The Day The Earth Stood Still

A title from one of my favourite old sci-fi movies and also a good description of the beginning of the new school year where an otherwise stable bus network can descend into chaos!

The problem, as always at this time of year, is passenger numbers. We carry many students to school who, because of their parents choice of schools, are not entitled to a bus pass or dedicated school transport. There is no way of knowing how many new students will travel, how many will change from one form of transport to another or which route(s) will begin to burst at the seems!

Early indications showed that Cirencester Deer Park School would be up and Thomas Keble School would be down. If this became reality, then a simple switch of resources and problem solved. Every year, no matter where I have worked, I find that it can never be that simple!

Cirencester Deer Park School's numbers travelling were up! so that's one point to me! However Thomas Keble Schools numbers were static with the exception of route 5 which shot up by about a third! The terrain this service negotiates means that it has been difficult to find a bus small enough to go round the route but big enough to carry the required number of passengers! I believe I have found one and so should be able to sort that one out by half term. I am hoping to go and pick it up on Monday!

So that is one of the many issues that have stopped me from attending to the important business of updating the blog. Look out for more posts that I intend to publish over the next week or so including the following subjects:

• our new pet duck
• fleet changes
• more school route tales of woe
• two new drivers
• fuel duty rebate
• the night bus
• fuel
• Stroud Town Centre
• return of the squirrel

and I am sure many more!

They're Here!

The ticket machines have arrived and are up and running!

The software works fine and now I have a staggering amount of information at my fingertips. The concessionary fare reports do, however, depress me. It reminds me of the phrase 'here's what you could of won!' from the classic gameshow Bullseye!

Onwards and upwards!

EU Legistlation Thwarts Progress!

Our ticket machine system has been delayed!

All we are apparently missing is a depot reader which, as it contains lead, cannot now be sold by the manufacturers under EU legislation.

My sense of dissapointment cannot be explained by mere words but the sight of me pacing up and down the yard often leads to people to avoid me, as they know that this represents a time when I am best left alone! Eventually the pacing turns to mumbling choice phrases under my breath before heading slowly towards a form of normality, or at least as close as I am likely to get.

Possibly up to another three weeks to wait!

The Bus Station?

Anybody famaliar with Stroud over the past few years will remember that it had a Bus Station. It was not a pretty place. In fact Dank, Grubby even threatening after dark but it was a proper bus station with loading bays, information and ample parking. Although Merretts Newsagent had disappeared from the bus station some years before and the empty shop was boarded up the rest of the adjacent shopping centre was refurbished leading to the replacement of the often not working escalator with stairs and an often not working lift!

The site was located on top of a culverted brook, which due the age and instability of the culvert, led to bus parking being withdrawn and replaced with a pay and display car park which in turn left less bus parking.

Judgement day occurred when Stagecoach sold the remainder of the site lease to the District Council for a reasonable sum (leading to anguished cries of 'assett strippers' by some) and the idea of redevelopment of the site came to be a reality, it was just a question of time. By this stage, services were departing from the town centre and the bus station was a signing on/off point with driver facilities and also a schools service interchange point. Even the travel shop was relocated to John Street.

Services eventually returned to the bus station after the District Council enforced a restriction of PSVs in the town centre meaning that vehicles above 33 seats in capacity could not access Russell Street (with the exception of buses involved with rail replacement services). The travel shop also returned.

And then the redevelopment came!

The existing bus station was replaced by a series of 'on road' stops as a temporary measure whilst a new interchange was to be built at the railway station. STILL WAITING!

Is there another bus station in the country with an 'A' road passing through the middle! The safety fears of people being run over passed without realisation although this perhaps due to the fact that traffic rarely moves at a significant speed due to congestion!

To illustrate how it is, I provide a picture of an ordinary weekday, taken at a quite random moment from the adjacent car park. Please note the delivery lorry illegally parked and the Stagecoach double deck parked up on bay N in the foreground!

The original bus station used to be to the right on a site now occupued by a cinema.

Advertisement Break

The advertising deal that I am so proud of displayed on L718 JUD. There are three versions of side adverts but only one version of the rear advert.

The property version on the side of F705 BAT.

The Camera Never Lies

More CCTV being fitted today! N913 NAP today joins the ranks of H430 EFT, H431 EFT, L101 HHV and L118 HHV.

The system uses a high capacity hard drive instead of the old video technology that I had been familiar with in the past and the results are impressive. The system has been bought for us by Gloucestershire County Council as a part of the BUSCAM project.

The BUSCAM project is to be launched in a blaze of publicity in mid september at a Sir William Romney School in Tetbury.

Noc Knock Knocking On Heavens Door!

H843 NOC is now withdrawn from service! I cannot justify the expense of putting it through an MOT for another year as I believe it will need an engine change. It will be up for sale soon unless it is used as a part exchange on another vehicle.

H886 LOX has just had its head gasket replaced and so should be back in service on 1st September to keep the Carlyle bodywork prescence in the Stroud area going for another couple of months.

H886 LOX will probably last until November when its MOT expires.

One Small Step For Man, A Giant Leap For Cotswold Green!

The ticket machines are coming! Not a cry of alarm concerning the invasion of the planet by errant items of ticket issuing technology (although what a 'B' movie that would be!), but a call to say that our Wayfarer TGX system is due for delivery next week!

So at long last, the old Wayfarer 2 machines can be consigned to history or more realisticly the bin! I just wish I had not ordered so many ticket rolls!

The Beast Of Nailsworth Mills

Today has proved to be an odd day! Glyn has had his gaze fixed on a tree all afternoon. A small crowd had gathered to witness the sight of a strange animal hitherto unknown to man. The desription was of a white animal with a huge black tail and large head!

The prospect of ridiculing Glyn was too much to resist for several people in the yard. The conclusion was swiftly drawn that he had inhaled a substance with similar properties to LSD causing halucinations on a grand scale!

I finally could not resist and so gazed upon the tree only to see a squirrel going about its normal business of gathering food. I immediately feared for the squirrels safety with this mythical beast lurking somewhere in the depths of the foliage! I now realise that the beast in question was actually the squirrel!

Despite photographic evidence being acquired, Glyn would still not beleive that this was an ordinary squirrel but the size of its head and tail, not to mention the colouration, gave the impression that this was evidence of some grotesque mutation currently afflicting the squirrel population.

I maintain that it was just a squirrel and here is the photograph as evidence of this fact!

What Do You Mean 2 Months Since I Last Posted?

Two months is not a long time! I regret that I have completely overlooked the blog in recent weeks. I was reminded of this by Nigel with his helpful "when are you going to put more on the blog!" and then he told me that the last entry was 5th June!



So what happened?

• Still chasing our new ticket machines! It would appear that the construction time includes mining the ore and refining it to form the raw materials ready to be made into componants!


• We bid for a contract, lost it, won it and then lost it again much to my regret. It would have provided a welcome boost to the 54 service.


• We won an evening contract to start in early September between Dursley and Stroud (Fridays only).


• Looks like the 620 service contract will be extended for another 12 months which is very good news! I don't think the Varios (R629 YOM and R630 YOM) will make it though. I am, however, not aversed to a bit of bus shopping!


• Many hours completing our claim for rebate of some of the fuel duty that we have paid.


• Painted the National (VAE 499T) but not too happy with the job!


• Exibited at the Stroud Running Day (H843 NOC, F705 BAT and H430 EFT). H843 NOC working a Cashes Green free bus run as part of the event.


• And much, much more!

I promise that more posts will follow!