Snow: Thank you to Bus Operators.

The East Midlands has today seen more than it's fair share of snowfall with some places seeing more than others. For example Nottingham for an hour we had some decent snowfall with a significant covering for the time scale resulting in Lilac 25, Blue 39 and Skyblue 45 being diverted or terminating away from their normal terminus'. After half hour of no snowfall it was gone!

However, some places such as the Peak District weren't as 'lucky' with the snowfall resulting in significant snowfall which saw High Peak withdraw all of it's services and tried keeping their highly popular limited stop Transpeak service operating until around midday when the decision was made to suspend the service due to poor driving conditions...I think poor is a bit of an understatement I think hazardous would be a better word!

Here is a brand new Transpeak Enviro200 stuck in snow after service was fully withdrawn. From High Peak Facebook Page.

As you can see conditions we're difficult for those out there and it's without a doubt that we've got to thank those who venture out into the unknown tackling the routes head on and those who provide updates to the pubic and once again this "snow storm" proved how well bus companies keep their passengers in the know with the situation out on the road.

High Peak (Transpeak branded) Enviro 200 stuck in snow awaiting rescue from the horrendous conditions. From High Peak  Facebook Page.

With more and more people using social networking to connect with friends, family and companies it makes sense for companies to provide information straight to their Twitter and Facebook pages. For the first time in a while every 'major' bus company in the East Midlands has posted their service disruptions to their respective pages and it's great to see!

...Although it is quite annoying when you read posts such as "Lilac 25 (Diversion route), Blue 39 (Diversion route) and Skyblue 45 (terminus change). All other buses running to normal unless mentioned above" and you see comments such as "Is the 56 still running to Arnold?"...well of course otherwise it would have been mentioned! It must take up so much time for bus companies to go though all notifications and want to smash your head against the wall when you see comments like this. But there are some genuine comments asking about what stops are being observed based on the diversion which the companies will happily reply to to help you get to where you want to be.

Despite this I think we should all come together and thank the fact that the bus companies provide us with the information while trying to juggle getting the information to drivers, posting to social networking sites and answer to questions regarding diversion routes - And finally, we cannot forgot about the drivers, they're the ones who spend everyday tirelessly driving around getting you to your destination safely and with conditions as bad as they're (as seen above) we should take our hats off to them!

A special mention to Transpeak's drivers - while their page is not manned by management it's manned by drivers which makes their job even harder as they have to find the information out by themselves but today they did really well.

Congratulations and thank you to all those involved in operating the buses today despite the weather conditions. You do us proud!

Now have brew and a chocolate biscuit sat in front of the fire on us! Stay safe everyone out there.

The model bus industry.

Hello its joe here,

First of all hello and a hearty welcome to my first proper blog. In this blog i will be talking about the model bus industry and comparing websites to try and get the best price for the buses you want to buy, so lets get started!

As a bus enthusiast i like to buy model buses and you will be well aware if this i you keep in touch with my youtube channel. I am always wanting to buy model buses that are good quality but at a reasonable price, because no one wants a crappy little bus that isnt very good, you want a proper good quality bus

So firstly lets start with ebay. I get most of my model buses from ebay but they dont make the buses themelves. What i like about ebay is that their buses are very cheap but are still good quality and that is what i always look for i a website. One problem about ebay when buying a bus it their bidding range. Sometimes the bits get ridiculous and some people spend over £50.00 for a bus you could get for half the price at a different website so i tend to either leave bidding altogether or wait until the ladt minute to get my bid in and sometimes it works!

Moving swiftly on to amazon, one if the big websites they sell anything you want really including model buses and they have all the top brands including corgi, EFE, britbus and exlusive first editions and myself have bought one or two models from amazon but they are very expensive but good quality and thats the dilemma when buying buses.

Moving on now finally to the smaller websites that include ehattons and gee dee models them both i have started to buy models from mainly because of the cheap prices, the wide range of models available and the quality of the bus. Now i would definitelyrecommend these websites and if you live in notts the take a look in gee dee models yourself because they have their own shop in the city.

So in conclusion to my blog today, in some cases buying cheap models is good IF! You know the site well and have resarched the bus i oher sites but in some cases cheap buses isnt good so be carefull!! Also in some cases expensive buses is good but be carefull again you could find a better site thats cheaper to buy the bus and it will be the exactly the same quality so you just need to shop around for the right one for you (please note: if you are a millionair just buy any bus because you have loads of money).

Thanks for reading ;-)    

Copy Cat Competition in the East Midlands

A topic which often causes wide debate is the competition for routes and passengers. Nottingham hasn't been shy to a bit of competition with the memorable 'bus war' between Nottingham City Transport and Nottingham Omnibuses back in 1994 when Nottingham Omnibuses ceased trading. 

Tactics of this 'bus war' included aggressive driving, blocking bus stops, boxing buses in and obstructing passengers from getting on to the bus in an attempt to become Nottingham's biggest bus company. Unfortunately for Nottingham Omnibuses their attempts we short lived as they ceased trading in 1994 leaving NCT to rule the City along with Trent Barton.

Trent Barton have also seen their fair share of 'bus wars' as bus companies try to barge their way in onto their 'patch' so to speak and try to get passengers off Trent Barton and onto their service.

Premiere Travel a family-run originally started up as a coach company but started operating commercial bus services mainly competing with Trent Barton's highly successful routes such as Bingham Xprss and Radliffe Line (now Rushcliffe Greens) by providing direct links with their X1 which was later renumbered to Red1 and proved very popular before Premiere made a carbon copy of Trent Barton's Cotgrave Connection named Red2 which was later withdrawn owing poor passenger use and the introduction of 'Bargain Bus 2' offering fares as low as 50p and £1 to Cotgrave.

Around the same time Premiere Travel offered a service between Nottingham and Loughborough via Costock and Bunny giving direct links which Arriva said 'wasn't financially viable' when they ran the route although Premiere showed that this was a very successful route and later forced Kinchbus (Part of Wellglade Group of which Trent Barton are a part of) to withdraw their service 9 operating the same route.

In 2010 Premiere Travel bought the rights of Veolia Nottingham getting thirty - forty vehicles and a few tendered services for Nottingham University. There expansions kept coming as they successfully competed along some Trent Barton corridors such as Red5 and Red8  as Red1 and Red9 already mentioned above - Premiere Travel looked like a big contender.

However, with expenses of around £1,000 a week their RedFLYER competing with Trent Barton's Skylink seemed to be the biggest costing route and after less than a year was forced with withdraw even with them 'ditching' the rather expensive to maintain coaches months in at an attempt to save money. Perhaps this could possibly be to blame for their ceasing of trading in January of 2013.

Just like the 1993/4 bus war the temperature started to heat up between the two companies as Nottingham embarked on another 'bus war' which just like we saw in 1993/4 was bus blocking stops, exchange of words between drivers, blocking bus from stands etc.

Premiere Travel tried a initiative called 'Fair Fares' which was Premiere Travel offering low fares to services competing directy with Trent Barton this saw fares at £1.00 which sometimes three times lower than the offerings of Trent Barton's fares. Unfortunately, due to increasing costs and unable to supply enough funds in 2013 Premiere Travel was placed in administration and ceased trading weeks later with no buyer coming forward.

With Trent Barton shaking off one competitor and returning to some normality and space to breath later saw Yourbus begin to contend with 'big' services of Nottingham City Transport and Trent Barton.

For quite some time Yourbus have competed with Nottingham City Transport's 36 service to Chilwell although this wasn't as heated as other bus wars between companies. Now in 2015 both the Y36 and 36 are running with very good passenger numbers with Nottingham City Transport investing in brand new Enviro400s and Yourbus buying the brand new Mercedes Citaro it looks like neither will be going anywhere soon. It will interesting to see how both services are when the tram hits the streets!

Yourbus known to some enthusiasts as 'posh premiere' which has reference to the fact that they're taking same approach as what premiere did but the difference is that yourbus (with the exception of their Enviros from premiere and dual door Mercedes from London) use a fleet that is made up of Citaros and Streetlites bought from brand new whereas premiere's fleet was made up of older second hand vehicles which reflected the fairs as more of a cheap and cheerful service.

Yourbus try various different ways to better there services and the Y1 and Y28 are two services that are consistently seeing route and timetable changes in a bid to get more customers on their services. 

I noticed something on Facebook recently about the way in which yourbus are marketing their services and it being linked closely to Trent Barton's and for me I have to agree. Infact if faced with the 'Google' or 'Bing' test but with 'Trent Barton' or 'Yourbus' I wouldn't really be sure which one's which.

Is this really the way competition has become, marketing routes the same as the competitor so passengers may get confused and use your service instead? Why can't Yourbus come up with their own marketing to make them look 'different' and perhaps stand out of the crowd rather than following the trends of the likes of Trent Barton?

Get the most out of your buses with Refurbishment..

Why do bus operators refurbish buses? And why is it becoming so popular amongst bus companies as a way of extending the life of their buses?

In a time when bus companies have to be financially aware of the costings of various different things and rather than buying brand new buses for hundreds of thousands of pounds they revive some of their older buses through refurbishing them. After seven or so years buses are sent for refurbishment to give them a possible five extra years in service and after that with buses in near to new condition they're able to re sell them and invest in the whole system again for other vehicles.

There are different approaches to giving buses some love and care, some companies opt to only  refurbishing essential work such as seating others go 'all out' to invest a substantial amount of money in bringing a tired bus into what would be seen by passengers as a brand new bus despite the age.

Nottingham City Transport are a prime example of where they use refurbishment to extend the life of their buses and allow them to use the funds from their unwanted assets to invest in new buses and the refurbishment of other buses.

With Nottingham City Transport and their refurbishment programme they replace any of the panels that need replacing, deep clean their buses inside and out, re-seat their buses with new cushions and moquette and in some cases extend the buggy bay, install real time equipment and next-stop displays and repaint/re-vinyl their buses. With this level of refurbishment it brings them up to 'brand new' standard at the fraction of the cost of a new one.

Nottingham City Transport also make use of their spare bits and pieces from their sold assets such as their withdrawn Scania Wright Fusion bendy-buses the seating from them buses were transferred over to their ex Maroon Line Scania OmniTowns now in use on LocalLink53.

The refurbishment of vehicles for Turquoise Line 76/78/79 use Scania Omnidekka that are 53' plate, 04 and 55' plate and were refurbished at different years and with them being at different ages rather than the slight change in vinyls between the older models and the newer ones you couldn't tell the difference between a 53' plate and 55' plate and if you asked a passenger 'how old would you say these buses are' they'd say around 4 or 5 years old.

With the option of using the car or other operators service, bus companies have to make their buses look more appealing and attractive as possible to get as many people as they can on their buses and as we've discussed in another article that the way the company portray themselves through presentation of buses is the impression they're giving the passengers before they've used the service or company.

When things go wrong, they go wrong horribly...

Having been in Skegness for a week in July 2014 I though I'd take a look at how Stagecoach in Skegness operate services in the high season. Unfortunately one day went to pot and didn't improve as you'll find out when you read this article. 

Last summer was without a doubt one of the hottest that I can remember for a long time and as people do during the summer holidays they head away on holiday some abroad and others flock to the British seaside. We chose to go with the seaside resort and Skegness was the chosen location and I was very keen to try out the newly refurbished open toppers changed from 'Coastal Cruiser' to 'The Seasiders' having arrived and settled I thought Saturday would be a great day to try out the award winning (The Award for Marketing Initiative of the Year) open toppers having got the times the night before I headed out for the service 3 to Skegness Interchange.

Walking to the bus stop I was astonished at the queue that had already formed, the summer timetable states that service 3 operates every 10 minutes and service 1 (which is ran by standard closed roof buses) every 10 minutes giving a combined frequency of every 5 minutes along this corridor. It was coming up to 30 minutes of waiting and some people of the queue by this time had either walked off or used Taxi firm 'Red Cabs'. In that space of time 2 open toppers, 2 single deckers went in the opposite direction; something was clearly wrong. After a half hour wait a Hunts Coaches Olympian pulled up packed to the rafters of passengers (picking up the waiting Stagecoach Skegness passengers from other parts of the route) after taking 5 passengers and turning away others it pulled shortly after was a Red Bus ALX300 where a large proportion of the passengers went, still there were a good fiveteen people waiting at stop. Nearly 35 minutes the first Stagecoach vehicle to turn up was a Interconnect Wright Gemini which only had a few seats spare and I boarded the bus arrived nearly 50 minutes late and was parked in the bus park opposite the station.

I've never actually had a need to go to the Bus Station as there isn't really much there for me when I got off the IC9 at the station wanting to see what it was like and I was shocked at how poor the bus station appeared there was sufficient information on the services but there was no colour it looked like it was abandoned something which wouldn't draw much attention. So far my experience with Stagecoach Skegness wasn't very good but still I persisted to make my way to the stand where the open toppers pick up I thought it was going to be a 'in and out' style thing, it wasn't! There was plenty going on in the station there was a man with a high-vis jacket, clipboard and radio walking around tirelessly organising buses.

The first bus was a single decker which was on the 3 the driver was ordered to drop off passengers and then reverse into the stand behind for service 1 it picked up and went out, a open topper arrived the driver let the passengers get off moved it towards the office got out and left the bus (which was still there after I finally got a bus). Everyone at that stand was wondering what was going on, there was no information given to us and it was only when a woman went over to ask the man with the clipboard what was going on the information that he gave the woman was "It's taking well over an hour to get to Fantasy Island, buses are getting stuck and because we've not got enough drivers on today most are on their break" he then said "the last service 3 departed around an hour ago". By this time I had been waiting for around 40 minutes, the next bus arrived pulled in, again closed roof and was ordered to swap drivers and was put onto another IC route (not sure which). Shortly after another open topper arrived and the driver took it straight into the bus park and left us.

Now approaching an hour with no buses departing on the 1 or 3 for quite some time a service 3 arrived and was a Dennis Dart which very quickly got full and driver went off by this time I was near the front of the queue. The third open topper arrived and driver left it but this time on the stand (it looked promising) the driver then walked into the supermarket opposite the station. There were plenty of drivers hanging around on their "break" but no buses going out. Finally over an hour of waiting a open topper arrived and it was 'Salty'; the driver apologized to us about the wait and gave the same explanation that they don't have enough drivers that day - A bit odd that it's one of the busiest days of the week and they didn't deploy enough drivers. But now sitting down top deck near the back I was quite contempt.

Some of you maybe wondering why didn't you take another bus, well there were two reasons. 1) It was hot and I wanted to have the sea air to cool me down 2) When you're a bus enthusiast out to get a certain bus you've got to persevere and I did and got my reward (just about)

So now on the bus and travelling to Fantasy Island (my stop) on a open top bus the journey was stop, start and we didn't really get anywhere very fast it did take nearly an hour to Fantasy Island. So wanting a drink and something to eat I went to a cafe, I had a BLT and a coke having relaxed I made my way to the stop hoping for another journey this time I was only going as far as Roman Bank I was very tired and had enough. The Roman Bank junction outside Fantasy Island is one of the busiest roads I've seen and it quite dangerous for pedestrians.

Let the wait begin! I joined yet another long line of passengers waiting for a bus one bus had just left and that was a East Lancs Mylennium we were waiting 20 minutes and 3 buses arrived 2 open toppers 'Sandy' and 'Pierre' and a East Lancs Mylennium there was confusion as people tried to join the 'smaller' queue but I stayed with Sandy and got a seat.

Overall I was impressed with the quality of the refurbishment and they captured the seaside brilliantly well with the 'seasiders' (Refurbishment programme will be a article discussed in the feature).

Before I conclude this article I'd like to make it clear I wasn't complaining about Stagecoach themselves as many of the problems they had on the road were unpredictable and they had no power over the only criticism I had was not having enough drivers and perhaps the 'man on the ground' should have gave more information to the waiting passengers had we not have asked him directly would we have ever had an explanation?

Now time for the conclusion to this rather lengthy article I think that the road structure of Skegness cannot cope with the sheer number of pedestrians, number of cars, coaches or buses and if possible needs updating although I can't see that happening any time soon. 

The Power of Branding...

Hi there and welcome to our first blog post and in this post we're discussing the power of branding we've seen different companies play around with branding bus services and in some cases keeping their vehicles in one standard livery allowing them to put any service they need to. 

Recently I've been looking at how different companies present their vehicles to the public through the use of liveries and it proved to be interesting looking at how each company has it's own strategy of using the exterior space.

I always see the exterior space of the bus as a moving billboard, it's how the company presents themselves to the public and their overall service. If the livery or exterior space on the bus looks 'scruffy' it begs the question whether the company care about their image and if faced with choice between a well presented vehicle or a 'scruffy' vehicle nine times out of ten the passenger would pick the well presented vehicle because noone wants to be seen on a 'scruffy' vehicle - well I know I wouldn't!

Leicestershire was notoriously known for it's confusing layout especially around City Centre bus stop and unattractive buses which played a part in the low bus use in Leicester. Kinchbus (a company part of Wellglade) was the only local operator in Leicester that tried to use new initiatives, identifiable branding and more appealing buses while trying to get more people to use the bus. 

(C) Paul Grant and National Bus Depot

Recently Kinchbus has upped it's game further by investing in a livery design making bus usage with Kinchbus more pleasing and investing in brand new 64' plate Mercedes Citaros which would be used on the Skylink Leicester service with the added extras of 4g free Wi-Fi, plug sockets, air conditioning and the increased frequency to every 20 minutes. The ticketing options that are available to the people of Leicester with Kinchbus is far more beneficial in terms of value for money - remember you get what you pay for! Not only have they invested into the services to get more people out of the car and into the bus as with most things that the Wellglade group do when they invest in new vehicles they had an event where they'd present their buses to the public allowing the public to talk to the managers about any questions they have about the bus service another great way of getting more people into the bus.

(C) Paul Grant and National Bus Depot

So, back to the power of branding! Branding is great for promotions as it can be very specific to the route itself rather than the network allowing there to be a unique selling point (USP) for that service in this example plug sockets on Rainbow and Rapid one the branding means it'll be used on either Rainbow or Rapid one making the plug socket a USP for that route getting more people on board that route. It also benefits the customer greatly as it makes buses more appealing, eye catching and something you'd be more interested in using because it's distinctive. Nottingham City Transport (NCT) uses a colour coded scheme that was introduced in 2001 which allowed customers to identify the colour to the area it serves for example Lime coloured buses serves Daybrook and Arnold. This is a great system for new users of buses as long as they know the area they want they are able to be identify the service they want by it's colour. Another part of branding which benefits the user is the vinyls that outline the route, to keep it consistent we're going to use Lime 58 which would show City, Sherwood and Arnold on either side making it more recognizable for potential customers to notice and know which service they want.

(C) Paul Grant and National Bus Depot

Let's compare this to companies such as First. First Bus is a company that puts buses within their fleet into one standard livery which allows them to move vehicles around as they please. Now, for nationwide company such as First Bus this works out better for the reason that they can be short of buses at any time and this allows them to make use of buses that may not be in use in other cities. Although we've seen First bus adapt their standard livery to accommodate some sort of branding this includes the City or County it operates in example in photo Worcester along the side in  original styling and colour aswell as the colour line and route number example Yellow 54.

Clearly there is advantages to both types of branding for local companies that operate in one City or County/region specific route, branding could possibly be the best way to present your buses whereas big nationwide companies will keep buses in one standard livery to allow the mobility of buses to wherever they need to be.

(C) First Midlands Facebook Page

Now let's look at the drawbacks to branding. I think the main one is the fact that sometimes a plague can hit the fleet and the only bus that's in the garage able to go out at that moment is shall we say for this example a Pink bus on a Green route which could confuse passengers who would be expecting a Green Bus when suddenly a Pink bus displays 8 Wilford Hill and drives past meaning you're going to have to wait for the bus behind. Next is, it's quite costly over the bus' life for some buses in Nottingham they've been in 2 or 3 liveries over their life which I know is far cheaper than purchasing new vehicles and means they can fully utilize the bus for however long it can stay in service for.

Of course there probably is more but right now I can' think of any further points to develop on, if you can think of any why not put them in the comments?

(C) Paul Grant and National Bus Depot

Let's finish of with the drawbacks to standard livery. Of course the main point has to be that when you roll something out you can't publicise it as much as you could if it was only going to be on a specific route when a bus has no branding it can be put on any route so they can't really grow a route with a USP without using some sort of branding, so buses will only get the 'standard' bits and bobs. Another being First bus' livery has became tired and is needing updating and to keep the consistency amongst the buses in their fleet they'll have to repaint all the buses in the fleet which can become very costly.

This is just naming a few I think this post has gone on for long enough now and has discussed the main points of branding and I have hopefully hit upon the main points.

(C) Paul Grant and National Bus Depot

I hope that you've enjoyed reading this blog post we hope to be hitting more topics as we go onwards and hopefully upwards.

A little intro

Hi everyone and welcome to mine and jacks bus blogging website that is called J&J bus blog. We hope you like our blog site and if you like anything to do with buses you will love it. In this blog website we will be putting lots of different bus related stuff up including some pictures and any info about the buses we put up. Myself and jack are big bus fans that's why we have decided to do this blogging site about buses and our hopes will be for this blogging site to be the best ever and have lots of people look at it daily. So thats been me and if you want some more bus action visit my youtube channel where there is on board bus videos, bus observations and some model bus videos so check that out. All you have to do is type in to youtube Joe_seston01 and subscribe to my channel! So again thats been me and jack will put some other stuff up about buses in more detail when he does his blogs. So thanks for reading

Bye!!