Stafford depot

[madmaxx]

can anyone help is the Arriva depot in Stafford an outstation of Cannock or full depot

[Discodave]

You could call all the depots Garages but like West Bromwich thats only an outstation of Tamworth was going to be Cannock

[Bob]

Apparently they STILL dont know whats happening with the Brum route from Cannock & it was due to end 2nd Sept yet its still not on the NWM listing for service changes on that date! Talk about a poor show

[Jack Grove]

Stafford is an outstation of Cannock depot.

[arrifirststage]

This discussion re garage or outstation raises some interesting points..............what actually defines a garage from an outstation?
With modern buses needing much less (in theory ) maintenance,all that is really wanted is open yards with minimal cover for very routine maintenance and simple office tasks.
The real expense today is the cost and maintenance of buildings beside which the cost of dead mileage pales into insignificance.
Far cheaper to centralise all main maintenance at one large centre and operate all the surrounds as outstations......eventually one garage will cover all Shropshire,another all Staffordshire,Etc,etc.
Arriva have already advanced down this road with the Arriva Cymru business in Wales..........from September,Llandudno Junction garage is closing and the whole of the Company will be run from only 5 garages with several outstations.
I would think that with much more fleet replacement Arriva Midlands could cope with only Thurmaston,Derby,Cannock and either Telford OR Shrewsbury (not both) with the rest being outstations.

[andy]

This discussion re garage or outstation raises some interesting points..............what actually defines a garage from an outstation?
With modern buses needing much less (in theory ) maintenance,all that is really wanted is open yards with minimal cover for very routine maintenance and simple office tasks.
The real expense today is the cost and maintenance of buildings beside which the cost of dead mileage pales into insignificance.
Far cheaper to centralise all main maintenance at one large centre and operate all the surrounds as outstations......eventually one garage will cover all Shropshire,another all Staffordshire,Etc,etc.
Arriva have already advanced down this road with the Arriva Cymru business in Wales..........from September,Llandudno Junction garage is closing and the whole of the Company will be run from only 5 garages with several outstations.
I would think that with much more fleet replacement Arriva Midlands could cope with only Thurmaston,Derby,Cannock and either Telford OR Shrewsbury (not both) with the rest being outstations.

I am sure they are thinking along these lines as I said in another thread, however I can't ever see a situation where the Shrewsbury and Oswestry operations could be made from Telford and Tamworth doesn't fit anywhere either, it is too intensive to be an outstation and isn't close enough to anywhere.

I always thought when I was working at Lichfield garage and it was closed that a trick was being missed. You could comfortably operate much of the Cannock, Tamworth, Stafford and Burton networks without too much dead mileage and interwork an awful lot of stuff.  If they were thinking about a Staffs superdepot at any point I would think Lichfield was a perfect place to look.

[arrifirststage]

I would agree with much of what you say,but I cannot see,for example,Oswestry surviving for long.A through route from Shrewsbury to Wrexham (combining the 70 and the 2/2a)would render it superfluous.If,as would be likely,such a route continued the existing 30 minute frequency thre would be plenty of opportunity to run Shrewsbury from Wrexham (or vice versa).Also,how far is Tamworth to Derby,or Cannock.
buses sent for maintenance do not have to run in service either,Midland Red ran to Central Works from Hereford,Banbury,Rugby etc,etc.

[andy]

I would agree with much of what you say,but I cannot see,for example,Oswestry surviving for long.A through route from Shrewsbury to Wrexham (combining the 70 and the 2/2a)would render it superfluous.If,as would be likely,such a route continued the existing 30 minute frequency thre would be plenty of opportunity to run Shrewsbury from Wrexham (or vice versa).Also,how far is Tamworth to Derby,or Cannock.
buses sent for maintenance do not have to run in service either,Midland Red ran to Central Works from Hereford,Banbury,Rugby etc,etc.

Yes but cost wasn't much of an issue to the Midland Red of those times!

You may have a point on some of the Shropshire running although I still can't see Shrewsbury being lost, Oswestry yes....I think if that's what they intended the new Telford depot would have been bigger than what it has turned out.

As for Tamworth, it's much too far from Derby or Cannock and there would be no opportunities atall to cover any of that mileage in service as the Lichfield - Cannock service is already used to get buses on to the 825 so Stafford don't have to.  I do think Tamworth will close at some stage but I think it will be replaced by something much more local than Derby or Cannock.

[madmaxx]

Andy, Stafford garage run buses to Wolverhampton because Stafford run the 88/A/B

[andy]

Andy, Stafford garage run buses to Wolverhampton because Stafford run the 88/A/B

I know, why what did I say?

[arrifirststage]

Do you not remember the early days of deregulation?Tamworth garage set up an outstation in Derby to compete with the then Derby transport.
In retaliation,Derby ran competing services in Tamworth,running several buses daily dead from Derby to Tamworth and return.
Also,it would not be difficult (it has been done before ) to extend the 825 from Lichfield to Tamworth,ditto the 60.
With any 30 minute route,you have upwards of 20 journeys per day,meaning it is quite easy to change 20 buses per day between garages,and this degree of change would never practically be required.
Again,using Arriva Cymru as an example, is not Aberystwyth to Dolgellau further than Shrewsbury to Telford but Dolgellau operates as an Aberystwyth outstation.
I am not suggesting that Shrewsbury ,Tamworth,Burton,Wigston etc may close..........merely that they will cease to be full garages with a consequent saving in engineering requirements.
I must admit that I find the operational aspect of bus Companies to be by far the most interesting study and it is comforting to know that others seem to share this interest.

[Discodave]

Do you not remember the early days of deregulation?Tamworth garage set up an outstation in Derby to compete with the then Derby transport.
In retaliation,Derby ran competing services in Tamworth,running several buses daily dead from Derby to Tamworth and return.
Also,it would not be difficult (it has been done before ) to extend the 825 from Lichfield to Tamworth,ditto the 60.
With any 30 minute route,you have upwards of 20 journeys per day,meaning it is quite easy to change 20 buses per day between garages,and this degree of change would never practically be required.
Again,using Arriva Cymru as an example, is not Aberystwyth to Dolgellau further than Shrewsbury to Telford but Dolgellau operates as an Aberystwyth outstation.
I am not suggesting that Shrewsbury ,Tamworth,Burton,Wigston etc may close..........merely that they will cease to be full garages with a consequent saving in engineering requirements.
I must admit that I find the operational aspect of bus Companies to be by far the most interesting study and it is comforting to know that others seem to share this interest.

if too many garages become outstations what happens when it comes to breakdowns eg if cannock became an outstation and the bus broke down in cannock or in the cannock area and the fitters are based for example in Telford its going to take them a while for them to get to use the lost mileage would be horrendous as an outststion generally only has enough to cover the daily service

[andy]

Do you not remember the early days of deregulation?Tamworth garage set up an outstation in Derby to compete with the then Derby transport.
In retaliation,Derby ran competing services in Tamworth,running several buses daily dead from Derby to Tamworth and return.
Also,it would not be difficult (it has been done before ) to extend the 825 from Lichfield to Tamworth,ditto the 60.
With any 30 minute route,you have upwards of 20 journeys per day,meaning it is quite easy to change 20 buses per day between garages,and this degree of change would never practically be required.
Again,using Arriva Cymru as an example, is not Aberystwyth to Dolgellau further than Shrewsbury to Telford but Dolgellau operates as an Aberystwyth outstation.
I am not suggesting that Shrewsbury ,Tamworth,Burton,Wigston etc may close..........merely that they will cease to be full garages with a consequent saving in engineering requirements.
I must admit that I find the operational aspect of bus Companies to be by far the most interesting study and it is comforting to know that others seem to share this interest.

I do indeed remember the Derby fiasco, it was set up as a loss making operation with one sole aim.....to reduce interest from other parties that might be sniffing around the potential sale of Derby City Transport, as Drawlane/BB were desperate to get their hands on it. They figured that if they started real competition in the area it would A) put other buyers off who had previously viewed it as a monopoly and an easy win and B) take a bit of the value off it.

The benefit to MRN was that they were only using Freight Rovers and Transits, neither of which required much in the way of maintenance and there was in fact a small facility at the Derby premises via BRS.  They very rarely had to run any vehicles to Tamworth depot.  At the same time, DCT introduced services in Tamworth that required dead running of 8 vehicles there and back every day, plus sufficient drivers to cover breaks. Although the services did well they were running at a collosal loss wheras MRN were in the Derby operation for the long haul to secure the prize, which they did. DCT didn't keep up with the Tamworth services for long although randomly they secured some Centro work aswell for a short while. It was a knee jerk reaction from DCT and all a bit pointless as the business was always going to be acquired by somebody, they simply didn't have the resource to keep the fightback up.

So yes you're right this did happen, but that would be dead running of over 30 miles, and while you are correct that you could interwork with Tamworth to Lichfield services, what would provide the vehicles for the Birmingham corridor? The local operations in Tamworth have a PVR of about 15 or 16 which would have to be based there, plus the Birmingham vehicles, rendering the exercise a little pointless really.  Interworking the 158 with Tamworth to Nuneaton would be tricky due to driving hours.

You see you can only interwork routes on the assumption that everything goes right and it doesn't! If you send a driver out on a long loop like Cannock do at the moment, ie Cannock to Lichfield, Lichfield to Stafford, Stafford to Cannock, it sounds great, but the slightest problem and you can have 4 drivers going over their hours all at the same time in the middle of nowhere, and then the onward consequences on their next parts.  Eventually you have too many drivers going too far away for too long and you end up with no slack and no opportunity to get the bus into garage and alleviate a problem. I hope this makes sense! I find it fascinating too, probably why I ended up going into logistics which I have since left behind!

[arrifirststage]

I must admit that the one garage that poses a real problem is Tamworth.I also wonder why it is that Tamworth is to receive (I think)the entire allocation of a batch of Mercedes Citaros.There is obviously an engineering advantage in standardisation,but Tamworth seems to be very out of step even with the current fleet there........no Darts,for example,and no DAF either.
Is there a reason for the seeming out on a limb feel to the place.
Mind you,the present operation ,from Tamworth, of Hill Top lends support to the theory that an outstation of at least 11 buses is very possible.......tamworth to Dudley is a long way especially in Black Country traffic conditions.
The secret is possibly using new buses which SHOULD (in theory) be more reliable.

[andy]

I must admit that the one garage that poses a real problem is Tamworth.I also wonder why it is that Tamworth is to receive (I think)the entire allocation of a batch of Mercedes Citaros.There is obviously an engineering advantage in standardisation,but Tamworth seems to be very out of step even with the current fleet there........no Darts,for example,and no DAF either.
Is there a reason for the seeming out on a limb feel to the place.
Mind you,the present operation ,from Tamworth, of Hill Top lends support to the theory that an outstation of at least 11 buses is very possible.......tamworth to Dudley is a long way especially in Black Country traffic conditions.
The secret is possibly using new buses which SHOULD (in theory) be more reliable.

It's a very fair point and it's always been the way, as an operation it has never really fitted! It's always been very convenient (and profitable) to run it as a unit. Which is why I have so many theories about what they would do if they leave the current premises.

Firstly, the only reason Hill Top was placed in the care of Tamworth is that Cannock had taken on the extra work for Stafford and were struggling for fitters and facilities, I would anticipate it going back eventually.

In terms of vehicle types, again it has never had the same mix as others. At one stage Tamworth was all deckers and DP's/coaches while everyone else was single deck buses.  They even tried to convert it to single deck at one stage with disastrous consequences resulting in me and my colleagues driving past endless bus stops full of passengers that we couldn't get on, a genius move at the same time as cancelling all the limited stop services! Now they are, quite rightly, back on deckers. They don't have Darts because they are too small and not robust enough. Tamworth is one of those places where you can be floating along with hardly anyone on one minute, and loaded to the gunnels the next. One thing they did get right was eventually realising that small buses don't work there (although it took years for the penny to drop) and they redesigned all the services so full size buses can be used everywhere, meaning they can now have a full allocation of full size.

The B6's they have there are even too small at times. The Citaros offer flexibility in that for the first time the depot will now have a fleet of fully interchangeable vehicles between Citaros, the Omnilinks and Geminis (bar a couple of B6's left over) everything can go everywhere (barring low bridges) and all of them will be Euro compliant for running into Birmingham. And as you point out, it will keep all the Mercs in one place. The B6's are 14 years old and needed replacing anyway. Buses get worked very, very hard at Tamworth. Darts need not apply!!