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  1. tbtc

    [Trivia] Peak Extensions In/Beyond City Centres

    Modern bus routes are often simple, predictable, intended to be something people can rely on without a timetable Thirty years ago, things were different, chaotic, much more variety Often corridors had “express” services at rush hour, something which has become a rarity outside of a few...
  2. tbtc

    [Speculation] Commercially Purchased Electric Buses

    The UK bus industry is slowly embracing electric buses. Some of that reluctance is perhaps understandable from operators who invested in “hybrid” vehicles a decade ago only to find that the technology wasn’t reliable enough for the hammering that buses get in daily service and had to spend...
  3. tbtc

    Trivia: Routes Still Every Ten Minutes Or Better

    This thread would have been unthinkable a few years ago, when ten minute frequencies were the norm on busy urban routes and we had services like the 22 in Edinburgh running every four minutes But, post-Covid (and with rising staff costs making occasional double deckers more attractive that...
  4. tbtc

    Trivia: Routes Used By Demonstrators To Test Buses In Each City

    The below comment in the Lothian Buses thread (https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/lothian-group-discussion-lothian-city-lothian-country-bus-and-east-coast-buses.208948/page-283#post-6074260) states that the 23 is Edinburgh’s testing ground for any demonstrator vehicles, since it gives them a...
  5. tbtc

    TRIVIA: Places that Scottish Citylink coaches no longer serve

    As the National Express thread seems popular (https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/trivia-places-that-national-express-coaches-no-longer-serve.242062/ ) I thought there might be merit in a Citylink one One difference between the operators is that most “former National Express routes” are gone...
  6. tbtc

    Trivia: Routes That Don’t Share Roads With Other Services

    How many instances are there of an operator running a service that doesn’t share any roads with other routes that they provide? Not even crossing paths for a few metres at a crossroads or roundabout For example, the xplore Dundee “Fly” to Edinburgh Airport serves central and western Dundee but...
  7. tbtc

    Eastern Scottish (inc SMT/ City Sprinter etc) in the 1980/ early 1990s

    Rather than derail the existing thread about McGills, I thought that there was enough discussion/ interest in that older era to warrant a separate thread There’s been a lot said about Lothian/ LRT during this period but I don’t think I’ve seen any publication devoted to the “green” buses during...
  8. tbtc

    Flea Markets (and other alternatives to full price shops/ eBay for second hand model railway treats)

    Are there any decent Flea Markets, or other places that you’d recommend beyond the full price model shops (where you can easily spend a couple of hundred pounds on a locomotive) and eBay (where there are some apparent bargains but then you find yourself paying a fiver for delivery which makes...
  9. tbtc

    Why has electrification not got further in the UK?

    mods note - split from the part of this thread that was the most manageable! :) Agreed. Nobody is going to argue against a plan of rolling electrification , I don’t think anyone ought to be proud of the stop/start electrification we’ve had or the fact that “modern” EMUs are scrapped whilst...
  10. tbtc

    Bus Stations (Or Groups Of Town Centre Bus Stops) That Need/Needed Stances Renumbered

    There’s a popular thread in the Railway side of the Forum asking about remembering of platforms at train stations, which is a complicated subject (often expensive to amend, but the piecemeal development of stations means there are a few where a platform has to be numbered out of sequence due to...
  11. tbtc

    Infrastructure Investment That Looks Less Necessary Since Covid

    @Kite159 made an interesting point in the thread about stations with awkward platform numbers, which I thought warranted a proper response (and I’d probably already gone off topic in that thread by discussing Platform 0 at Doncaster which was intended to accommodate the Scunthorpe stoppers...
  12. tbtc

    Trivia: “Oxbow Lake” service numbers

    What examples are there of modern bus routes that have a route number that once made a lot of sense but now stands out as a bit of an oddity? Some networks have a nice and simple numbering system, with no oddities. The Xplore Dundee routes are all between 1-33 (ignoring School services/...
  13. tbtc

    [Trivia] Journeys With The Same Operator, Exact Same Route But Different Number

    Are there any/many examples of individual journeys operated by the same overall company with the exact same routes and exact same stops... BUT with a different route number? There are a number of routes that have a common section with other routes, there are a number of routes with "part"...
  14. tbtc

    Trivia: "InterCity" Services That Don't/ Didn't Stop At Any Intermediate Cities

    Following on from this thread (https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/weakest-link-on-the-intercity-network.229388/page-4#post-5582993) - are/were there many "InterCity" services that didn't stop at any intermediate cities (i.e. ignoring the original and final stations)? For the purposes of...
  15. tbtc

    Replacement Bus Services

    These days, if a line is closed we sometimes see services diverted and sometimes we see replacement bus services - a lot of the time the existence of such buses is blamed on "privatisation" I know that they didn't start post privatisation (although they seemed to become more high profile, maybe...
  16. tbtc

    Orbital Links That Are Missing Or Too Infrequent

    Many places have seen their "outer circles" trimmed back/ cut into multiple services, so that more and more journeys would mean having to go into the city centre and back out again The "Strathclyde" thread started a discussion about the (apparent) need for orbital links, providing a grid-like...
  17. tbtc

    [Trivia] Worst Bus Map

    What is the worst bus map (at the moment, historically)? It's all subjective, of course, but I'd consider things like: Too many colours Not enough colours, so it's confusing which "red" line is which Too many lines Too schematic, so no relation to reality Insufficient information to work out...
  18. tbtc

    Trivia: Services run under contract (but NOT National Express/ CityLink/ PTEs/ Councils/ Schools/ Worker Services etc)

    The recent announcement that Falcon (the Plymouth - Bristol Airport service started by Stagecoach a couple of years ago) is part of the services that will transfer to ComfortDelGro caught me by surprise - both in terms of it being part of the sale (I'd seen no rumours before hand that it was...
  19. tbtc

    West Coastway (Havant A Clue How To Improve It?)

    How would you like to organise West Coastway services, given the flat junctions/ competing demands between a variety of places/ fixed number of paths into London etc? For all of the discussions about minor rural lines (and reconnecting tiny villages etc), we don't discuss busy routes like the...
  20. tbtc

    What was the shortest electric loco hauled service?

    What was the shortest (by distance or time) loco hauled electric service? I remember ScotRail running 90s on the Edinburgh - North Berwick route for a short period - there was a Doncaster - Leeds working to get GNER trains back from Edinburgh to Neville Hill - but were there any shorter...

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