Trivia: “Oxbow Lake” service numbers

[WibbleWobble]

Bizarrely for such low-numbered routes, rather than being anything major, they're essentially early morning weekend circular services that mop up the contents of several daytime routes. That's been the case for quite a few years.

They might primarily act as staff buses given both run past South Shields depot, but have been registered so Stagecoach can claim BSOG.

 

[Statto]

217, 217A Kirkby to Huyton or Halewood are now completely out of place, the service has it's origins on the old Liverpool Corporation 92, which was Page Moss to Pier Head via Kirkby, Fazakerley & Walton.

By the end of the 70s, the 92 was revised to become Crosby to Huyton with hourly extension to Halewood.

At d, reg, the 92 was diverted at Fazaklerley to Penny Lane replacing the 99, the Fazakerley to Kirkby & Halewood wasn't registered so Merseytravel registered an all day 192 Walton to Halewood via Kirkby & Huyton

In the late 80s Merseybus then registered a Monday to Saturday daytime route Pier Head to Halewood via the 17C Pier Head to Fazakerley then 192 to Halewood, Merseybus numbered it 217 to fit in with the 17 group of routes.

GTL introduced a 227 Liverpool City Centre to Huyton, which followed mostly the 217 but went on a different route from Kirkby to Knowsley Village

In a network review back in 2006, Stagecoach cut the 217 & 227 to become Kirkby to Huyton, Merseytravel later renumbered the tendered 192 to 217A

227 was withdrawn last weekend, but 217 looks out of place, if you don't know the history of it

 

[noddingdonkey]

Most of First Huddersfield's services are in the standard 3xx West Yorkshire scheme, but a few years ago the 365 Huddersfield to Oldham was withdrawn and replaced by by extending Oldham depots 184 to Huddersfield on certain journeys.

As a result the 349/350/351/352 became 181/2/3/5/6 to match.

 

[Man of Kent]

Various renumberings at Stagecoach in East Kent have left no survivors from the East Kent Road Car system of the 1980s where lots of routes were numbered in the 600s (to avoid duplication with Maidstone & District numbers during an era of common management). Except one - the 666 between Faversham and Ashford, which passed to independent Kent Coach Tours shortly after deregulation and thus kept its number. It was more recently run by Regent Coaches before returning to Stagecoach in 2015, and is now a complete oddity among their other routes.

Not quite. Other Kent County Council-funded routes run by Stagecoach are also in the 600 series, including 638 (Faversham-Whitstable), 645 (Hillborough School-Herne Bay) and 649 (Canterbury city service). There's also a 653 (Chartham-Canterbury Schools) which is probably the last commercial 6xx service.

 

[Stephen1001]

Not quite. Other Kent County Council-funded routes run by Stagecoach are also in the 600 series, including 638 (Faversham-Whitstable), 645 (Hillborough School-Herne Bay) and 649 (Canterbury city service). There's also a 653 (Chartham-Canterbury Schools) which is probably the last commercial 6xx service.

I wasn't really counting the school buses as they're not really part of the regular network and often in a separate sequence anyway - although presumably the 653 is a legacy of the old 652 through Chartham which is now the 1 - but I had indeed completely missed that the 638 and 649 are in Stagecoach's hands now.

On the school bus point, I wonder if the 607 in London counts towards this thread - virtually everything else in the 600 series is a school bus but it's a high-frequency express route. The number harks back to a trolleybus that used to run over a similar route, although there was a gap of three decades when only the 207 ran and the other limited stop 600 series routes mostly stopped in the 1970s so you can argue it made no more sense when introduced. Perhaps the 507 fits better, introduced in 1972 as part of the Red Arrow network alongside routes 501-506 but now has only the newer 521 for company.

 

[Surreytraveller]

Most of the bus routes in the Redhill area in Surrey still retain the old London Transport Country Area 4xx numbers, except the 32 and 315

 

[Statto]

Stagecoach 300 Carlisle to Workington looks really out of place. In the Cumberland Motors era, it was numbered 30, as Cumberland Motors number scheme was 1 to 99. I think sometime after deregulation it was renumbered to 300, but the 300 doesn't fit in either with the old Ribble number system either, as Ribble numbers in North Cumbria were in the 600 series, & Ribble 300 series was used for West Lancashire routes.

 

[-Colly405-]

Stagecoach West's Bristol 3X and 462.

3X
Back in time, Wessex (Rotala) ran a 3 from the City out to Aztec West as a commercial venture. In the peaks there were 3A, 3B, 3C and 3X variations.
The 3 didn't survive, but the 3A, 3B, 3C and 3X did.
The operations then passed to Stagecoach.
Pre-covid, the 3B was subsumed into the new 10 and 11 when Stagecoach recast their North Bristol services.
During Covid, the 3A and 3C fell by the wayside.
Now only the 3X remains.

Separately, after Wessex ceased their 3, First renumbered their 41 and 40 to be the 3 and 4 respectively, servign a completely different area.

So we are now in a situation where Bristol route 3 bears absolutely no relationship with Bristol route 3X.

462
The South Gloucestershire Bus & Coach 462 was numbered in a series with other peak hour routes in the area, but the rest of them are all now either withdrawn or school buses. It was also similar to First's X62, which is no more.
Other than open school buses that the public don't use, the 462 (now with Stagecoach) is therefore now the only 400-series route in the Bristol area and bears no relation to any other route.

3X and 462
And, as a further note, the 3X and 462 are both peak hour only routes, only running in the peak flow direction, and interwork.
Morning 462 journeys from Emersons Green *to* Bristol City centre, then become 3X running *from* the City to Aztec West.
Evening 3X journeys from Aztec West to City become 462 from City to Emersons.

 

[Eyersey468]

The Scarborough seafront service being the ‘109’ is a good one

I believe the 115 still actually is the 115, despite sometimes being referred to as the S115 in online timetables etc. Perhaps it clashed with a 115 in Hull?

There used to be a 115 service in Hull, now the 104

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Stagecoach 300 Carlisle to Workington looks really out of place. In the Cumberland Motors era, it was numbered 30, as Cumberland Motors number scheme was 1 to 99. I think sometime after deregulation it was renumbered to 300, but the 300 doesn't fit in either with the old Ribble number system either, as Ribble numbers in North Cumbria were in the 600 series, & Ribble 300 series was used for West Lancashire routes.

It's not an area I know well but seem to recall that the 30 was the all stopping service from Whitehaven to Carlisle. At some point, they decided to cut it back to work only as far East as Maryport. Instead, Whitehaven and Workington to Carlisle gained a faster service but rather than make it the X30, they called it the 300? I think it was before deregulation and had those awful Willowbrook Leopards in Border Clipper colours? There was also the 600 on the same faster basis but I can't recall the difference with the two routes.

 

[RELL6L]

I suppose the Arriva Berks & Bucks 800 and 850 count as there is nothing else in their range of route numbers at all. They used to be the 329 and 328 respectively, still the same as High Wycombe to Reading via Shiplake (800) or Wargrave (850). Once joint with Reading Buses who largely ran the 328. The Arriva 300 and 500 were other numberings into straight hundreds, also the 100 and 150 (100 gone) but no logic remains.

 

[johnnychips]

It’s just been posted, in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire thread, that Hulley’s will no longer be running the M17. This is a service operated by a medium-sized bus in the Totley area of Sheffield. Once there were a large number of ‘M’ buses (Midibus?) and I suspect this is the last remnant. I am sure @tbtc will be able to elucidate.

 

[tbtc]

It’s just been posted, in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire thread, that Hulley’s will no longer be running the M17. This is a service operated by a medium-sized bus in the Totley area of Sheffield. Once there were a large number of ‘M’ buses (Midibus?) and I suspect this is the last remnant. I am sure @tbtc will be able to elucidate.

That’s a great example, I’m annoyed that I didn’t notice one own doorstep!

In the final days before deregulation, there were a handful of “N” services, for Nipper, or Little Nipper, which were minibus routes that ran via the back roads of Sheffield/ Rotherham to target the kind of elderly etc passengers who’d struggle to walk to the main roads, infrequent but exactly the kind of initiative that PTEs used to be good at

The “M” routes were (mainly?) after deregulation, although some “Little Nipper” branding continued.

It was a bit of a strange combination of routes that qualifies for “M” prefixes. A lot of them were hourly but a handful were high frequency (IIRC the M10/M11 were every Ten minutes combined taking in the back streets behind Park Hill flats, the M26/M27 were a combined eight minutes, taking in the Council estates of Wybourn/ Manor Park, penetrating them better than ‘big buses’ on routes like the 56 managed, the M47/M48 were about every ten minutes, similar to the double decker 47/48 but serving the back streets of Shiregreen rather than the main loop)

Later though, when SYT embraced the Eager Beaver brand for frequent minibus services running along “main” roads (13/ 14/ 33/ 52/ 89/ 92 etc - note, no prefixes), the “M” routes were generally just hourly, often PTE subsidised, they started to be merged together or ‘rationalised’.

Funny that some cities had high frequency minibuses in 1986 (e.g. the C5 in Edinburgh running every five minutes) but South Yorkshire took a long time to properly trust frequent services to minibuses

Longer standing examples included the M67 (Darnall - Littledale Estate - direct along the Parkway - City - University - backstreets of Crookes/ Walkley - Hillsborough - backstreets of Warncliffe etc - Stocksbridge - some of of the unique links provided by the M67 became frequent commercial services, e.g. First/Stagecoach ran a 52 every four minutes from the city centre - Uni - Crookes - Hillsborough, Littledale Estate gained a twenty minute bus into town with the 6, albeit via a much slower route (Both of these have been significantly cut back since then)

The M67 was renumbered 201 around the millennium, when the PTE seemed to grow out of “prefix” routes - though oddly the M17 remained the M17 - the 201 running from the city centre to Hillsborough as described then via the Stocksbridge bypass to Chapletown/ Northern General Hospital/ Meadowhall. The Stocksbridge - Chapletown bit survives (recently taken on by Stagecoach when Powells abandoned ship).

Other bits of M67 that still exist are posts of the Hillsborough- Warncliffe route served by the 58, which Stagecoach subcontracted to South Pennine due to lack of drivers) and the Langsett Estate bit of First’s 135, which was a tough drive up a twisting hill negotiating parked cars when the M67 was a minibus but even messier on the B7RLEs that the 135 drivers have to do it in, nightmare!

Other “M” routes worth a mention were the M60 (which had a branded bus despite just being an hourly variation of the 60 - diverting at Endcliffe and extending to Lodge Moor).., the M23 (the Skye Edge section survived as part of the 10 until Powells abandoned Sheffield, the Broomhall part was only ever a stones throw from main road services but survived for many a year), the M92 (the hourly minibuses was the last evidence of the twenty minute cross city Sheffield &District 91/94/98 from Handsworth to Chapletown, now just the 92, no prefix, intertworked with the 58 mentioned above)

The last “new” M services I can recall were the M85/M86, around 1997, when Mainline were losing the Middlewood market to Supertram, so the 85/86 were converted to minibuses and extended to the bottom end of Winn Gardens (with “M” prefixes to highlight the extension); it wasn’t enough to save the services though, the Middlewood route had seen double deckers terminating every five minutes in the 1980s but once the trams came there was no market for a dedicated bus service

I guess that the reason for the “seventeen” bit of the M17 was because the route from Totley Brook into the City Centre was the 17 until the late 1980s, when the 17/24 provided a frequent service from Abbeydale Road to Attercliffe (before the 24 went straight on to Brinsworth/ Rotherham and the 17 took a tour of northern Sheffield’s council estates before terminating at Hillsborough). The changes of the late 1980s saw the 97/97a (later 98) becoming the Totley/ Totley Brook - Abbeydale Road - City service, but the M17 remained unnumbered, even as the 17 shrivelled up, running City - Hillsborough, then City - Fox Hill, then Meadowhall- Hillsborough, then replaced by other routes

(Unless the M17 was a top secret service for spies? That might explain why it kept going as other routes were withdrawn?)

 

[LancasterRed]

Preston Bus - 19, 23, 31, 35, 43, 44, 45

When these services were introduced there was a bus route for almost every number between 1 and 45. 13, 17, 18, 37, 38 and 39 the only outliers. With such a limited service in the modern era, these services hold their numbers but there are substantial gaps between each one. In attempts not to trod on old routes unless the service was effectively a recreation of one, the wider area now has routes such as 74, 75, 76 and 78 run by PBT and BPT.

Lancaster - 40, 41, 42, 89?

The 40, 41 and 42 naming comes from the above however there also exists an 89 and possibly a few other random route numbers. Fortunately, Lancaster in general has one of the more sensible bus numbering systems which makes it easy to travel around.