On Trains & Buses

Night bus services around Edinburgh will be improved by Lothian at the start of July.

Links are being kept up to date on a continual basis using the website’s link checker. Notable tweaks have included an update to the entry for the Diamond Buses’ new website and the changes to Cheshire East bus services with service 130 running between Macclesfield and Manchester being a particular example.

The timetable link has been updated for the Transpeak service in Trunk Services: England. The Derby to Nottingham section is omitted now, possibly due to how the bus service was between those cities anyway. After all, Trent Barton holds sway around there and High Peak now operates Transpeak instead of them since earlier this year.

The timetable link for 581 Settle - Ingleton - Kirkby Lonsdale bus service is updated now in Local Services: England. The latest timetable has been in operation since early September though and only recently came to my notice.

Rural bus service pages now added from outdoors blog and tweaked a bit to fit in here. There’s more to do and it may be that rural and other bus services that I have decided to highlight here come together as part of a home nation by home nation split. There’s no plan to rush that in just yet though. Gradual progress is how things work on here and I may change my own mind too.

Changed hosting provider and website being made less of a blog in feel. There are more changes to come that will be introduced on an ongoing basis; there’s little need to do everything at once after such a big move. Latest news and observations still will be published in blog format though. Just look under News and Musings to find them.

A few weeks ago, I learned that the A34 was affected by a major traffic incident and it brought back recollections of a two-hour journey home early in September. Having changed my place of work over the summer, I have gained an option that wasn’t available to me before then: going home by train. It might have involved a less direct itinerary and cost more but it was worth that outlay in terms of time, confidence and convenience. There have been too many times when I was left waiting for a (very) late bus out in the cold of a dark November evening so having the rail option is a godsend for any future problems that might arise. After all, we are into wintertime now and November can seem to be a mad month when it comes to traffic problems in East Cheshire. Let’s see how it is this year.

After a look at the National Rail Enquiries website, I have noted the appearance of a departure board form on the main page during the recent arctic spell and it’s still there after the restoration of full service. There is one annoyance that has just come to my attention, though. It’s that you cannot plan day return trips without some adjustments because the default behaviour is that the earliest return date is the day after the day of outward travel even if you specify the return date correctly. This is a situation that does annoy me and I hope that they get to removing that restriction. All in all, the new website feels rough underneath its shiny surface. Did they rush things in place of delivering a more polished item?

If there ever was an operator that seemed to manage with relative anonymity outside of their operating area, it’s Swilly Buses. That leaves me wondering if it is any better around Derry and north Donegal. Maybe I should pay the area a visit to find out. In the meantime, here’s some places to find out more about them (including a timetable) on the web:

Northern Ireland Bus Site Irish Transport Trust

Not wanting to waste a weekend that promised some decent weather had me out on a Sunday trip to Edale. All was going swimmingly until the driver of the Northern Rail service that was to take me the last stretch of the outbound journey had to tell us that there was a delay due to not having a conductor. For safety reasons, one has to be present and I suppose that it helps with revenue protection too. That delay was to be 15 minutes and all passengers that were on board had to disembark until a train conductor arrived. Overheard conversations revealed that there had been a night out and that someone was feeling rough after it. Was that the reason for the delay? That question remains unanswered but there is another: how do railways staff have lives involving going to live gigs at the same time as having a job that involves weekend working? Well, it doesn’t make getting out to see the Happy Mondays and their like any easier.