The Bygone Era will be returning tonight (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 will still be going online today 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.