Bus Shite

[Zelandeth]

On 05/09/2025 at 11:47, danthecapriman said:

It’s pretty good, but I need more of an engineers drawing with details and dimensions. The biggest thing really is length, width, height and the side profile to see how much curvature there is the body sides and exactly how/where it curves. 
Ideally even door & window dimensions & position but I can get away without that if needs be.

This kind of thing is great but doesn’t have any dimensions.

 

It is to scale within itself it looks like though, so if we know at least one dimension with reasonable accuracy (wheel size?) it shouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility to extrapolate the scale from that and then annotate the rest of the drawing as necessary.  If no actual technical drawings turn up anyway.

[danthecapriman]

27 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

It is to scale within itself it looks like though, so if we know at least one dimension with reasonable accuracy (wheel size?) it shouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility to extrapolate the scale from that and then annotate the rest of the drawing as necessary.  If no actual technical drawings turn up anyway.

That’s pretty much how I do it for other things. Find something of a known dimension then use that as a scaler. 
I haven’t tried building a bus from scratch yet, but the hardest part looks like the curvature of the body sides and taper of the ends. The older buses are much worse for that than more modern ones which are much more square and angular.

[willswitchengage]

From a news article about Israel. What bus is this? Citroen?!

[mk2_craig]

16 minutes ago, willswitchengage said:

What bus is this?

Golden Dragon apparently. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dragon_(company)

[mk2_craig]

On 08/09/2025 at 16:02, mk2_craig said:

Golden Dragon

A colleague has just pointed out to me that there’s a fleet of these in narrow/short/RHD flavour currently rattling around Bermuda. 

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=542425480639527

[Yoss]

A 75 plate Enviro 400. I thought this was worth stopping for a photo. 

So new it doesn't even have fleet names on yet. It belongs to Xelabus, a small local company that specialises in school work/rail replacements/general private hire rather than stage work. They have had some council tendered routes but tend not to do commercial stuff. Which makes me assume this is leased, I can't see them being able to afford this outright. 

[quicksilver]

On 04/09/2025 at 15:39, Yoss said:

I can't remember the exact timeline now but Portsmouth were briefly owned by Southampton CityBus but the competition authorities got involved and made them sell it again even though they were two entirely different areas twenty odd miles apart with no overlapping area. A few years later both companies were bought out by First Group but that was fine apparently. Go figure. 

In the bottom left picture above the Atlantean has a Southampton CityBus type logo but with Portsmouth replacing Southampton. Quite a few were repainted in Southampton red and cream, many of them were painted at Portswood garage before it all went tits up. 

Like so. Not my picture, just pinched off the internet. 

 

A similar thing happened when Stagecoach bought Cambus Holdings in Cambridge/Peterborough/Milton Keynes. The authorities decided that gave them too much of a monopoly in East Anglia and wanted them to sell their operation in Bedford but eventually agreed on selling Huntingdon and Milton Keynes. Both went to Status Group, but they quickly sold Huntingdon on again to Blazefield, who in turn sold it to Cavalier. Stagecoach then bought Cavalier so just ten years after being forced to sell it they re-acquired the Huntingdon operation and that was absolutely fine and not monopolistic this time around.

[Snipes]

6 minutes ago, quicksilver said:

A similar thing happened when Stagecoach bought Cambus Holdings in Cambridge/Peterborough/Milton Keynes. The authorities decided that gave them too much of a monopoly in East Anglia and wanted them to sell their operation in Bedford but eventually agreed on selling Huntingdon and Milton Keynes. Both went to Status Group, but they quickly sold Huntingdon on again to Blazefield, who in turn sold it to Cavalier. Stagecoach then bought Cavalier so just ten years after being forced to sell it they re-acquired the Huntingdon operation and that was absolutely fine and not monopolistic this time around.

To be fair I imagine the local councils have 1000 and 1 things to deal with, and zero budget, while Stagecoach will have a legal department/contractors paid specifically to make the process as opaque as possible.

[quicksilver]

4 minutes ago, Snipes said:

To be fair I imagine the local councils have 1000 and 1 things to deal with, and zero budget, while Stagecoach will have a legal department/contractors paid specifically to make the process as opaque as possible.

The stupid thing about the whole saga is that Stagecoach had expanded locally in that decade and the Cavalier purchase also brought operations across a large neighbouring part of Lincolnshire. Operating in Huntingdon in 2007 gave them more of a monopoly than it did in 1997, yet they were allowed to keep the lot, no questions asked.

The Milton Keynes operation incidentally was purchased from Status Group by Arriva a short time after Stagecoach re-acquired Huntingdon. Again it was allowed despite Arriva already having a substantial presence nearby in Aylesbury and Luton.

[Zelandeth]

One of Arriva Milton Keynes older Scanias has something caught in or a broken blade on one of the cooling fans.  It is doing an *incredibly* good impression of a WWII era air raid siren every time the engine comes off idle.

I literally spent the last five minutes wondering what the heck I was hearing in the distance until the bus went past.

[quicksilver]

I've been riding this heap of bus shite today.

Milton Keynes held a 'Bus to the Future' event to showcase Ohmio's autonomous shuttle technology, which frankly is still a bit crap. It's currently limited to seven passengers and 15mph, and can't see traffic lights or overtake so the human operator has to take over for these. It isn't a very smooth ride either as it brakes quite fiercely and is programmed to drive extremely cautiously, slowing down whenever anything comes even vaguely near it. At one point a guy was walking right in front so it slowed down to follow him, but when he got a bit closer it did an emergency stop that wasn't really necessary.

In its current form it's too small, too slow and needs too much human intervention to be anything more than a novelty. I'm sure the technology will get there eventually but for now a conventional human-driven electric bus would do the job so much better. If this is the bus of the future, I'd rather stay in the past with the Routemaster they also had on display.

[Yoss]

This will be of very limited interest to anybody else but last week I noticed a Unilink bus on the Bluestar route 7. It's not completely unheard of as they are technically the same company operating out of the same depot but it was certainly rare. Until now, because then I saw another one, and it seems almost all the 7s are now in the hands of Unilink buses. 

This is a crap picture because I had a 46kg lump of dog in the other hand who was getting bored. 

I tried getting him in a picture with a bus but he was having none of it so here's a picture of the former DOE 33 without the dog. 

[lisbon_road]

16 minutes ago, Yoss said:

This will be of very limited interest to anybody else 

 

@Yossyour local posts are always of interest to me.  I've also seen some odd workings recently though not made a note of them.  As you know, Go Ahead also own the Isle of Wight and More buses and I think we don't know how lucky we are as they really seem quite decent.  I recollect that when they took over the buses in Bournemouth, a friend/colleage said that they were more punctual from day one.  

[Yoss]

1 hour ago, lisbon_road said:

@Yossyour local posts are always of interest to me.  I've also seen some odd workings recently though not made a note of them.  As you know, Go Ahead also own the Isle of Wight and More buses and I think we don't know how lucky we are as they really seem quite decent.  I recollect that when they took over the buses in Bournemouth, a friend/colleage said that they were more punctual from day one.  

We once had a bus in dual Unilink/Bluestar livery. I think it was one of this batch which are now all in normal Bluestar colours. 

But it was split half and half front and rear so it could be used on either. Unfortunately I can't remember which one and the internet doesn't seem to be helping. 

 

I was on the Island a couple of weeks ago and the fleet numbers all match with ours. This was in Ventnor. 

And we occasionally borrow buses from both Southern Vectis and More (the silly name for the ex Bournemouth/Poole branch of Wilts & Dorset). I once, and only once, even saw a Brighton & Hove bus coming down Shirley Road in service but couldn't get a picture. 

[Snipes]

 @Yoss my primary memeory of IoW are the hills that Ventnor is made up of

 

[Yoss]

1 hour ago, Snipes said:

 @Yoss my primary memeory of IoW are the hills that Ventnor is made up of

 

Yes we got the bus down from Ryde to Ventnor and the route south of Shanklin is superb including a double hairpin just outside Ventnor itself. Easy enough in the now standard Enviro 400 but the drivers would have really earnt their money in the days of the Lodekkas or even the early VRs. 

[Leyland Worldmaster]

13 hours ago, Yoss said:

Yes we got the bus down from Ryde to Ventnor and the route south of Shanklin is superb including a double hairpin just outside Ventnor itself. Easy enough in the now standard Enviro 400 but the drivers would have really earnt their money in the days of the Lodekkas or even the early VRs. 

There was an excellent John F Parke article in Buses Magazine in the early 'eighties about this. 

An excellent bit of writing that had this reader smelling the warm brakes and tyres as well as hearing a hard worked Gardner lump...

[busmansholiday]

6 hours ago, Leyland Worldmaster said:

that had this driver smelling the warm brakes and tyres as well as hearing a hard worked Gardner lump...

FTFY

[martc]

I've stumbled upon some old photos of buses in Victoria, Australia. Some of them look quite British, which is not surprising, others American.

The badge above the grille on this one looks familiar, any ideas?

Decidedly homemade looking, on an Austin chassis.

[martc]

A slightly dinged Büssing Type H31 in Helsinki, 1966. Not a bad looking thing, I guess the engines at the front. Büssing were known for their underfloor flat, air cooled engines. They merged with MAN and the 'Lion of Brunswick' motif used by MAN to this very day is in fact the emblem used by Büssing.

Note the cheeky Sprite peeping around the corner, it couldn't have been much fun in this weather.

[martc]

This looks a bit unusual, any idea why the pillar behind the front door is so big?

[Dyslexic Viking]

9 minutes ago, martc said:

The badge above the grille on this one looks familiar, any ideas?

This?

[martc]

!978, celebrating 100 years of public (bus) transport in NuT.

[martc]

Just now, Dyslexic Viking said:

This?

Thanks, I thought it looked familiar...

[hammy]

On 11/09/2025 at 17:20, quicksilver said:

The stupid thing about the whole saga is that Stagecoach had expanded locally in that decade and the Cavalier purchase also brought operations across a large neighbouring part of Lincolnshire. Operating in Huntingdon in 2007 gave them more of a monopoly than it did in 1997, yet they were allowed to keep the lot, no questions asked.

The Milton Keynes operation incidentally was purchased from Status Group by Arriva a short time after Stagecoach re-acquired Huntingdon. Again it was allowed despite Arriva already having a substantial presence nearby in Aylesbury and Luton.

There are a couple of issues - the original takeover of Cambus Holdings in 1997 was referred to the OFT., and a report by the MMA( who were generally more hardball than their subsequent replacement) resulted in the need to sell of parts of the business.  At the time there were far more medium sized operators and groups around at the time, and competition was more previlent

Subsequently the market had changed dramatically when Cavalier sold out to Stagecoach in 2008 it was referred to the OFT again, and the deal came under scrutiny of the CC, who were more understanding that the market was seeing greater consolidation by big groups, and that no other buyers were interested in buying the business, therefore the sale protected jobs and services. It wasn't a walk in the park for Stagecoach. 

A similar view was taken when FirstGroup took over Cawlett Holdings who ran Southern National and North Devon.  The company was basically bankrupt and would have collapsed if a buyer had not come forward. The deal by First resulted in jobs being saved and a continuation in service in the short to medium term. 

[hammy]

On 19/08/2025 at 19:16, artdjones said:

There's someone of the same name in the same area who's got a couple of aviation related convictions, one for flying planes with a faked licence, and one for stealing aircraft parts.

If it's the same man it's probably a typical example of a common misconception women about to marry have.

"I can change him."

 

It's the same person. An absolute Walter Mitty character.   

Ran a bus restoration business in Dartford, which ceased trading and I dare say owed a lot of money. Rumours of unpaid VAT bills.  He was also a director of the Epping and Ongar railway but was dispatched from his platform earlier in the year.   

Flying planes without a licence, stealing rare parts from the BBMF but was amazingly spared prison.  Amazingly people still seem to be taken in by him. 

[busmansholiday]

On 20/09/2025 at 16:50, martc said:

This looks a bit unusual, any idea why the pillar behind the front door is so big?

Roe bodied AEC Swift, new to Leeds (hence the thick pillar to accommodate the route number blind - a Leeds thing) seen with West Yorkshire PTE.

 

[busmansholiday]

On 20/09/2025 at 16:51, martc said:

!978, celebrating 100 years of public (bus) transport in NuT.

The Regent survives (I believe), the MetroScania passed to Reading and was last seen dissolving in a field over 10 years ago.

[lisbon_road]

The number one from Southampton to Winchester is now every 10-12 minutes during the day and the timetables don't list the exact times.  I caught it today and we overtook another one.  @Yoss you probably know this.  Seems ironic that they've increased the frequency while doing away with the 46.  Oh well.

In Winchester, still a few Tridents.  Some in the older livery and some in Beachball.  Thankfully no buses yet in the new battleship livery - whatever it is called, apparently dark blue but looks like grey to me - I wonder if they have rebelled against it?  Gives the bus folk something to moan about anyway.  

[Yoss]

15 minutes ago, lisbon_road said:

The number one from Southampton to Winchester is now every 10-12 minutes during the day and the timetables don't list the exact times.  I caught it today and we overtook another one.  @Yoss you probably know this.  Seems ironic that they've increased the frequency while doing away with the 46.  Oh well.

In Winchester, still a few Tridents.  Some in the older livery and some in Beachball.  Thankfully no buses yet in the new battleship livery - whatever it is called, apparently dark blue but looks like grey to me - I wonder if they have rebelled against it?  Gives the bus folk something to moan about anyway.  

Well the 1 is Bluestar and the 46 Stagecoach so completely unrelated but I know what you mean, there's no joined up thinking. Years ago it would all have been Hampshire Bus (or even Hants & Dorset) so they would have had a more even spread, hence the alternating 45 and 47.

An update on this picture I posted last week. 

The 7 is back in the hands of blue buses today. So for two weeks only it was being run by Unilink buses. I was hoping to get a better picture of one in Shirley Road but it never quite happened and looks like it won't now. They must have had their reasons but I have no idea what it was. 

And lastly, while we are doing Southampton news, this is happening on Sunday. 

I think the buses just congregate in Pound Tree Road in the city centre. 10.00 to 16.00.