few weeks back the "Airport" line was opened with due ceremony and self-adulation by the appropriate politicians.

The sitz-im-leben of the new line is to serve the airport. But services will also enhance two other lines which currently both terminate in Perth centre.

Here is the Airport section.

It makes a junction with the Midland Line ay Bayswater and serves three completely new stations at Redcliffe, Airport Central and High Wycombe. The Midland line is one of two shorter east-west (roughly) routes ...

... the other being the Freemantle line/

The diagrammatic map perhaps makes this clearer. Here is High Wycombe to Bayswater and (almost) into Perth:-

And then the new service continues to Claremont on the Freemantle Line/

The Airport Line thus provides cross-Perth travel between Claremont and Bayswater where previously a change was necessary in the busy Perth (central) station.

The station is quite well hidden these days, but lies between Roe Street on the north ...

... and Wellington Street on he south.

It is on Wellington Street where you will find the original station building as seen below in a 1921 photo.

The central feature is a bit lost behind trees in the modern photo - but it is there1

Here it is the station'slocation on a street map

The main access to the platforms is from William Street, the wiggle road with the red one way arrows. From here you can look down on the rebuilt and extended set of platforms.

It is good that the railings pick up the style of that 1921 shot.

There are massive plans for redevelopment of this central area of Perth shown below in a general scheme.

The overall station roof can just about be glimpsed at the far left of the plan,

There will be more about the airport line itself in tomorrow's blog and more about the buses in Perth next week.

 Next Variety blog : Saturday 29th Oct 

For Better For Worse ...

For Richer For Poorer!

fbb's nostalgic look at some of Sheffield Transport's heavily annotated fare tabler from 1963 wasn't just an exercise in happy nostalgia for the good old days. It does beg the question, "is the 2022 fares structure the right way forward?"

Whilst very few bus companies publish fare tables, it does appear that the trend has been to ramp up single-journey fares - possibly to get the best payback for OAP 'free' travel - and give some ludicrously cheap travel on "season tickets".

In 1963 the vast bast majority of Sheffield passengers paid their fare to the conductor in money. The fare was the fare and that was it! fbb had a vague memory of "weekly" tickets aimed at "workpeople" but sales were low. If fbb's brain cells remember correctly, you bought a card ticket which was punched day by day with a simple circular punch fixed to the ticket machine shoulder strap.

The announcement of fares changes (an equally sanitised alternative to "revised") from Southern Vectis illustrates the point well.

The cost of running our bus services has significantly increased.  This has meant we have had to review the cost of our fares, and have reluctantly increased some ticket prices. This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We have kept any prices rises to an absolute minimum.

The language is entirely predictable, so much so that it is hardly worth writing. What is wrong with "Our fares will increase from Monday 31st October?" Honesty is surely the best policy; no one is conned by the platitudinous babble.

Would any person intent on "selling" ever write anything different?

We have gleefully increased some ticket prices. This is an off-hand decision in the hope you won't notice. We have ensured that the increases are as big as we can get away with!

But then the complexity is revealed.

Our single adult fares will increase by approximately 10p, 20p or 30p. Child singles will increase to short hop £1.50, medium hop £2.10, long hop £2.70 and period passes and multi-trip bundles will also have increases.

But we aren't telling you what the actual fares  are! And can you really believe "approximately" - or is it a management-speak obfuscation because some fared will increase more than others?

The good news is our £10 adult day rover will remain unchanged. 

Goody!

As some stage in the recent past there has been a change in the pricing of a day rover. It used to be valid on everything including the open top "Breezer" routes but now...

... you pay a bit extra to be frozen on the top deck - somewhat academic at the moment because the OT routes cease for the winter.

These are still the current fares. But the fares policy becomes very obvious when we look at existing seasons - called "Freedom" tickets

Leaving aside the price difference between cash and two electronic technologies, with the doubt that users will be particularly price conscious, please note the bargain price set against a one day rover.

You get 7 days' travel for less than the price of three!

Blog readers will not be surprised to read this about "The Key", the most expensive way of buying the Freedom ticket

theKey system ...

...  is no longer being developed or supported and of late we have sadly experienced some technical issues causing inconvenience to some of our customers. Therefore, we are phasing out this method of buying bus tickets over the coming months. By the beginning of summer 2023 it will be discontinued. This will be a gradual process. Initially we will stop selling ticket types with very low sales.  Some ticket types that are withdrawn are available on our app.

But here are the "revised" prices for the current examples listed above.

And for Freedom seasons.

The multi-bundles at 5, 15 and 30 days travel within a year are, obviously, more expensive than a Freedom ticket (per day used). Why?

One slightly unusual feature of the Island's "ordinary" fares is that they are always valid for through journeys e.g. Alum Bay ...

... to Bembridge with a change at Newport and Ryde.

But we are not told what these fares are!

Back in the days of fbb's not too distant past it used to be singles and 1, 7 and 28 day rovers. The longer rovers were at a discount, but nowhere as big a reduction per day as today's Freedom tickets.

What would happen, fbb muses, to the company's bottom line if all the above were swept away allowing individual fares to be reduced and returning to the long-gone simple pattern of Rovers ...

... including the train as well!

With reduced single fares, more people might actually use the bus!

Hmm, not a good idea - all those extra passengers to spoil the company's efficiency!

I stops when I'm requested

Although it spoils the ride

So I can shout "Get out of it!

"We're full right up inside."

I don't ask much for wages

I only want fair shares

So cut down all the stages

And stick up all the fares.

If tickets cost ten pound apiece

Why should you make a fuss?

It's worth it just to ride inside

That thirty-foot-long by nine-foot-wide

Inside that monarch of the road

Observer of the highway code

That big six-wheeler, bright-green-painted,

Southern Vectis, diesel-engined,

Ninety-seven horsepower omnibus!

fbb seems to remember hearing a very similar song long, long ago!

 More blogging tomorrow : Friday 28th Oct 

Nostalgia - 60 Years (Approx) - Mini-Blog

Fare's Fascination

When fbb arrived at Sheffield |University in the autumn og 1963 he was immediately captivated by the overall appearance of Sheffield Transport.

There were long buses ...

... almost unknown in Northampton. (United Counties had a few FLFs) and very strange buses with an engine at the back only know by repute and report for fbb.

The bus timetable book was free and called the "bus guide" universally by Sheffielders. It included routes to far away places with strange sounding names - placesbb which fbb had never visited like Cleckheaton, Heckmondwike, Gainsborough, Buxton and Huddersfield.

And, as indicated above, you could find out all the fares in minute and comprehensive detail.

Many things were strange. Although many of the city routes ran from suburb to suburb through the city centre ...

... there were no through fares. You had to "rebook' in the city centre. This came as no surprise to your Northamptonian exile. Some of the town's Corporation buses ran cross town, but unadvertised, as, again, fares were only on offer to the centre. In the case of Sheffield, you could go a little way past the main centre stops ...

... in this case as far as St Mary's Road - wherever that was. 

One of te first bits of exploration that fbb undertook, on the advice of hid landlady, was a ride round Sheffield's outer circle. It was a genuine "circular" with buses circling seemingly endlessly. The fare table ran over FIVE pages ...

... with a fare "all the way round" (two shilling and three pence) for every stage back to every stage.,

But there were many other things for the lad to grasp.

fbb soon discovered that you could board, say, a 14 and travel via Holme Lane Junction (where trams used to junct but did no longer) and continue round Wisewood as far as Holme Lane Junction a second time.

But lots of tables had "special conditions" marked with a slightly threatening black star. With apologies for the fuzzy photo the "special condition" was applied at peak times. You had to pay as far as Holme Lane Junction if boarding in the city.

This ensured that the bus did ot fill up with intermediate passengers to the detriment of the noble residents of Wisewood. In practice it was unlikely to be a problem as the Wisewood buses left from Campo Lane, a well hidden back street on the end of the shppping area.

Sadly fbb never rode the Wisewood "loop" and the route has now disappeared completely with a minimalist replacement.

Normal services ended at route 99, followed by a heady mixture of works services and other "oddments". Some of the works routes were jam packed with fares restrictions.

Thse were all designed to ensure that folk going to their "works" would have room available whilst intermediate passengers would have to use the more frequent non-works services.

Longer distance services also had their restrictions.

Route 16 to Dinnington via Todwick was typical. Fare stages were always numbered consecutively outward from the city centre, or, in this case, the bus station. But note that stages 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 do not exist for the 15. Effectively there was no loading restriction if you wanted to travel locally, but if you did, the ONLY fare on offer was that to Elm Tree. This would make your local journey up to twice as expensive as travelling on the city service 95.

Sheffielders did not use the 15 for local journeys!

The only normal city services in the 100s were the 101, 102 and 105 to Gleadless.

fbb is incapable of explaining the route variations of these three but suffice ot to say there were THREE different routes plus peak time variations. Only regulars ever fully understood them - fbb never did until long after they changed!

The 101/102/105 had another secret!

Norton Aerodrome is the site of the former Lightwood RAF balloon barrage station active during during World War Two. RAF Norton was n°16 Balloon Centre (Barrage Balloons) comprising of three Squadrons: 939, 940 and 941. Each squadron had three flights comprising 8 balloons each. Their role was to prepare and supply equipment, carry out repairs, and train staff to operate the sites. During the war, Lightwood was partly used as a military detention centre. 

By 1943, the air threat to Sheffield had diminished, and most of the balloons were transferred to the defence of London. On the 1st July 1943, Lightwood was renamed RAF Norton. It was transferred to Signals Command and became n°3 Ground Radio Servicing Squadron. This continued until 1965, when under an RAF reorganisation the Squadron was moved to Rutland. RAF Norton officially closed in January 1965.

fbb cannot be sure, but thinks things were well run down by the date on the fare table ...

... buit the fare (as presumably the requested buses) were still there if needed! But there exists one picture of the camp with a Sheffield Transport bus - so they did happen.

The picture is undated and the bus registration number illegible; but fbb guesses late 1950s from the unfashionable ladies' fashions!

Incidentally, it was not long after fbb clutched his 1963 fare table that through fares were introduced on all cross city services. One oddity removed!

Due to a series of speaking engagements and the necessitous preparation for them, some blogs may be reduced in length and content over the next week or so!

 Next Bus Fares blog : Thursday 27th Oct