Messages

So is it a little odd that NXWM will operate the evening and Sunday journeys on Walsall 37? Does it make a difference that many of them interchange with the 41?

Kevs have been seen operating a Solo , YJ62FYZ in and around Worcester so you may have seen that one , although I have seen a "non-Solo" , "non-Primo" vehicle on a couple of 147 workings this week.  8)

I rode on the 147 today with Mercedes WX07 ZRG, decidedly non DDA!

Not to mention a long walk from the station.

Perhaps the most interesting things to see in Bromsgrove are the tomb stones of the two railway men, Scaife and Rutherford, killed by a boiler explotion in November 1840. They can be seen in the grave yard of St John's church which overlooks the town.

Were you on the same 11/13 from Dudley as me then? Had a driver try to sort it out a bunch of times and then had to get a daysaver or something from the driver in front at the stop I got off at.

The incidents I saw were on the 529 and X51.

In the last couple of weeks I have seen two drivers leave their cab and sort things out when the printer scrunched up a ticket.  Is there a reliability problem here?

In no particular order,
61   Aylesbury - Dunstable
2L   Ludlow - Kidderminster
125 Bridgnorth - Kidderminster
675 Ledbury - Malvern
442 Ashbourne - Buxton
66   Buxton - Baslow - Chesterfield
841 Stafford- Uttoxeter
        and
402/3  Uttoxeter - Burton.

To be honest the pass scheme has it's plus points & it's negatives. In urban areas it has kept off peak pvrs high. But in rural areas it has meant service cuts due to the reimbursement rate.
I don't think a one size fits all is the solution & maybe transport tokens would be better for some areas.

The whole point of the scheme is that it is national, a pass holder from Cumbria can use it in Cornwall. If you started using tokens etc in some areas this would be lost.

Correct. If the passes are doing so much harm to operators why are NXWM running advertising campaigns to try and encourage more use of concessionary cards

I have seen a wolverhampton district timetable from about 1975, before passes. All services were reduced by 33-50% between 9am and 4pm. The (5)29 was down to every 13 minutes. Who wants a return to this?

It's because of concessionsry passes! They need to be scrapped ASAP! It's not doing the operators any favours and no other countries use that stupid system.

Without concessionary passes what would happen to off peak patronage? Even more cuts? Plus the ability to get around can make a real difference to the lives of older people. In April I shall be taking part in a campaign backed by the TUC to defend the passes and encourage more use.

Makes you wonder why they didn't just follow the old low level rail route from Priestfield to the train station.
Then you wouldn't have had the original disruption of digging up the Bilston Road and now Pipers Row.

I've already had enough of the disruption caused by the council's pointless road layout changes in Wolves city centre and now I get to look forward to this >_<

What would be the advantage of turning out passengers at the old Low Level? Seperated from the City Centre by railway, canal and ring road?

So hard luck to the residents of, for example, Sandhills and anyone wanting a day out in Lichfield?

The War Memorial, not something you demolish lightly

Indeed not Tony. The Walsall Cenotaph marks the spot where a Zepplin bomb fell in 1916. A passing Corporation tram was caught in the blast and the Lady Mayoress, who was on board, recieved injuries from which she died.  There is a plaque on a building in Bradford St commemorating the event and showing damage from the blast.
And for the number grabbers it was tram 16...

At Derby bus station every bus has to back out and I have never seen a bankman. I also understand that low speed bumps and scrapes are not unknown...

Seems like quite a reduction on the Walsall - Lichfield corridor from 3/2...

Not yet. Not a good idea to start until all buses are done, otherwise you get people trying to use them on other buses and then not able to pay if they haven't got cash on them.

Coventry is launching in January, with the rest of the west Midlands a couple of months later

Thanks for that Tony.
BTW, a TfL concessioary pass works here, but a WM one does not work on London buses, you need to show it to driver.