Derby Bus Station - July 2010

The first three pictures show work in the street outside the bus station. Temporary bus stops are being removed and replaced by a taxi rank and blue badge parking (I think).

The last picture shows passengers queuing in the rain between the bus station doors and the bus door to get on their bus.

Clay Cross and Chesterfield

TrentBarton still have some Dennis Darts in service. The Transpire web site has reported that service 241 may be upgraded shortly.

I understand that this Stagecoach bus was acquired with the business of Dennis Coaches of Manchester.

A former London bus now with TM Travel. It is unusual for TM buses not to have some form of destination blind.

A high tech experiment

Today we tested the WiFi on the Red Arrow by trying to watch the Wimbledon final on the bus. It worked!

We caught the 13:40 from Ripley to Chesterfield and saw the start of the game before we lost the signal. We then went to Wetherspoons where there was a better signal and some nice beer that was slightly too cold. There was also a silent big screen TV so we had an analogue picture with slightly delayed sound from the computer.

We then caught the 16:20 back to Ripley. The signal was great near to Chesterfield but broke up on the more rural section to Clay Cross and between Clay Cross and Alfreton by which time the game was over.
To me it is amazing that I can nearly watch real time TV on a cheap 'toy computer' whilst travelling on a bus.
Finally having seen the warning on the BBC website does each Red Arrow need a TV licence?

Oh dear!

A loose exhaust on the 11:05 9.3 from Derby.
(Thanks for the comment. I don't know why the pictures sometimes disappear. All I can do is reload them.)

Nottingham Broadmarsh 30/06/2010

There have been some changes at Broadmarsh with a partition between the main waiting area and the buses.


Individual stopping bays have been marked out for the buses.

The two centre platforms are pretty much the same as they always were.

Sunday bus wars in Ripley

Starting today TrentBarton have introduced hourly journeys on service 9.2 between Derby and Mansfield operating 5 mins in front of Stagecoach service 92.
The 5:45 pm southbound TrentBarton followed 5 minutes later by the 17:50 Stagecoach.

The 5:50 pm TrentBarton to Mansfield.

Finally the 17:55 Stagecoach to Mansfield had no passengers at all when waiting for time in Ripley.

Ripley & Chesterfield 3/6/2010 - TrentBarton

Yesterday in the space of 5 minutes around 9:30 I saw four TrentBarton journeys operated by the wrong type of bus.

Service 90 is usually operated by Dennis Darts and the 1A is usually an Optare Solo.
The Sixes are usually route branded Scanias and The Red Arrow should be a route branded coach. I wonder if the Excel on RA was deliberate as we had about 10 standing passengers on arrival in Chesterfield.

Local buses at Wythall Museum

One of the first Midland General Bristol VRs.
[left]  In the early 1970s I made a small donation towards the purchase of this bus for preservation.


[below]  Willowbrook bodied AEC Regal.

Former NCT Leyland National sales stand that I had seen at Crich the previous day.

Blue Bus Services operated an immaculate fleet - mostly Diamlers.

Newark 29/5/2010 - Marshalls, Premiere, Travel Wright, Stratford Blue (Stagecoach)

Former TrentBarton Optare Excel.

This Routemaster belongs to Stagecoach company Midland Red (South) and was used on several local services to mark the closure of the bus station. I was issued with a zero value Setright ticket for my OAP pass. The last time I saw a Setright machine in use was in Ireland on the Lough Swilly service from Derry to  Letterkenny.

Newark 29/5/2010 - CentreBus, KJB, Stagecoach, Travel Wright

Newark Bus Station

Newark bus station is closing today and the site is to redeveloped by Asda icluding a new bus station.