This is an exceptional blog site for anyone with an interest in former bus services from years gone-by. Although a lot of them are from before my time, it's still a brilliant collection and well worth a visit if you can!

http://oldtwbustime.wordpress.com/

All news/discussion of Classic Coaches to go here.

News, debate and discussion on Scotland's Bus Operations.
Bus operators include the likes of Stagecoach, First, Arriva, Lothian Buses and many more.


To start the discussion, we'll kick off with Lothian Buses...

Some of the ten new Volvo Hybrids have arrived.
They are destined for service 1, and their rumoured commencement date is for 24th March or 13th April.

A photo of one (HY13 BUS) can be viewed below:
HY13BUS (Jamie056)

Hey guys.

As always, Brandon has been working very hard on the "Bygone Area", and it looks great - as we'll all agree!
As part of a discussion between North East Buses management to "clean up" the forum, we decided that it would be much better if we collected all competitions and games into one child forum appropriately named, "Competitions". I have spent a small amount of time this evening sorting all of this out, and the result can be seen by clicking here.

The sub-forums within the "Competitions" child forum speak for themselves in all honesty, but I'll give you a quick walkthrough on this post too.

Montly Photo Competition
No changes have been made to the threads inside of this sub-forum, it was simply changed from a child forum into a sub-forum while "cleaning up" the forums (so it now appears to be more categorised as opposed to being under "The Canteen"). All members can post in this sub-forum.

Miscellaneous
All smaller competitons (that don't require an individual sub-forum like the Monthly Photo Competition does) will have a thread placed in here. The new "Guess The Bus" thread can be found in here. All members can post in this sub-forum.

Past Winners
All past winners of competitions and monthly leaderboard scores will be posted here. You can keep up-to-date on the monthly scores in here, as well as see all winners for that month too. Each competition/game has its own thread. In the case of the "Guess The Bus" competition, the leaderboard will actively be updated (every time a point is added) on the actual competition thread's OP, but a monthly update will occur on the thread found in this sub-forum.


If you have any questions, feel free to PM me - just click 'PM me' below.

Cheers,
Dan

The Bygone Era is now back online (10/03/13)! While it has been down for essential maintenance which I’ll mention after this, I’ve taken the opportunity to make some other changes. As I promised earlier, the Independent operators now have their own threads, and we also welcome a new thread from the Tees and District Transport Company, with timetables from December 1990 including those operating under the names of CountyBus and Hoppa.

I have also been working on re-uploading the problematic PDF timetable attachments into unique URL links, which will give faster page load times and improved accessibility. The Independent operators and the Stagecoach/Busways threads have now been completed; and work is underway on the Go North East thread, the Tyne and Wear Timetables thread, and the PTE thread. These should be completed shortly in the coming days but are online now as they are in their current form.

The main reason for the section downtime was to add a watermark to all content generously donated by cbma06. After the recent scare we had with our bus photo collection, we both deemed it necessary to prevent against future theft. All timetable scans and a few other miscellaneous items are now copyright to cbma06, and you’ll now find a discreet copyright mark on all material supplied by him. I do apologise for the length of time the section has been down due to this. I only acquired the watermarking software this week, and combined with a poor internet connection and site issues; this has taken a bit longer than I was hoping to complete.

As before, I'll continue trying to locate further items as and when I get the time. Anyway, I'm just over the moon we're back online, so hope you enjoy having a look around!

Have a travel query? Visiting a new area but not familiar with the directions given by Traveline? Post your travel queries here, and someone with local North East knowledge should be able to help you out!

---

I'm trying to find the best route for someone to get to the new Washington Primary Care Centre from Park Lane by bus. I've visited the old health centre, dentist part I think, many years ago and there was direct foot access from the Galleries, but I can't tell if it's as easy to reach the new building. Is it well sign-posted from the bus station and easy to find? This is for someone with a poor sense of direction and having not visited the Galleries for many years too!

Any help would be much appreciated, cheers!

Not sure if anyone else was listening this morning, but there was a big boss from Northern Rail in the 'hotseat' from 9am on Radio Newcastle.

Apart from the usual, he also announced 40 additional trains will call at Blaydon with extra services calling at Dunston - all from December this year.

It isn't an area I go to that often, but I am aware of how many buses to/from Newcastle and the Metrocentre from Blaydon. It will be interesting to see how GNE react to this, or whether the new deckers for the 10 was their pre-emptive move.
40 trains a day seems a massive number considering it is single figures at the moment.

39729 crashed this morning near the OAK tree farm pub in doxford park around 8:30.

Van pulled out in front of him.

Friend was driving bus.... Cant post link from echo on phone

Almost forgot I saw two East Coast trains on the Durham Coast Line through Sunderland this afternoon, one in each direction. Don't think I've ever seen it happen myself before but I guess it might happen more times than I've realised!

Photos by Graeme Phillips - http://www.flickr.com/photos/66289212@N07/8522131000/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66289212@N07/8521931968/

Diversion is in place until tomorrow -

http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/

"Engineering work between Darlington and Newcastle from 13:30 on Saturday 2 until 12:30 on Sunday 3 March 2013"

"An hourly diverted train service will run between York and Newcastle, not calling at Darlington and Durham"

There's also some travel information for trains by other operators.

Since we have all discussed GNE on here, can i make a suggestion for stagecoach Sunderland?

I would merge the 8 and 20 together to make it one full route... New 20 route.


Pennywell, Prestbury Road, City Centre, Fawcett Street - Royal Hospital - South Hylton

Not many people use the 8 (well when ive seen it its being empty or very few on) but it may get used more if new links are opened.