The Velvet Bus Blog

Move on, nothing to see here!

2010-11-28T12:33:00.002Z

I have finally decided to bring this blog to an end! But all is not lost - join me in my new home for a full explanation, and even a new post!

Thanks for reading this blog over the last couple of years, and here's to the success of the new one!

Rubbish!

2010-04-12T21:29:00.002+01:00

My job involves me in some unusual tasks, so here is the story of how I ended up rooting around in the bins in Eastleigh Bus Station.

Sharon came in on the C1 arriving at 0955 and handed over to Taz for the 1000 C3. Shortly afterwards she texted me. I speed-read the text and gathered that she had left a bag containing £20 in the cab of the bus she handed over. Please could I contact Taz and see if it was there, and let her know.

So I went down to meet Taz while he was loading for the 1100 C3 and explained what had happened. He insisted that there was nothing in the cab, we both had a good look and sure enough, nothing apart from Taz's own possessions. He did however draw my attention to an empty coffee cup on the dashboard and said - with a small amount of sarcasm and a large amount of humour he said, "she didn't leave me her money but she did leave me her rubbish - charming!!!"

So I left the bus and casually tossed the cup into one of the several bins in the bus station.

Anyway, I replied to Sharon that there was no bag on the bus, very sorry but I had no idea where her bag had gone. And then I set off on my next mission to carry out a shopping errand in the Swan Centre, a 5 minute walk away at the other end of Eastleigh Town Centre.

No sooner had I set foot in the Swan Centre than I received a further text from Sharon. I had misread the original - the £20 was not in a bag, it was in a cup!!!!!

I made it back to the bus station in slightly less time than I had taken going the other way! The only slight problem being that I had no idea into which bin I had discarded the cup, so I had no choice but to ferret through all of them - attracting the inevitable strange looks until - rejoice! I finally found the correct cup. The £20 was saved and has now been returned to Sharon, much to her relief but even more so to mine!

It must be love!

2010-02-15T23:24:00.003Z

Evidence of the much-improved relations between Velvet and Bluestar came today in the form of a photoshoot ahead of a new joint initiative that will hit the streets next week.

From 21st February, in a deal brokered by Eastleigh Borough Council, we have brought our route A times into line with their revised Bluestar 3, to give a combined half-hourly service between Botley, Hedge End Village and Hedge End Superstores. To enhance the usefulness of this link as much as possible, we will accept each other's tickets over the common section.

The actual photoshoot featured Daisy (our new Solo 221, YJ55 YGN) with a Bluestar Scania (the obvious irony being that neither bus used for the shoot normally appears on the routes in question), along with me, Alex Hornby from Bluestar and Councillor David Airey, Eastleigh Borough Council's Cabinet Member for Transport.

Afterwards, while we were up in Bluestar's offices afterwards going through the pleasantries, I couldn't help noticing Daisy having a little cuddle with the Scania....

Obviously she goes for the younger man, and as far as I know she never even bothered finding out his name!

Meanwhile, the sight of a Velvet Solo parked outside Bluestar HQ for over an hour is said to have set tongues wagging...

I wish to complain...

2010-02-04T21:15:00.003Z

Luckily for us, complaints don't happen very often.

However, Mikey took one this afternoon that has put us firmly in our place!

Leigh Road is a long road connecting Eastleigh with Chandler's Ford - the main artery of Velvet C. For the next two weeks, a long section of Leigh Road will be completely closed for resurfacing.

In the middle of the closed section there is a bus stop called Ford Avenue.

The gentleman is extremely aggrieved about the fact that - for the next two weeks - we will not be providing any kind of bus service from the Ford Avenue stop. Even after Mikey made the obvious point about not being able to serve a stop in a section of road that is closed, he just does not think it is good enough!

Anyone got a helicopter we can borrow?

Another Little Duck

2010-02-02T22:14:00.003Z

We were expecting Donald some time this week, but didn't really know when. In the event it came today!

The first we knew about it was when I got a call from Rob at Brenhaul, asking if I'd ordered a hire car! Now they are pretty used to us using and abusing their address as a dropping-off point for anything too bulky to come to the office, so when some strange person turned up trying to deliver a car their suspicions immediately turned to us!

Initially mystified, the penny dropped when the guy delivering the car said that it was for a particular person, and I recognised the name as the Mistral delivery driver!

After a few phone calls it turned out that 222 was coming at 2, so at about 1.30 Ant and I headed over to Brenhaul to await its arrival. This left just enough time for a furious row involving the entire Brenhaul team about whether it was going to have a 4- or 6-cylinder engine. I didn't join in because I already knew it was 6, at least I hoped so since that was what we had been promised!

Luckily when it turned up, there were indeed six cylinders present, thus saving me the embarrassment of having to ring up Mistral and ask them to forward the two missing ones in the post!

However, whereas Daisy slipped in under the radar on Sunday and was gone before any self-respecting engineer had time to get their tools out, Donald arrived in the middle of an industrial estate right in the middle of a working day.

Now the best way to evacuate a workshop in a hurry is to park an interesting vehicle outside and open the engine flap, and sure enough within seconds Donald was surrounded by a swarm of boiler suits representing Brenhaul, Bluestar and Hants & Dorset Trim. All seemed fascinated by the fact that behind the engine flap was hidden an engine!

It was several minutes before calm (and productivity!) was restored and we were formally able to take delivery of Donald.

One inspection later and with ticket machine fitted, Donald is ready for the road. He is nominally spare for the next few days - I prefer not to use an unmarked white vehicle if we can avoid it - but I suspect it will get pressed into service at some point.

Those who have driven it so far have fallen in love, so the emotional pressure to get it out is severe! And to be honest I'm happy for others to use it. Although it is a very nice, smooth, comfortable, powerful motor, it is almost so smooth as to be boring. It is a 'point and shoot' bus - point it where you want to go, press the accelerator to go and the brake to stop.

Right up there alongside it in the roll call of today's events was the return to roadworthiness of V14 GMT, which has been off since Saturday 23rd January with a faulty fuel pump. Reconditioned pump now fitted and the smoothest, most comfortable DAF now goes like stink! (Relative to other big metal boxes that is!) So I shall look forward to taking 514 out on the prowl while others fight over the Solos.

Donald will continue in plain white until Daisy has returned from paint and is vinylled ready for use, likely to be in the middle of next week.

Introducing Daisy and Donald...

2010-01-30T23:43:00.003Z

Following on from our success in winning a four-year contract for route 22 in Southampton, we needed to find a suitable vehicle with which to operate this route which starts on 8th February.

The Optare Solo was always going to be a favoured choice given its excellent layout for passengers. One of my grievances with the interior design of low-floor buses is that the first available seats are a long way back from the door (the DAFs are a spectacular example of this). This is bad news for dwell times at stops, as our drivers have to wait quite a long time for passengers to get to their seat, and for those with mobility difficulties makes the process of using a bus more traumatic than it need be.

The Solo avoids this problem, with seats available immediately inside the door.

However, different versions of Solo have differing reputations for reliability, so it took us a while to home in on suitable examples.

The upshot is that we have now acquired two Cummins-powered 8.8 metre examples from Mistral. They are Daisy (YJ55 YGN) and Donald (NX55 FFO), our fleet numbers 221 and 222 respectively, both with 28 seats.

Daisy arrives tomorrow as I write this and will go straight to Qualiti Conversions at Botley for paint, and Donald will turn up some time in the next few days. Since new they have been employed by Scarlet Band of County Durham, mostly on Durham Park and Ride, and we have high hopes for these vehicles!

One will always be allocated to route 22, and when the second one is available (which we hope will be most of the time) this will appear on the C.

Here are a couple of pictures of Daisy, taken before she knew she was going to be called Daisy, when we first went to look at her. No doubt the local Gricerazzi will come up with a few hundred more shots within a few minutes of her arrival!

On the Wagon

2010-01-30T22:45:00.002Z

An interesting day today, the highlight of which lasted no more than a couple of minutes!

It was a typical Saturday, spent the morning and early afternoon washing buses and putting the world to rights in Brenhaul's rest room. Drove the second half of duty 56 - four hours on C3-C1 starting at 1500.

The world of Brenhaul can be quite surreal at the best of times but on Saturdays many of their clients and friends are not doing normal work, and when they are not doing their normal work, there is nothing that truck people like more than to hang around a workshop! So on a Saturday Brenhaul's Worldwide HQ at Barton Park takes on the role of a drop-in centre and like all the best soap operas, each week's episode has its own storyline.

Star of today's story was Steve, one of the owner-operators who parks (like us) in Brenhaul's yard. He set up in business on his own a year or so ago, using an X-reg DAF unit with which he hauls containers the length and breadth of the land.

Faced with the prospect of mounting repair bills and looking to build on a successful start to self-employment, Steve has decided to buy a new truck. Today was the day when much deliberation about his options finally came to a head, and he parted company with his faithful DAF and acquired a Volvo.

The happy twist in the plot is that after Shaun (part-owner of Brenhaul) had collected the truck for him and brought it back to Eastleigh, I got to take it for a spin round the industrial estate!

It is a little known fact that both Taz and I have obtained our LGV driving licences in the last couple of years. I have not used mine in anger at all, but occasionally get to have a play. Today was such a day.

Don't ask me any of the technical details, but all I can say is that this truck is gorgeous. Super-smooth to drive, equipped with every conceivable luxury (microwave, fridge.... as Ant jealously pointed out, more facilities than our office!) and in immaculate condition, spotlessly clean and well looked after. Thanks to the cherished registration you could easily believe it's a new truck, not the 52-plate that it really is. Needless to say, I am now hugely envious and I might just have to sell my car and buy one!

Anyway, recorded for posterity, here it is.... (I wonder if Steve needs any trips covering!!!)

An accessibility dilemma

2009-10-22T17:19:00.002+01:00

Ok, here's a dilemma.

Most journeys on route C offer low-floor buses and we have a small number of regular wheelchair users.

Because of scheduling constraints and/or capacity issues, a small number of journeys use double deckers which are step entrance vehicles, not accessible to wheelchairs. Obviously we aspire to a 100% low-floor fleet one day, but we are not there yet.

Two such journeys - the 1715 and 1815 C1 from Eastleigh - always feature double deckers.

One day last week, Karl was about to pull his double decker on to the stand to do the 1815 - his last trip - when he noticed that one of our regular wheelchair users was waiting.

At his own initiative (but with my knowledge and consent), he "borrowed" a low-floor single decker from another running line that happened to be laying over on break in the bus station at the time, operated his C1 with this bus, conveying the wheelchair user safely home in the process. At the end of his trip, he went out of his way and stayed beyond his finish time to return the low-floor to the driver who was supposed to have it, reclaim his double decker and head back to the depot.

Today, Taz was about to operate the 1715 - also with a double decker - when he noticed the same wheelchair user waiting. Unfortunately, we did not have a low-floor available at the time - they were all out in service - otherwise he would have gone out of his way to get hold of one to operate this service with.

On the one hand, this is all very admirable. And if these were journeys that normally had low-floor buses but for one reason or another had had to be replaced with step-entrance buses, I would be leading the charge to make sure we got this guy home.

However, as I said before these journeys never feature low-floor buses.

So the question is this. Are my staff justified in putting this amount of effort into finding low-floor buses when they see this guy waiting to travel on a journey which is not scheduled to be accessible, bearing in mind that there is a reason why they are scheduled this way and therefore our ability to help him will depend more on good fortune in having a spare vehicle available, and very often we won't.

Or should we be managing his expectations by explaining to him that we can't reorganise ourselves in this way every time we see him waiting to travel, and therefore 'stick to our guns' and require him (or any other customer requiring an accessible vehicle) to limit his travel choices to the journeys that we know should be low-floor, but in doing so risk disappointing a regular customer when in fact we know that on some occasions we will be able to help him?

Clearly the drivers want to help him and it is hard to tell them that they shouldn't, but if he becomes accustomed to the idea that this will happen on his behalf, will he start to expect it as routine?

As a side issue, there is an argument for giving better information in our publicity about which journeys are and are not accessible, and I intend to add this to the website in the near future. However, this customer is a regular and our schedules are very repetitive so it is not hard to work out (or indeed obtain via a simple enquiry) which journeys are not wheelchair accessible.

An interesting dilemma, I think.

Your award winning local bus company!!!

2009-08-23T01:27:00.002+01:00

We've won an award!

OK, we may not be quite ready for Bus Operator of the Year yet, but you have to start somewhere, and it doesn't get much better than "Best Float" at Eastleigh Carnival!!!!

The real credit goes to Karen and the team at Refresher's Cafe, who decorated the bus and entertained the crowds. Steve J drove the bus and Marie and Becci also represented Velvet (in fancy dress!)

Telling it like it is...

2009-08-16T21:35:00.002+01:00

I found myself earlier this evening talking to an illustrious ex-colleague, someone for whom I have the utmost respect but haven't seen or spoken to for some years.

He said, "I've been reading your blog". Cue pregnant pause while I awaited the verdict.... "It's quite amusing.... in parts!"

The Curse of the Ham and Mustard Sandwich

2009-08-11T22:49:00.003+01:00

While cleaning my car out a few months ago, after it had been used by a number of drivers over a long weekend for bus stop publicity duties, under a pile of unused bus stop flags I found a rotting ham and mustard sandwich.

Several days old, with the odour to prove it, someone had clearly eaten one of the two sandwiches in the pack and simply abandoned the other one in the back of my car, to gradually decompose.

None of our staff admitted responsibility for this act of wanton vandalism and it definitely wasn't me because I hate mustard!

Today, while giving 302 a deep interior clean prior to MOT, Steve J and Simon lifted one of the seats to discover.... a rotting ham and mustard sandwich of even greater vintage!

Indeed, they have not yet been able to positively establish beyond all doubt that it was ham and mustard - DNA tests will be required for final proof - but it seems to be the most likely candidate.

So the question is, who is the ghostly individual that visits our fleet when no-one is watching, can apparently penetrate the locked door of my car and lift the seats of our buses undetected, before declaring biological warfare with aged ham and mustard sandwiches?!?

Is our fleet haunted.......?

And is our mystery assailant limited to ham and mustard, or is this just to lull us into a false sense of security to be followed by a more comprehensive attack with such diverse flavours as cheese and tomato, chicken salad and the weapon to end all weapons...... egg mayonnaise!?!

How will we ever know????

A bad day at the office

2009-08-06T01:01:00.000+01:00

Contrary to what we may sometimes wish to believe, everything is not always bright and shiny in Velvet World, and yesterday was one of those days that proved this.

The day started well, with twelve out of a possible twelve buses available for service. 511 is due for its four weekly inspection this week, so with the luxury of having the whole fleet available we decided to leave that one off the allocation so the engineers could do their thing.

Everything went smoothly, and indeed just before 9am Ant texted me to let me know he was off for a few hours. He has just bought another Leyland National (that’s an old bus for non-geeks) thus bringing his collection of these venerable old heaps to two, the main difference being that this one has most of its panels in their proper place stuck to the outside of the bus, rather than piled up on the inside waiting to be reattached as was the case with the last one he bought.

Anyway he was off to collect his new toy so that left me in sole charge of the empire. I was planning a quiet productive day, paying wages and suppliers, and then raising invoices to make me feel better about all the money i’d have spent.

The peace and quiet was rudely interrupted by a female resident of Velmore, who decided to drive into the side of 558 just before 10.00.

Luckily everyone was apparently ok, and the bus was able to continue in service albeit with some delay, and by all accounts the car was not in a position to continue anywhere, which frankly serves it right!

So I headed down to the bus station to meet the stricken bus, which arrived about 10 minutes late at 1015. Closer inspection of the damage revealed some dents and scratches to the battery flap under the driver’s window, which will not stop the bus being used, but some damage to the offside front indicator which will need to be sorted before the bus can go back out.

Luckily the scheduled 1005-1015 turnaround is also a driver changeover and I was able to get the outgoing driver installed in the spare bus, 841, in time to allow plenty of time for loading and a punctual departure.

Meanwhile, our accident driver was due back out again after a legal thirty minute break on the 1045 C2. Now bearing in mind our stipulation that drivers must be on the bus a minimum of five minutes before departure, this was clearly not going to work. Besides, although unhurt, our driver was a little shaken and deserving of slightly more civilised treatment than being kicked straight back out on the next bus. So that made me the driver of the 1045 C2!

This bus turned out to be 552 (Ant having swapped the allocation round extensively in the morning from how I’d left it the previous evening – I guess he was bored or needed something to distract him from the excitement that awaited him later on). I can never make up my mind about 552. Darts with that particular engine make a pretty unattractive throbbing, growling noise, usually accompanied by extensive vibrations when idling, and to be honest I find the noise really tiresome. This is as opposed to earlier Darts that just sound like overgrown hairdryers.

Anyway, for some reason 552’s noises didn’t bother me particularly today and on the plus side, the Darts are much nippier than the DAFs which is ideal on a fairly tightly timed urban route like the C1 or C2. So 552 and me got on just fine today, and a three minute late departure from Eastleigh occasioned by the uncharacteristically late arrival of the incoming journey, was effortlessly turned into an on time arrival at 1205, ready to hand back to our now rejuvenated accident victim for his next trip, the 1215 C1.

In the meantime, I learned that the 1115 C1 had been delayed on departure from Eastleigh because of a problem with the kneeling suspension. The DAFs have very complicated interlocks to stop you driving away when the suspension is lowered, and sometimes they get themselves a bit confused and won’t let you drive away even when the suspension is patently in its proper position. This had caused about fifteen minutes of annoyance to Steve and Simon while they tried to sort it out, and accordingly the 1115 from Eastleigh was about 10 to 15 minutes late.

Our normal practice now armed with such information is to go straight for Twitter and inform the general public of any delay. I was pleased to note that in my absence Mikey had done just that so the world was duly aware of this delay. (As an aside, the process of sending a Tweet is now known internally as “devaluing the brand”, for example in the expression “Please would you devalue the brand Mikey”, meaning please would you update the Twitter feed - an obscure in-joke that will be understood only be the more perceptive observers of the local bus scene, and there are absolutely no prizes for getting it!).

This of course now meant that the 1156 C1 would also be running late, and with a driver changeover due on its arrival in Eastleigh at 1240 before the 1245 C2 departure, I was able to commandeer another spare bus, 851, to enable Taz to go out on time on the 1245.

Having thus lost the entire morning, I grabbed a salad for lunch and headed back to the office, where I did at least manage to pay the wages.

Then I got two texts almost simultaneously. One from Ant to say that he would shortly be back in Eastleigh with his new toy, and one from Matt to say that he had an airbag warning light on 512 at Boorley Green, waiting to come back on an A. After an interrogation about any possible problems with the suspension, I judged 512 safe to drive and asked Matt to bring it back in service and said I’d meet him in Eastleigh.

So just over an hour after arriving back in the office, I was heading off back down the bus station. Sure enough, just before 3, a dark green Leyland National came romping into the bus station and glid to an elegant halt on the wall. Ant emerged from the driving seat commenting that it was one of the nicest Nationals he’d ever driven. Whereupon one of the friendly staff of the adjacent Sainsbury’s store wandered over and asked him, “who owns this piece of s**t then?”.

Chastened, Ant decided to make for the safety of the yard, and at that moment 512 trundled in, Matt announcing that in addition to the airbag warning, the speedo had failed just before arrival in Eastleigh!

So off I headed to Brenhaul in the stricken 512. As I passed the entrance to the yard, there was Ant’s toy surrounded by the local bus paparazzi who were out in force to greet it. Sadly, my arrival at Brenhaul met with a rather gloomier reception.

Upon carrying out 511’s inspection, Brenhaul had found a problem with the body at the rear, which will need the attention of the body repair company we use. They would be unable to look at it before the following morning, so it would be off overnight.

By some clever detective work I had established that the suspension on 512 raised and lowered fine, which suggests that the airbags themselves are not the problem – it was only the kneeling switch that didn’t elicit a response and therefore the problem i s much more likely to be the switch. And too much of a coincidence that the speedo failed at nearly the same time. So almost certainly an electrical problem.

But needless to say, our electrician would be too busy and unable to attend before the following morning, so 512 joined 511 and 558 on the casualty list, meaning that our available low-floor single deck resource would be halved from Wednesday morning to Thursday morning, with only three out of the six being available Thursday morning.

Back I trooped to the office, having now lost a good chunk of the afternoon as well. I managed to pay a few invoices, the joy of it, and was just thinking about how to prioritise the remaining time when Matt called again. He was on C stand, ready to depart on the 1615 C1 with 507, and it wouldn’t start! Electrics all ok, all the systems came to life exactly as they should, but when you hit the all-important ‘start’ button...... nothing!

So I arranged for him to decant his passengers on to the third spare bus of the day, 843, and off I went to the bus station yet again, having summoned Brenhaul to attend the scene. Sure enough, not long later, Rapid Response International Rescue came roaring into the bus station showing off the nice flashy orange lights on their shiny new van.

In about the only piece of good news, after some fiddling about under the engine flap (a land of mystery in my world), they managed to get it going again. Looks like it was something to do with the contact that tells the bus the engine flap is shut – if the contact is not made, the bus thinks the flap is open and won’t let you start the engine. The bus managed to start successfully for the rest of the day, so hopefully all is now well. My fear that this bus would have some terrible fault putting it off the road and taking the single deck casualty list to two thirds of the total happily proved unfounded.

By now it was approaching 5pm, or 1700 hrs as my brain doesn’t like 12 hour clocks, so I chatted to Taz for a bit and watched him go on the 1715 C1, then finally did manage an uninterrupted hour in the office before heading over to the yard for my daily game of helping the buses back into their parking spaces. I really need a set of table tennis bats for this for the full air traffic control effect... if anyone knows of any going spare!!!!

So that was the story of not the worst day ever by far, but just one of those niggly, frustrating days where nothing seems to go right and the “to do” list remains as long, or longer, than it ever was!

Vanilla-flavoured bus times

2009-07-26T18:57:00.001+01:00

Great excitement this week as our new travel helpdesk has opened in Eastleigh Bus Station. Mikey’s main job is supposed to involve helping the public in the bus station, but since the demise of Fair Oak Flyer, our departures are now concentrated at quarter past and quarter to the hour. This makes for long periods of inactivity between departures, during which time Mikey was unable to do anything useful if he remained in the bus station.

Our new helpdesk solves this, as he can work productively on other jobs during the quiet times, while still being easily accessible to the public. We are hugely indebted to the Cafe at the Crossroads of Civilisation, as our helpdesk is situated in a corner of their newly opened ice cream parlour – could this be the only combined ice cream and bus information shop in the region?

The official opening hours are Monday to Friday 0930 – 1500 – basically Mikey’s working hours (on schooldays he also conducts the morning Thornden School bus first, but that’s another story!). However, I have realised that on a Saturday the helpdesk makes an ideal command post for me!

Usually on Saturdays, I run the operation with no other controller or spare drivers on duty, so any necessary operational support has to come from me. The new helpdesk is the ideal base from which to monitor the operation and be able to respond instantly to any problems. So yesterday I spent a fair bit of time there, much of it assisting a stream of Bluestar passengers who still haven’t worked out that their E service moved from stand B to stand E well over a month ago!

The ice cream travel centre is situated in the unit that used to be Bluestar’s travel shop, and I couldn’t help but reflect on the irony that when I left Bluestar in June 2007, little did I realise that just two years later I’d be back in that same shop dispensing bus information!

However, perhaps the most crushing comment yesterday came from a lady who wandered into the shop around midday, obviously mindful of its previous role.

She peered in from outside, then stepped warily in through the open door. She spent several moments scanning the ranked shelves of drinks, the brimming ice cream freezer, the cash desk with helpful smiling ice cream salesperson, the cheerily painted ice cream murals on the wall, the table stacked with bus timetables and me.

Then when she had finished contemplating all these various items, she looked all around again.

Finally I could bear the tension no longer and broke the silence with a cheery “can I help you madam”. At length, she turned to look at me and said, simply, “I suppose this place has closed down for good then?!”

The Great Fire of Asda

2009-07-04T12:40:00.002+01:00

0855 on Saturday morning and the phone rings. It's the driver of the 0856 C1 from Asda. He breathlessly informs me that he was unable to wait time at the normal stop an Asda as it's on fire! There are three fire trucks lined up in the access road, firemen running around all over the place and climbing up on the roof, from which our driver thinks he can see smoke rising.

I mention this in passing to another colleague, who then texts one of the drivers, and within minutes word has spread to almost our entire workforce that Asda is on fire! Before long, even friends who don't work for the company are receiving the reports of this huge inferno and it can't be long before it reaches the local media!

The driver of the following 0956 journey is duly invited to pass on a live on-the-spot report from the epicentre of the incident, as we all await the news of whether the store is still standing.

The time comes and, oh so nonchalantly, she reports that the store is still very much in evidence, and not in any way on fire.

The reason for the fire brigade presence....?

They were setting up for a charity fun day!!!

China Wight

2009-06-08T21:07:00.003+01:00

The crossroads of humanity is the cafe in Eastleigh Bus Station. All of society converges there, and the greatest way to pass a few minutes is to sit and eavesdrop the world's conversations.

Today while Ant and I were enjoying a leisurely lunch, we became aware of the two chaps at the table next to us discussing a recent visit one of them had made to the Isle of Wight. In particular they were discussing Blackgang Chine, a family attraction on the south side of the Island, named after the natural landmark of the same name. The discussion mostly centred around what a great attraction it was, and indeed the loveliness of the Island as a whole. Then it took a slightly unexpected twist....

A: I wonder why it's called Blackgang Chine.
B: I don't know, it sounds a bit Chinese to me
A: Yes I agree. But the Isle of Wight is British isn't it?
B: Yes, I think so
A: So why would somewhere like Blackgang have a Chinese name then?
B: I don't know, maybe its just got Chinese owners

And with that settled, they got up and left!

Frustrating Friday

2009-05-04T23:03:00.003+01:00

We were very tight for vehicles anyway, but I thought we were going to make it! That was - of course - until the phone rang!!!

We currently have a fleet of 12 vehicles, of which we need 10 on the road until around 0830 in the morning, 7 in the middle of the day - plenty of slack there to deal with non-urgent maintenance issues - and then an afternoon peak of 9 vehicles between 1430 and 1800.

In other words, at our busiest point - the morning peak - we can afford two vehicles off the road, otherwise we would have to cancel service. To date, we have only ever cancelled service due to traffic problems (usually a motorway closure) or a breakdown en route, and we have never ever (as far as I can recall) cancelled a single journey due to lack of vehicle or lack of staff.

As at late Friday afternoon, we were running it close to the wire for Friday afternoon, never mind Tuesday morning:

V14 GMT is off for MOT preparation and will not be available to us again until after its test on Wednesday afternoon.

W558 JVV - a Dawsonrentals Dart of appalling reliability - has now added to its long list of ailments since it has been with us, a recurring fuel problem which is proving near enough impossible to trace, and basically involves the bus running fine for a while then suddently cutting out and refusing to restart. Brenhaul were following up some leads of various ideas that people had had, so it was off the road for Friday afternoon but we were hoping for a miracle cure in advance of Tuesday.

J841 TSC needed a thermal switch replacing that was not due until Friday, and in the meantime had been drained of all water and other essential fluids, and was therefore VOR for Friday although due back on the road Saturday morning.

So we already had the three casualty slots filled for Friday afternoon, but with the clock passing 5 (or 17 in my world), it was looking good...

Then the phone rang.

V7 GMT is our jinx bus. A perfectly pleasant drive, it is nevertheless accident prone. Of the mercifully small number of accidents that our fleet has experienced, V7 has been the company vehicle on well over 50% of occasions. It has also lost more panes of glass than any other bus. There is also an honourable tradition that something always goes wrong with one of our buses on the Friday of a Bank Holiday weekend.

Evidently on its way into Eastleigh to do the 1715 C1, one of the panes of glass in the door had smashed. We don't know how or why, we just know that it happened.

This immediately meant trouble, because the Bank Holiday weekend meant that the bus would be off for nearly a week. Our glass company are excellent, and will be able to source the glass first thing on Tuesday. But it will hopefully arrive on Wednesday and be fitted that day and - being bonded glazing - will then need several hours to cure putting it off the road effectively for Wednesday.

So, one pane of glass goes on Friday and the bus is off the road until Thursday. Delightful!

More urgently, that meant no bus for the 1715 C1, and no spare buses available because we now had four off the road.

So I pulled the bus that was due to go out on the 1720 Fair Oak Flyer, and stepped that up to the 1715 C1, which accordingly left 5 minutes late, albeit that I managed to warn the passengers that it would be a little late.

We then needed a bus for the 1720 Flyer, for which the most likely bet seemed to be the bus that comes back from the 601 college run to Hamble (due Hamble 1655) and then does the 1815 C1 after refuelling.

Taz (who drives the 1720 Flyer) went and warned his passengers of a likely short delay. Paul C eventually pulled in just after 1725 so we commandeered his bus and after a driver change and loading up, the 1720 left just before 1730.

The 1720 would normally come back to do the 1750 A but the delayed Flyer departure now put the 1750 at risk, so I had a bright idea. Pinch the bus coming back from the 612 college run - which goes straight to the yard and finishes - and use that for the 1750 A, using a driver on overtime (or - if need be - me) to cover it.

So I called Matt who had just arrived back, only to be told that a student had been sick on his bus, so that would not be available! And so it proved, Matt insisted on staying to do the clean-up job himself, but it took him an hour after his sign-off time such was the mess!

Next task was to speak to Brenhaul to see if they had any joy with 558. This was met with a resounding "no!" Not only not available for Friday, but not going to be available for Tuesday either.

Meanwhile I had sent messages to two drivers - normally good bets for overtime - to see if they would drive the trip, and for completely legitimate and unconnected reasons, both came back and said they couldn't.

The fates were determined that the 1750 A was not going to leave on time come what may!

So another trip to another stand to warn the waiting passengers, all of whom seemed grateful for the warning.

As it happened, Taz managed to make up some time on the 1720 Flyer, and in the end was back in the bus station and ready to go by 1755, so only a five minute delay after all that.

The only remaining task was to pinch the bus arriving on the A at 1800 (1710 from Boorley Green) to do the 1815 C1, and all Friday's work was finally covered.

As Friday evening peaks go, easily the most stressful for a long time. Three trips delayed - one by ten minutes, two by five minutes - so three commuter journeys disrupted. Not good!!! Some might argue that Friday afternoon peaks will always be troublesome, but for us this is way below acceptable performance.

And it also meant we were a bus short for Tuesday, but that's another story for another post.

But with apologies for anyone delayed by this sequence of events on Friday afternoon, there is the story of a pretty unpleasant hour in the life!!!

The perils of running on time

2009-04-04T16:34:00.003+01:00

It's a balmy, lazy Saturday afternoon in Eastleigh and I'm on control. I decide that the best use of my time is not to tackle the huge pile in the in-tray, but to patrol the bus station for a bit, making sure none of our customers are unduly troubled by the warm sunshine, that kind of thing.

The time is 1528. I'm stood talking to a couple of the guys on stand C. An indignant chap storms up and demands to know what has happened to the 1520 service E to Winchester. He thumps the ground with his stick, proclaiming how ridiculous it is that the bus should be so late.

There are two problems. Firstly, service E is run by Bluestar, so we have no way of knowing if there is a problem. Secondly, we all recall seeing the bus arrive and leave spot on time, so we don't actually think there is a problem in the first place.

I ask rhetorically if there is anyone else waiting - the E is a busy bus and there would be a long queue - but we can all see there is no-one at the stand.

The man declares that it must have left early, but we are sure it didn't. He says he's been there a good few minutes and there has definitely been no bus.

I ask if he realises that it is actually 28 minutes past. He looks at his watch, agrees that it's 28 past, and says "but I've been waiting AT LEAST five minutes".....

A Frustrating Evening

2009-04-03T20:49:00.003+01:00

These days we have settled into a routine.

Ant comes in early in the morning, opens up, makes sure the buses are ready to go and all the drivers turn up ready to drive them, then once they have all gone out heads to the office for paperwork fun. Usually he then does some driving after the morning peak has passed and goes home mid-afternoon.

I roll in around 9ish, spend my day not getting done all the things I need to get done, then head over to the yard around 1730. I meet the buses as they come in, attempt to get them parked in the right order to go out the following morning, ensuring they are defect-free as far as possible, have ticket machine, running card, o-licence and defect cards all in position to minimise any morning hassle. On a good night my day finishes around 1930, on a bad night it can run on much much longer.

Of course that is rarely the true end of my working day - invariably there is more paperwork to be done when I get home - but I'll save the self-pity for another time.

Tonight's run-in could not have gone more smoothly if it had been coated in butter. Yesterday was a totally different story!

I was in the bank when the problems started, just before 1630. Which is a pity since I love going to the bank. The staff are super-helpful and there is something highly satisfying about watching huge piles of notes and coins pouring into one's bank account. However, the smug self-satisfaction was blown away by a phone call from Kev, explaining that he was on Marie's bus, that they had just left Asda on the 1616 C1 back to Eastleigh, and were stuck in traffic caused by an accident in Templars Way (between Asda and Valley Park). According to Kev, a car had even managed to end up on its side. This didn't make sense as Taz would have been nowhere near the area at the time, but I'm sure he was right.

Essentially the phone call was to warn of likely delays later, greatly appreciated but not what I wanted to hear as I was in the mood for a nice relaxed, sun-drenched, chilled out end to the afternoon.

Marie's journey back to Eastleigh was padded with loads of recovery time in the schedule so I figured she'd make it back ok for her next trip - the C1 at 1715 back to Asda. The question mark would be against Karl on the 1615 from Eastleigh - due to arrive at Asda at 1653, out again at 1656, back to Eastleigh at 1740 for the 1745 departure. He was due to pass the accident scene in both directions.

I decided to 'monitor the situation' (aka carry on as if nothing has happened and hope for the best - most commonly used bus control technique in my experience), but my careful monitoring was interrupted by a message from Karl some time after he should have left Asda, to say he was still stuck in traffic heading towards Asda.

This immediately put the 1745 C1 from Eastleigh at risk and while I was more than happy to jump in to do this trip myself, there were two obvious problems:

1) I didn't have a bus to do it with
2) If I'm out driving any time after 1800, there is no-one to supervise the run-in, so the buses end up being abandoned all over the yard and surrounding area and it takes ages to sort out, plus there's no-one to resolve any problems or make sure the drivers sweep their buses properly etc etc

Nevertheless, the customers come first and I resolved to spend the next half hour working out how to create a bus with which to do the trip. I asked Karl to let me know when he was at Hiltingbury on the way back - after the accident site - so that I could gauge roughly his arrival time in Eastleigh.

Except that my plan lasted three minutes before Taz rang to remind me that I was supposed to be covering his last two trips - the 1720 and 1750 Fair Oak Flyers - so that he could attend his son's parents evening at school. I had completely forgotten!

The time was now 1710 so there was nothing to do but to head for stand F and await Taz's arrival. His arrival was prompt, the handover seamless and at 1720 I was heading for Fair Oak in 843.

At around 1730 I received a message that Karl was at Hiltingbury, just over 20 minutes late. This meant that he had no chance of making the 1745 C1, but might not be too far off the 1750 Flyer. I therefore decided that I would do the 1745 C1 - a tight turn given that I was not due back into Eastleigh until 1745 myself but certainly better than making them wait for Karl - and ask Karl to do the best job he could of making the 1750 Flyer.

In the event I got into Eastleigh with a minute or two to spare, got out on time on the 1745 and passed Karl inbound at the Leigh Rd/Passfield Ave lights, which would put him maybe 2-3 minutes late on the Flyer - not a bad outcome really.

And that would have been the end of the story except for the fact that Karl left me a message when I got to Hiltingbury, to let me know he was in the petrol station on the way back to the yard and had just discovered that his rear offside tyre had completely come off the rim!

A quick call to our trusty tyre suppliers, Hampshire Tyres, and they were on their way to the scene. I completed my C1 trip and headed back to the yard, with some trepidation knowing that apart from 552 feeling ill with its bad tyre, most of the rest of the fleet would by now have arrived back with no guidance on where to park.

I called in at the petrol station, decided that 552 could be carefully driven back to the yard and got Karl to follow me up the road in 843. As we arrived at the yard, we were greeted by a scene of some chaos with buses parked in all kinds of random spots around the yard - albeit that the drivers had very helpfully organised themselves so that everything was in and not blocking the road - but the buses that needed to be at the front were parked at the back and vice versa.

To make matters worse 511 had been off since mid-afternoon with a brake defect and Brenhaul had not yet had a chance to look at it, so that would not be ready to park for a while yet.

I left the tyre fitter working on 552 outside the yard and spent the next 30 minutes with Karl's help orchestrating a grand ballet of buses, like giant pieces on a chess board to get the ones that needed to be at the back at the back.

By now it was 1945 and Karl went home, leaving me to wait for 511 and 552 to be ready. They finally were ready to park at around 2030, so I took both round to the yard, parked them up, locked the gates at 2045 and was finally on my way home!

Here's another good blog

2009-04-01T22:57:00.003+01:00

Rob Arkell, part-owner of Cotswold Green, a small independent operator in Gloucestershire, has a very enjoyable blog running here.

Rob used to work with me at Stagecoach West many years ago and is a thoroughly nice bloke. He has quietly built quite a sizeable operation in a deeply rural area.

For whom the bell tolls...

2009-04-01T22:48:00.003+01:00

Having been harangued numerous times over the past 48 hours about the lack of activity on this blog, I have been shamed into writing something.

On the 500 every Saturday, the 1545 short journey from Eastleigh to Chestnut Avenue always carries four very nice old ladies who travel to various points along the route.

Nothing unusual there, except that in true "ah bless" fashion, one of the party - clearly deemed 'the organiser' - has to sit on the seat where there is a bell push at chest level on a horizontal hand pole.

I have no idea whether the other old ladies are unable to use the bell for themselves or have simply been instructed not to, but the job of 'the organiser' is to guard the bell, and ring it whenever the bus is approaching one of the stops at which any member of the party wishes to alight.

Maybe we should teach her to ring the bell twice when the bus is ready to move off again. She could even collect the fares! Oh no, there aren't any........

More Delays

2008-12-14T10:51:00.002Z

Nothing to do with work this one....

Went to see Delays at the Joiners in Southampton last night. Awesome band, a great venue, great company (you know who you are) - just a fantastic night out!

End of an era

2008-12-07T19:44:00.002Z

One of our founder members left yesterday. Jamie has decided that he wants to seek a fresh challenge somewhere else, and lucky Uni-link passengers can look forward to his services.

More than any other bus person I've ever met, Jamie understands the difference between backstage and front of house. No matter how tough things may be behind the scenes, whether it's work issues or personal problems, none of this matters to the paying public. So, waiting in the wings for the curtain to rise, on goes the mask and the performance begins.

Why is it so hard for many people in service jobs to realise that the public actually doesn't care a jot whether they are having a bad day - and the service must be provided to the usual high standard come what may, with a laugh and a smile and a friendly word. Look no further than Jamie to see how it should be done.

There is nothing to do other than to pay the warmest of tributes for the immense contribution that Jamie has made to the foundation of Velvet, and while we have a great team here that will ensure that we continue to grow and succeed, we could not have got where we are without him.

The key question....

2008-10-28T15:52:00.002Z

Louise has spent the last five minutes on the phone to a lady who has lost her keys.

She spoke to me last night. She lost her keys on a bus yesterday afternoon, of that she is certain. In fact, she said she knew she dropped them on the bus because she heard them hit the floor. So she asked the driver to come and look for them - which he did, but couldn't find them. She knows she dropped them there though, and to prove this the person sat behind her heard them hit the floor too! Except that she apparently looked and couldn't find them either.

So, to recap, she claims she heard her keys fall on the floor of the bus. The driver and another passenger looked at the time, but couldn't see them.

She rung last night to ask if they had been handed in. They hadn't. I said we'd check the bus again. We did - they weren't there.

She rung again this morning to see if they had been handed in. They hadn't. This is not a surprise given that the driver and another passenger looked at the time and couldn't find them, and we checked the bus again last night.

She is on the phone again now wanting to know if they have been handed in yet and explaining that we must have them, because she definitely heard them fall and hit the floor of the bus at the time. Even though the driver and another passenger checked at the time for her but couldn't see them. And even though we checked the bus again last night. We must have them.

I feel sorry for her really because she is clearly confused and without her keys, but she is insistent we have them and we just don't! Where do we go next?!?

Where have I been?

2008-09-26T19:12:00.002+01:00

Greetings from Hampshire, where I am sitting in my living room surveying the view of the sunlit marina on this beautiful warm evening, sipping a glass of white wine and watching the cruise ships glide out into the Solent.

Various among you have commented on the lack of blog activity in recent times - and frankly you are right do so. Shameful performance!

So first and foremost, it's only 7pm, the night is young, why aren't I at work, I hear you ask! After all, it is daylight and it is the law that I should be at work during daylight hours (and most of the darkness ones too!). Well today was washing machine day! The washing machine that I inherited from my brother finally spun its last spin about two weeks ago and expired terminally. So I ordered a new one and it arrived today, so I had to stay home to say hello to it (and of course tell the delivery lorry where to come!)

In all the excitement I finally found out why the old one used to go careering round the floor at every opportunity, and it turns out it was for the simple reason that no one (least of all me) ever took the transit bolts out! Had I done so, it would apparently have sat there and burbled away quite happily in one spot instead of doing a scenic tour of the flat every time I wanted clean clothes!

Anyway the washing machine came at 0930 this morning but I - bad person that I have become - decided that I really didn't fancy going to the office and could quite happily work from home, so even at 2pm this afternoon I was telling my work colleagues that I had no idea when it would arrive and could be any time before 7 this evening! Let's hope none of them read this!!!!

To be fair, it is the first respite I have had after one of the most manic months in the history of history. Over the summer we expanded our fleet to ten vehicles in preparation for a new contract with Barton Peveril College in Eastleigh and on 1st September became responsible for transporting around 400 students a day into college on top of our other work commitments. Every day now six of our vehicles stream into the college just after 8 in the morning, and are lined up ready for the exodus at 4 in the afternoon.

One of the clinchers in us getting the deal was that we allow the students (most of whom live in the catchment area of our route A) to use their passes to travel around during the day, so in addition to the twice daily panic to make sure there are enough buses in the right places for all the students, we have had real overcrowding problems to deal with during the day. Luckily we have kept it together and I am proud to say that apart from day one when one of the buses missed three stops by mistake, every single bus on every single day has run faultlessly - on time, correct route, no complaints at all (apart from one lady who rung us every day for a week because her son insisted that the bus hadn't gone to his stop so he had to go home again, even though we knew full well it had because it picked up twenty other students there. We wondered how long it would take the penny to drop that he actually didn't have any intention of catching the bus. I don't know if it ever did or whether she simply got bored ringing us, but to be honest, tough beans!!!)

The downside of all this is that it is very time consuming. Apart from having our attention focussed on the college routes between 0630 and 0830 every morning and 1530 and 1730 every evening, we still have all our normal work to do as well, and apart from last Sunday which I managed to take off, today is my first day away from the office since August, and even then I've been working. But as time goes on and the students spread their journeys more and we get better at managing the hotspots so that we don't have to stay on top of it all the time, the pressure should ease and hopefully it will all work out.

Meanwhile, all these college buses sit doing nothing between 9 and 3 every day, so we decided to use some of the dead time to run a new service - the B. We worked hard to pick a route that avoided confronting Solent Blue Line in a competitive way and created something genuinely new. By linking a number of estates that Blue Line have dropped and providing new direct links that didn't exist before, we have created a route from Eastleigh to Southampton that manages to avoid Blue Line's main corridors.

Unfortunately for us, Blue Line have reacted as though we have marched into the Finance Director's office, held a gun to his head and demanded all their money. Immediately they found out about our new service, they registered their own route - also called the B - following an identical route with every single journey 3 minutes in front of ours. They branded it Beep! Bus B, use red buses that don't mention Blue Line or Bluestar anywhere on them, drivers wear red polo shirts and even the ticket machine 'till rolls' are plain white and do not mention Bluestar - all to try to dupe the public into thinking that Beep! is the innovative new service - not ours that we registered first.

They got over the fact that they were a week behind us getting their registration in (Because obviously it didn't exist until we registered it) by using a loophole to start on the same date but not charge any fares for a week. So, for a week, our brand new B route ran around with one of their buses running free of charge three minutes in front - and we still carried more passengers than them!!! Admittedly, not great numbers for either of us, but it's a start.

The balloon finally went up last Saturday when the Southampton Daily Echo made it front page news, and you can see it here...

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/3690016.Bus_wars/

...but be sure to read the public comments below the article itself.

Since the press coverage, we have been getting more of the passengers because it took the newspaper article for many of them to realise that Beep! was in fact Bluestar in disguise. This week, the Beep! drivers have tried to get round this by pretending they are Black Velvet! But most of the passengers at least seem to have sussed it out and contrary to the widely held belief that passengers simply get on the first bus that comes along, it is a common sight to see people waving the Beep! bus past so they can wait for ours!

As if all the college work wasn't hectic enough, the b-b-bus wars have taken a fair bit of my time too, so 16 hour days have been the norm - sometimes more! Aaaaaaaah, I hear you all chorus!

So all the above, in a roundabout way, tells you why I haven't been writing much on the blog lately. So on that happy note, and with the oven bleeping at me to let me know it is dinner time, I shall wish all my impatient readers a happy weekend and hope to be back here soon :)

Enjoying a week's holiday...

2008-08-17T16:15:00.007+01:00

Everyone else that is, apart from me!!!

Normally we allow one person a week to be off on holiday. Via a combination of freak events we ended up with Taz, Jamie and Paul all away for the week, and Rob needed Tuesday and Thursday off, all of which left us a wee bit tight for staff!

Taz has been away with Nicki's family in the Italian Alps, although he kindly telephoned a couple of times to offer words of encouragement!

This meant that I had to sail the ship alone this week, apart from yesterday when even I needed most of the day off due to a social engagement, and Ant agreed to run the company for a day (and as far as I can see did a pretty good job apart from accidentally taking my office keys home with him).

And as if that wasn't enough, I have also had the pleasure of looking after Tommy, Taz's cat. Just to maximise the 'aah' factor here are some pictures of Tommy...

In the third one he is indeed lying on my computer and this was taken shortly before he decided to remove the 'i' key and space bar, which took me a fair while to reassemble.

Workwise, apart from Tuesday which was a complete mess and will shortly get a post all to itself, the week went surprisingly smoothly. Because of the number of people away, all the remaining staff worked every day apart from Sunday, and Pete joined us on Tuesday and Thursday. But everyone turned up every day on time and we had no staff problems and no major vehicle problems.

On Wednesday we collected J841 TSC from Qualiti Conversions at Botley, who have done a superb job of repainting it, and also recoated the hand poles yellow which has brightened up the interior a lot. This bus has original Edinburgh plastic seats which are perfectly comfortable and - like everything about this bus - in immaculate condition so don't justify retrimming. But they do look a bit, um, municipal!

Since Matt has adopted this bus, the plan was for me to meet him in Eastleigh Bus Station at 1500 on Wednesday when he finished duty 1, and take him down to Botley to collect the bus.

Mikey has been with us all week as well - doing a superb job of producing promotional material for the new service starting in September, promoting these routes in Eastleigh Bus Station and looking after our service A customers. It therefore seemed a good idea to take him too for the experience. Then Ant invited himself along - some excuse to do with needing someone to take photographs - and suddenly we had a carload to collect one bus!

Ant was on duty 3 which does the 1140 - 1425 portion of the Ringwood routes, then uses a double decker to travel empty back to Eastleigh, with the next piece of work in school holidays then being the 1650 A, so he had plenty of time assuming he would get back to Eastleigh at around 1500.

Then of course events intervened. At around 1400 Mikey had a problem with his phone and needed to get to the Vodafone shop in Southampton urgently, so we sent him off to Southampton on the bus. But this meant there was no prospect of him getting back in time to come with me and Matt, so I texted Ant and asked him to wait in town, meet Mikey and take him straight to Botley on the changeover bus.

So the definitive answer to "how many people does it take to collect a bus" is four - two people in a car and two people in a double decker bus. But at least it meant Ant could get these shots...

Looking good, don't you think???

We were running a bit late by the time we were ready to leave so Ant had to scurry off to do his A. I followed Matt back through Botley expecting him to turn right up Winchester Street, but of course he didn't. I guessed that Matt's coach driver instincts and love of 841 were going to seduce him into doing a scenic tour of South Hampshire and took the direct route back where I found the local bus paparazzi waiting on the corner of Barton Park to take piccies when the bus finally made it back.

By the time I had been into Brenhaul to talk about when we could service 841 and answered their questions about who those strange blokes were loitering on the entrance to the industrial estate with cameras, there was still no sign of Matt. Luckily he had Mikey with him, so I was able to obtain position reports from him. Eventually he appeared heading from completely the wrong direction and having taken a mere 40 minutes or so to do a journey that takes 15 minutes direct!

Steve fitted the ticket machine on Friday and the bus should be serviced tomorrow, so although it lacks graphics it should be ready for the road by early this week, if we choose to use it. The other two should emerge this week and next week respectively.

By now, Taz should be back from the Alps and Paul should be raring to go again so this week is looking a lot better staff-wise!

My last word on wheelie bins

2008-08-17T15:24:00.004+01:00

Since this blog is in danger of becoming all about wheelie bins rather than buses, I think it's time to end the subject by reporting that the new bin for our yard arrived on Friday. If you want pictures, you'll have to take your own. Sorry! Unless of course someone captures it for Derek's site, which will now be our officially recommended point of reference for all matters relating to this particular form of four-wheeled transport :)

The wonderful world of wheelie bins

2008-08-09T17:01:00.006+01:00

There are people out there who think that bus enthusiasts are a strange breed.

But maybe those people would instead be inspired by the idea of wheelie bin spotting. The uninformed observer may be simply unaware of the variety of sizes, shapes and colours of bins available, the unusual settings in which they may be found and what they are used for.

It turns out that there is a special place on the internet for those who wish to pursue an interest in wheelie bins. Courtesy of that illustrious bus (and now, as it turns out, wheelie bin) photographer Derek Doling, I am delighted to introduce you to The Wonderful World of Wheelie Bins, where our wheelie bin has been immortalised.

And as if that wasn't enough on the subject of wheelie bins, we've ordered another one, this time for the yard to accommodate all the rubbish we sweep off the buses every night. This one is coming from a different supplier, so that should get the wheelie bin fraternity flocking to Eastleigh for a second time!

A terrible incident

2008-07-31T23:57:00.003+01:00

As most people who read this will know, our colleagues at Wilts & Dorset suffered a terrible incident earlier today when one of their open-top double deckers overturned following a collision with a car, resulting in upper deck passengers being thrown clear of the bus.

Mercifully - almost unbelievably in fact - there were no fatalities and only a modest number of passengers were injured, and none of them too seriously.

This is the kind of incident that it just seems impossible to believe has really happened. The idea of an open top bus toppling over and passengers being thrown out is a concept almost impossible to visualise. What must have been going through their minds when they realised what was happening to them?

Tonight I am feeling sorry for the passengers who were caught up in this dreadful incident, and their families. I am also thinking of the bus driver, who I see is being praised by the police for minimising the severity of this incident. Thankfully I have never been personally involved in any serious collision as a driver, so find it difficult to truly understand what he must be going through, and so can only begin to imagine how he will come to terms with what has happened today.

But I also want to say a word for the other representatives of Wilts & Dorset who will have been involved. For all those who attended the scene, as well as all those left back at base trying to pick up the pieces, today will have been an horrific day. It is hard for anyone who hasn't been in a position of responsibility when something like this has occurred, to imagine that initial phone call which stops your world, and that dawning moment of realisation that something horrible has taken place. To then have to attend such an incident, to be confronted with the reality of what has taken place, will have taken their breath away.

I saw a brief interview with Andrew Wickham, Operations Director of Go South Coast, on the BBC website and although the interview was brief and factual, Andrew covered the essential information extremely well and clearly, impressively so. However, a 20 second interview barely touches the surface of a whole day of unfolding drama such as this, and whether it is now or later, I feel quite sure that today's events will leave emotional scars forever on all those involved.

While relieved at the low number of casualties and absence of fatalities, one must not underestimate the emotional impact of having to deal with an incident such as today's, and so right now my thoughts are very much with my colleagues at Wilts & Dorset.

A new addition to the fleet

2008-07-26T09:34:00.004+01:00

Today we are celebrating the newest addition to our fleet. Somewhat smaller in capacity than our other rolling stock, it nevertheless drives very smoothly, is highly manoeuvrable and will fit into the tightest of gaps, as this picture shows...

A day on the 8

2008-07-20T23:58:00.002+01:00

For the second week in a row, I found myself doing the service 8 duty today, as I did a deal with the scheduled driver (in this case Matt) to cover work for me later in the week if I covered their Sunday. That doesn't mean that it has to be me that does the duty, but I do like it a lot and so I am not too upset that no-one else really wanted the rest day work.

Having said that, last Sunday was great fun from start to finish. Today I wasn't really in the mood when I crawled out of bed, thinking of all the things I could have been doing instead. That's the only problem with driving. I love it, but it stops you doing anything else useful at all.

Added to which, I felt grotty - felt sick, headache, bad stomach - my body was truly in revolt. So I shuffled into work, devoid of any kind of spring in my step, just in time to prep the bus and go. Taz was there to say hi, which cheered me up. Ant was there with his entourage waiting to go to Alton Bus Rally. I was so rude - didn't even say hi to them. Just crawled into my bus, did the walk-round check, set up the ticket machine, drivers seat and destination blind and left.

My steed for the day V7 GMT - recently transformed by the fitment of a new throttle cable. Previously it was like driving a house brick. Now it glides along effortlessly. A ridiculous amount of money well spent! Almost overnight, V7 has gone from being "don't use on Ringwood except as last resort" to first choice Ringwood motor. (In case you are wondering, its because the Ringwood routes are by far the most demanding we cover. Way higher mileage and average running speed than anything else, lots of big hills, tight schedule, you name it.) It has also had four opening passenger windows fitted which has vastly improved the ambience.

So off I go, leaving at 0910 from the yard which should give me about 5 minutes waiting time at Hythe, and sure enough I pull in to the Ferry Interchange at 0939 for a 0944 departure, giving me a few moments to chat to the driver on the 0943 Bluestar 9 heading down to Fawley.

I'm not up for this though. I have already decided that today is going to be a day to endure. The object of the exercise is going to be simply to get to the other end of the day, having looked after my customers the best I can along the way. Last week the revenue was abnormally good, so I'm not expecting a repeat performance and while I like seeing the money come in, maybe a quiet day isn't such a bad thing.

Off I go, empty, and the first customers I meet are the elderly couple who always get on at The Mead stop, and as usual they are very cheery and it is a pleasure to welcome them on board. This is my fourth time on this duty, but I have travelled several other times on the first couple of trips to show drivers the route, so I know some of the regulars and that cheers me up a bit.

A quiet trip into Southampton is no surprise - last week more or less every seat was taken by the time we reached the city on this trip - and a quiet trip back puts me back in Hythe ready for the 1144, feeling a little bit better but still wishing I was in bed, and with a lot less cash in the bag than I had this time last week. One of our regulars, our friend in Pooksgreen who always buys a return to Totton travelling out at 1008 and back at 1732 even adds to the shortfall this week, only buying a single.

Then the day goes mad. On the next round trip I am besieged with people coming from all directions and £5 notes are being handed to me in unprecedented quantities! I am quite certain that the amount I take on this round trip must be the highest for any individual round trip on this route ever. Where are they all coming from? What's more, being busy seems to have perked me up a bit and by Marchwood I'm starting to cheer up a bit, and by Totton I'm positively in the groove! Now I'm checking the module every few seconds it seems to work out how much I've taken, trying to remember how much I'd taken this time last week, how much more I'd need to take to beat last week. I still don't think I'm going to do it - I doubt I'll even come close - but someone has pressed the 'cold start' button in my brain and it's now revving near the top of the green band, and that's always a good sign!

Then, heading back towards Hythe on the 1246 from town, the unthinkable happens. As we leave Totton, I suddenly realise that I have gone from a long way behind, to being actually ahead of where I was this time last week! There is a Magic Number (commercial confidentiality prevents me from disclosing what precisely) that you must pass on the way to the end of this duty, as any figure below this Magic Number would be a failure, but sometimes it passes quite close to the end of the duty - I have had plenty of nail-biting moments in the past wondering if it would ever come, and certainly you never pass it in the first half, except that last week I did, and to my complete amazement I have done it again, and more!

So I am a much happier camper when I pull in at Hythe for my break- running a few minutes late because of the volume of passengers - at around 1345.

A few minutes later, after a quick walk into the village, I'm back on the bus munching a Waitrose sandwich and a drink, door open as an invitation to anyone who might want to come aboard, but enjoying a few minutes peace and quiet.

Then a very posh Merc draws up alongside and four gents spring out taking a close interest in the bus. The whole thing looks very official, and my mind goes into overdrive wondering what could merit such a dramatic scene.

Then the cameras emerge and before I know it, the four guys are lined up shoulder to shoulder on the pavement opposite, they are bus spotters taking pictures of the bus! Never before have I seen such a slick, disciplined approach to bus enthusiasm! Nor has anyone else in Hythe, for it seems the taxi drivers also present and the locals in the area are now clustered in little huddles showing as much interest in the photographers as they are in me!

A brief conversation reveals that they have spent the morning in Bournemouth riding on open-top buses and are now on their way to a bus rally in Alton, but one of them realised that there would be a Velvet bus to be seen if they dropped into Hythe at around this time!

Back to work now, and I'm back in the groove again as I leave on the 1414. Now I am continually drawing comparisons with last week. This is normally a quiet trip, but seven days ago I took more than £10 just in Hythe alone. This week, there is hardly anyone around so I am behind last week's figure again. However, for some reason, there is quite a crowd at Marchwood Church - normally nobody at this time - and suddenly I think I am up again. I stay just ahead of last week's figure all the way through Totton and into town - stopping twice along Millbrook Road to pick up people who stay seated and don't put their hand out because they are determined to catch a blue bus, and a little explanation is required to help them realise that the purple buses do all the same things that the blue ones do, so there is no reason not to ride!

Then, disaster! In Southampton City Centre on the 1516 to Hythe, I take no money at all! Normally this is quite a busy trip, mostly returns and passes but the odd farepayer, but today hardly any passengers and no farepayers! Suddenly I go from being just ahead of last week to way behind once again! There's no coming back from this, is there?!?

There is an elderly lady who boards this trip every week and gets off at Batts Corner just after Totton town centre. I am convinced that she can't tell the difference between me and Jamie and thinks we are the same person. She's always very cheerful though and we briefly discuss the weather. Then she asks if I will be on again next week, or if I am on holiday. The possibility of there being any other options seems to pass her by! I inform her that it should be Jamie, and this seems to confuse her quite a lot - giving me further evidence that she cannot tell us apart.

Into the last round trip now and I would need an unprecedented performance on this trip to match last week's figure and so I start trying to tell myself once again that I already have a more than respectable figure and to calm down about the whole thing!

Sure enough, a quiet run into town makes this almost inevitable, but as I pull onto the stop at West Quay I am suddenly besieged with fare paying passengers! Single to Marchwood after single to Marchwood rolls into the bag and the pound signs in my brain are starting to light up after all!

But as we pull away, and finding no farepayers at Central Station, I know that we are £5 behind last week's figure. It's still a very good figure, but after all I have gone through today, it really would have been the icing on the cake to have beaten it. The only remaining hope is Totton, which usually yields a few passengers but mostly passholders so my hopes are not high.

But then, at Asda, I find myself selling a single to Hythe! A youngish guy needing to get to Blackfield will ride with me to Hythe then transfer to Bluestar 9.

This leaves me precisely £1.50 short of last week and I look hopefully at the two passengers getting on behind - but they both show me free passes and so the fat lady is starting to sing.

But then, as we cross over Rumbridge Street there is a guy stood at the Batts Corner stop. He hails me, unbelievably there is money in his hand, and it's a single to Marchwood - it's £2.60, it's the winning goal, it's £1.10 more than the figure for last Sunday that I thought I wouldn't touch, it's fireworks, it's lights and it's a good job he moved fast or I may well have given him a big hug!

An hour or so later, I'm back in Eastleigh after an uneventful run through to Hythe, and now suddenly everything is right with the world. Even Ant and his cohorts are there, so I have the opportunity to apologise for my lack of communication this morning. I go home happy, reflecting on another awesome day on the 8!

In the middle of the night

2008-07-16T22:55:00.003+01:00

Tuesday - a quiet evening in, plodding around the flat, doing bits and pieces on the computer, doing the washing, loading the dishwasher, high octane stuff! But I'm not tired and I'm putting off going to bed. Finish chatting to a friend on the computer around midnight and wonder what to do next.

The problem is solved for me. The phone rings. 0208. It's a rail job! Can we provide a bus for 0035 Eastleigh to Portsmouth Harbour via all stations?

I'm practically out of the front door before we've finished the call. 0035 is half an hour away, I'm in the centre of Southampton heading for my car. I tell them to expect the bus 10-15 late but it'll be there.

Halfway to Eastleigh Wimbledon Control ring back - double checking I know which stations I'm serving - I reel off Hedge End, Botley, Fareham, Portchester, Cosham, Hilsea, Fratton, Portsmouth & Southsea and Portsmouth Harbour from the top of my head and they seem happy.

I drive to Eastleigh - quickly run into the office, round to the yard, open the gate, I need 303 - it's at the back with V7 and V14 in front. Start 303, pull the DAFs out, drive 303 out, put the DAFs back - it's messy but they are out the way for the moment - out through the gate, lock the gate behind me, round to the station and I'm there at 0036!

You never know with rail rep passengers. Sometimes they're jolly and happy that you're there to get them home. Sometimes they're just stroppy because they've been turfed off a train unexpectedly - and I can't really blame them.

Tonight there is a distinct lack of cheer, but they're not going to spoil my mood! It's a quiet, still, calm night, hardly any traffic, beautiful driving conditions and a beautiful bus. The miles slip away effortlessly.

Hedge End - half a dozen noisy youngsters off - peace reigns. Botley - no-one. Turn round and a nice bit of country driving down through Curbridge and Burridge to Swanwick and into Fareham - one off, no-one else in sight. Good progress along the A27 to Portchester - one off, that was a surprise. A few more off at Cosham, really no point going to Hilsea cos there won't be anyone either on or off, but its what SWT want and that's what they'll get. But I was right. All the rest off at Fratton bar one who stays on til the bitter end. 1 hour 15 mins end to end - doesn't seem too bad really.

Back in the yard at 0230, quick chat with one of the truck drivers who's turned up to start work - likes to go early morning so he's finished by lunchtime - and I'm out by 0245 after a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Open even more hours

2008-07-12T14:16:00.002+01:00

The fitting postscript to the last post about being called at odd hours, is that having gone to bed shortly after writing that post, I was then woken at 0545 the following morning by the phone ringing. Now you never get a phone call at 0545 unless its an emergency - driver not coming in, problems with buses, whatever. Unless - as in this case - it's a lady ringing to ask about the times of buses from Mansbridge to Eastleigh later that morning! Doh!!!

Open all hours

2008-07-10T22:26:00.002+01:00

The time is now 2226 - or 10.26pm if you prefer your times in 'classic' format. The office phone is diverted to me this evening and I am at home, mixing my time between watching TV, surfing the internet and trying to get a couple of jobs done for the morning.

In the last half hour I have received two enquiries from members of the public asking about bus services from Parkway Station to the Rose Bowl. The first came from an 0208 number so that got the heart racing - I was convinced it was going to be South West Trains! Neither enquiry has been a problem, both gentlemen have been a pleasure to assist and they seem to appreciate the information I have given them.

So why am I writing about this?

Well it just strikes me as odd that anyone should expect to ring up at such a late hour expecting lines to be open and people on the other end of them! As a rule, if I am ringing a business as a customer, I would expect them to be winding down from about 5pm onwards, with only the biggest companies still manning their call centres at 8pm, and not much after that.

I am more than happy to help, but it just seems to be an odd time to be ringing with a query about bus times. Is it just me that finds that odd?

The Crazy Frog has croaked

2008-07-05T21:34:00.002+01:00

Following the reduction in frequency of service A last weekend, we now have one bus surplus to requirements so we had given notice to Dawson Rentals that we would end our hire of V384 SVV from Tuesday 7th July.

Unfortunately, the sense of rejection obviously proved too much because it disgraced itself outside Hedge End Superstores on Friday evening, and cannot sensibly be repaired in time to be of any use.

So Steve's baby has withdrawn itself early, and he will now need to find one of the DAFs to adopt!

Friday 13th

2008-06-15T14:25:00.005+01:00

I think I might take up superstition as my new hobby! I have never believed in all that Friday 13^th rubbish, but after this week I think I might have to reconsider!

Last Friday was one of the smoothest days we have had. This Friday couldn’t have been more different if the sun had come up at midnight and the sea turned purple.

As usual the early warning system was the text going at 5.30, just as I was hauling myself into work (normally Taz opens up first thing, but today it was my turn!) According to our local gricer friend Kev, the A31 was shut eastbound east of Ringwood, and this was going to stuff up the Ringwood services. Sure enough, Matt turned up for the 0615 start (which does the first 35 off Ringwood at 0715) with the same information and the same forecast!

Armed with just a few vague thoughts about possible diversionary routes – at that stage we weren’t even 100% sure where the A31 was closed – Matt set off on an expedition into the unknown in V12.

The rest of the run out proceeded smoothly enough - V7, V14 and 384 heading out on the A, with V11 off the road awaiting a new indicator stalk (oh, the exciting world of bus maintenance!). But whereas we normally take one double decker over to the Bus Station – it does two driver transfers into Southampton to enable reliefs on the 35/300, and then the Wildern School run in the afternoon but is otherwise spare – I took both 303 and 309 today in the belief that there may be trouble ahead.

Not knowing what had happened to Matt once he disappeared into the great unknown, but guessing he would probably be marooned in a huge traffic jam somewhere, I started to think through the next few hours. What follows is a serious geekfest!

Ant was on the 1100 start, and would almost certainly be up for coming in early, but given that he lived the other side of the closure could take him all morning to get in. But I texted him anyway to give him due warning and get him moving!

Karl was on the 1000 start, but by 0800 frankly there’s not a lot anyone’s going to do to get in much earlier than they were going to anyway, but with only three A’s on his duty (it’s only a modest little number, 1000 – 1500 doing three trips on service A, a duty designed for a part-timer who decided not to join us in the end so now I give it away as overtime!) there’d be scope to move him around.

Other than that, I had what I had in terms of drivers and buses available.

The first problem would be that with Matt running late on the inbound 35, this would knock on to the 0840 300 to Ringwood and the 0930 round trip from there to Lyndhurst on the 35, and then the 1045 Ringwood to Southampton, which would be Matt’s last trip before coming off for a break. In fact, the delays would probably get worse as the morning wore on. I couldn’t bear the thought of all those journeys running late, and besides which Matt would probably run out of legal driving time eventually.

So, plan A: get Taz to cover Jamie’s service A at 0850 to Botley and back, and send Jamie off after his 0825 arrival to pick up Matt’s duty wherever he could – probably at Poulner on the 300 down to Ringwood – and then once I knew where and when Matt was, sort something out to get them back on track.

Bonus – traffic around Eastleigh was very light so Jamie didn’t need the recovery time built into the schedule and rolled in early at 0815. He was up for plan A, but even better with an extra 10 minutes to play with and light traffic, could probably get to Southampton to run the entire 300 journey – even if a few minutes late.

So off he went roaring out of the Bus Station just after 0815. Ten minutes later, the phone goes, it’s Matt! He’s in Southampton on time!!! Turns out a helpful lady passenger got on at the second stop in Ringwood and proposed a diversion that proved highly effective, and with traffic levels not having built up to any great degree yet, Matt was only 13 minutes late at Lyndhurst and got most of that back with a clear run into town.

So I cancelled plan A, messaged Jamie and got him to come back to Eastleigh and he went back out on his scheduled trip at 0850 to Botley, and Taz got to go to the office for a bit!

In fact, at that point I wondered if the whole thing might turn out to not amount to very much. The Highways Agency was estimating 0915 for the road to reopen, so Matt’s arrival in Ringwood should be just in time to allow him to follow the correct route on the 35 and it would all be fine from there on! Or so I thought.

Then two things happened. The Highways Agency delayed the estimated time for reopening to 1000 and Ant started sending me increasingly worrying texts about traffic conditions in the New Forest as he attempted to battle his way into work.

So I figured that Matt would be ok for the 0930 round trip on 35 but would almost certainly be back in Ringwood too late for the 1045 300. Apart from being the key commercial trip of the day, on arrival in Southampton there is a driver change with the early shift driver coming back to Eastleigh to do some A’s, so any problems with this trip could have nasty consequences for the schedule.

Trouble is, the only driver I could realistically get down there in time to do the 1045 was Jamie, who was supposed to be Matt’s relief at 1140 having had a break after his early A’s, but since he didn’t get back to Eastleigh until 1005 couldn’t get to Ringwood for 1045 AND do all his scheduled trips between 1140 and 1425 as he would have had no break at all since the start of the day.

Meanwhile, Ant was getting ever closer to Eastleigh and his duty had a relatively easy start, 1120 Eastleigh – Botley – Eastleigh on the A then a break and down to Southampton to take over the Ringwoods at 1430. Lots of potential to muck about with that then!

So, plan B – Jamie came in at 1005 expecting a break, but willingly allowed me to send him straight to Ringwood to do the 1045 300 on the basis that he would get a break when he got back to Southampton. That meant covering him from 1140 onwards so instead of doing his A Ant agreed to go to Southampton.

However, this would cause a problem later on in the day as if Ant did the whole stint from 1140 – 1430, he would be unable to carry on to do his own scheduled trips from 1440 onwards without a break.

In the middle of pondering all this, the A31 reopened at around 1030 which at least eliminated the need to cope with further delays as the day went on.

So, in the end, the simplest solution was to get Ant to take 303 into Southampton to relieve Jamie at 1130, do all the remaining trips on the Ringwoods apart from the 1345 round trip to Southampton on the 300s, and get Matt to stay in Ringwood when he got back from Lyndhurst, have his break, do the 1345 round trip then come back dead from Ringwood to Eastleigh at 1520.

This left me with Ant’s scheduled round trip on the A at 1120 and the afternoon Wildern School run to cover, and Taz willingly stepped in for both of those.

This also led to the unusual sight of two of our buses in Ringwood at the same time – Matt with V12 and Ant with V14 that he had taken over from Jamie, though the downside of that was that we had to run one of the A workings with a double decker for several hours until Matt got back just after 1600.

All that sorted, we settled in for a quiet afternoon. And that’s largely what we got until the very end.

Jamie’s duty finished with the 1750 from Eastleigh, which is due back at the yard at 1857, and I knew he needed to get away for a family engagement. Friday evening traffic is usually ok by then, but I had fixed up with Taz and Paul that if the traffic was bad, Taz would do the 1720 and Paul would drop back on to the 1750 to allow Jamie to get away, but if traffic was light everyone would do their scheduled trips.

With everything running on time and no traffic problems reported, I told Taz he wasn’t needed and he left just before 1700.

Then, just before 1730, phone call from Jamie – there had been an accident at Haskins and all the traffic was backing up!

So after wrestling briefly with my conscience, I figured that the only thing I could reasonably do was to cover Jamie’s last trip for him, and he in turn agreed to fuel the first couple of buses in before heading off to his family meal.

I left Eastleigh on time at 1750, joined the queue at the Ford factory, passed the Mansbridge timing point just about on time at 1804, and it then took 40 minutes to cover the mile or so up to Haskins!

Fair play to the ambulance driver coming the other way though, who – in a repeat of the Steve and the policewoman story a few days previously – pulled up alongside my bus to let me know what was happening and how long I could expect before the road was clear! Nice one! Passengers certainly seemed impressed.

So I figured that apart from me getting back to the yard late, nothing else could possibly go wrong on Friday 13^th. Then – just as I’m near the head of the queue, a message from Jamie... the petrol station had run out of diesel! He’d managed to fill the two buses I’d left him with, but there were only around 70 litres left in the tank so the station was closing!

This was either a minor problem as has happened before – the station closes for a while, a new delivery arrives and everything returns to normal – or, with the Shell tanker strike all over the news, could this possibly be something more serious? Horrible thoughts filled my head of driving all over Hampshire in my bus trying to find an open petrol station! However, my rational side figured that I hadn’t seen panic buying at any of the petrol stations I’d passed all day, so everything must be normal really, but I still had to get mine and Ant’s buses fuelled!

Pulled in and sent a quick message to Ant to meet me at Rownhams motorway services which he would soon be passing anyway, and after dropping off round Hedge End and Botley got over there within 30 minutes or so. Luckily everything was calm, we fuelled the two buses with no problem and got back to the yard around 1945.

So that was it then.... except that unfortunately a tree branch had smashed one of Ant’s mirrors, so I couldn’t quite make my escape until I had sorted that out ready for Saturday morning.

I got away at 2030 in the end, crazy day!

(Photos courtesy of Ant and Kev)

The customer is always right

2008-06-15T12:48:00.002+01:00

It's Saturday afternoon, and service A has fallen apart because of cricket traffic around the Rose Bowl.

So I leap in V12 (spare bus) and go hunting for passengers. First trip round I pick up a load at West End Post Office at around 1635, mostly for Parkway station but a few going into Eastleigh.

I head out for a second trip, get back to West End Post Office at 1715 and find a few more people waiting (I know at least one other bus has gone through in the meantime).

"Thank goodness you're here", announces a lady passenger in haughty tone, "we've been waiting an hour and a half and no buses have come!"

"I'm so sorry," I reply sweetly, "I must have missed you when I was here forty minutes ago".

Haughty lady issues a loud "hmmmmph" and flounces off down the bus.

Lady behind her, part of the same party, sotto voce to me: "Actually, we all went to the pub!"

Keeping track of who reads this

2008-06-07T21:50:00.002+01:00

I wonder who reads this blog. Is it possible that someone from South West Trains does? In particular, someone who works at Wimbledon Emergency Control Centre (or whatever it's called?)

When the 0208 number appeared on my phone, I was one step ahead of them. I said to Taz straight away, "it's South West Trains"! You'd have been proud of me!

Now I have previously described the control office in Wimbledon as South West Trains Wimbledon Emergency Control Centre, then suggested that that is not it's real name.

I wasn't really paying enough attention (too busy gloating) but I am pretty sure that the very friendly lady on the other end of the phone introduced herself - in a slightly mischievous tone of voice - as South West Trains Wimbledon Emergency Control Centre, so either I got the name right due to a freak accident, or someone reads this blog and put her up to it (maybe she does herself)!!

Or maybe of course I'm deluding myself and she didn't introduce herself as anything of the sort - but she sounded very nice, so I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt! She did tell me her name as well but in the heat of the moment I forgot that! If it was you, or someone you know, prove it by introducing yourself as Wimbledon Choo Choo Crisis Control next time you ring!

Anyway, to all those at SWT WECC, (or WCCCC as you prefer), I'm sorry you decided you couldn't use us on Wareham - Weymouth in the end. It would have been fun. And Ant and I were sat in our buses, all psyched up and ready to go when you stood us down, but it didn't really matter in the end. Better luck next time! And while I'm on, big grovelling apologies for missing your call at midnight 20 on Friday morning! Don't know how that happened, but as it happened we couldn't have helped anyway, but it would have been nice to have been able to tell you that in person. My bad!

Smooth operation

2008-06-07T21:41:00.003+01:00

Friday was one of those rare days when everything ran like clockwork from start to finish.

All the drivers were in early and left on time. V7, V14 and V384 were on A, V11 was the Ringwood bus, 309 was on line D1 (that's our secret code for the bus that does the driver transfers in and out of Southampton to swap drivers over on the Ringwood bus, and then does Wildern School in the afternoon). 303 was spare and V12 was in for MOT preparation.

Having left on time, all the buses stayed on time as far as I could tell all day. All the drivers appeared at the office at the right times for paying in and breaks.

At the end of the day, the buses appeared at the petrol station at the times I was expecting them, all went up to the yard, parked up and swept, and the drivers were away a bit before their sign off time (which is the way I like it - it means that when it does go pear-shaped, they are ok about staying a bit over to help out).

V7 and V11 had their radiators cleaned out on Thursday night as they were running a bit hot again, and the temperatures on both were absolutely spot on.

Put simply, nothing went wrong.

Wouldn't it be boring if every day was like that!

Road trip

2008-06-04T22:26:00.005+01:00

With all drivers present and correct and a calm day in store, Taz and I went on a road trip today!

The day started early - after yesterday's rain, all the buses were filthy, so Taz, Jamie and I were all in the yard around 0530 and managed to wash and mop all three DAFs before they went out, and mopped the white Dart as well. Tiring, but rewarding. To prove the point, we rewarded ourselves with breakfast after all the buses had gone!

Our excursion took us to the Ringwood area. It is likely that at some point we will seek to run the 35 & 300 from a base somewhere in that area to minimise dead mileage, but that requires finding an off-road site suitable to house one of the DAFs. We therefore went on a top secret (until now, that is) reconnaissance mission of a number of possible sites and to be honest, didn't really see anything that fired our imagination, so we'll have to keep looking for the moment. Bright ideas welcome, if anyone has any by the way!

We also paid a visit to Solent Coaches just to say hello while out on our travels and what friendly, nice people they seem to be!

On the way down, we passed V11 going the other way on the 1045 300 Ringwood - Soton. Sparkly clean V11, with the sun glinting off the roof, looked absolutely stunningly gorgeous! I wish I'd had my camera! (And not driving at 70mph in the other direction!!!) Was so excited I forgot to check how many passengers there were!

Our route back to Eastleigh took us via Winchester where we ordered new football kits for the Monday 5-a-side football time hitherto known as 'Solent Blue Line' but shortly to be officially renamed (whether they like it or not lol!)

Back in Eastleigh by around 1700 hrs and off to do the fuelling. Everyone was in very good time tonight, obviously not much traffic around, so in came Steve with the Crazy Frog Bus (don't ask) at 1810, Paul with V14 at 1815, Matt with V7 at 1845 then Ant with V11 from Ringwood at 1900 - the earliest return yet!

Off to bed now - alarm set for 0445 (I'm opening up instead of Taz tomorrow) ready for a new round of fun and frivolity! But this time with no buses to wash!

303 goes to Fareham

2008-06-03T22:22:00.003+01:00

South West Trains tricked me today! Maybe they read this blog (yeah, right :-S) but I never saw the 0208 number on my phone! No, they were far too clever for that - they called on the land line!!!

The call came at around 1240 - could we find two buses to help replace the Eastleigh - Fareham line, closed by flooding at Botley? In fact I could only provide one - we have six o-licences and use five of them on weekdays, so even if all seven vehicles are available I can't use them all. So I offered one, to be required at Eastleigh 1330-1345.

The bus had to be 303, but this was due in for service, so a quick call to Brenhaul, our maintenance contractors, and this was rescheduled for tomorrow just in the nick of time!

Driver-wise I took Ant at his word. Having asked him to come in for our short five hour duty 5 today, he said to me this morning that if anything extra came up during the day, to let him know. So I texted him that I would cover his last scheduled trip - 1320 service A Eastleigh-Botley-Eastleigh - and could he please do the rail rep? Next I spoke to Taz and asked him to cover the trip on the A.

All straightforward enough except that Ant didn't read the text, so was surprised when Taz turned up to relieve him on the A, but was up for it nevertheless!

I went round to Eastleigh station with Ant, arriving dead on 1345, only for the station staff to tell us that we would not be used until 1430! Not to worry, Ant did two trips - at 1430 and 1630 from Eastleigh to Fareham (curiously the northbound line was open and trains running throughout) - and was stood down at 1825, so another successful day playing trains!

Blues and Queues

2008-06-01T09:18:00.003+01:00

On Thursday we suffered delays on the A for a while because of an accident at the White Swan - apparently two cars ran into the back of an ambulance (because of course ambulances are so hard to see! :-S)

We first heard of the delays through a phone call from Steve, who was heading towards Botley at the time. Nothing odd about that you may think, except that when he rung us Steve was sat in the queue, couldn't yet see the accident and ordinarily wouldn't have known what the problem was.

So what happened? Well, it seems a police woman driving her patrol car in the other direction away from the accident scene, actually pulled up alongside Steve's bus, opened her window and suggested to Steve that he might like to ring his company (ie. us) to warn us of the likely problems, before closing her window and continuing on her way.

I have never ever come across this before, so just wanted to big up the policewoman concerned and offer full marks and a bonus for having the presence of mind to do that! Awesome!

Playing trains (2)

2008-05-27T21:41:00.002+01:00

I can remember travelling by train the odd time when I was younger when it would go wrong, and the line would be blocked or something would happen and we'd all get turfed out and told that buses would happen and - guess what - buses would magically appear! I just kind of assumed there was a big bus printing machine somewhere and if buses were needed in a hurry, the handle would be turned and out they would pop!

Fast forward to present day and why is it that I have a mental block about 0208 numbers? When my phone rings at odd times (and it does ring at some very odd times, because we divert the company landline to it out of hours), if I see an 0208 number I think that it will be some polite old chap enquiring about coming down from London for cricket at the Rose Bowl and how can he get from Parkway Station? Any why is there a 90 minute gap going home just as the cricket finishes? (HCC please note! Both HCCs for that matter - the County Council and the Cricket Club who still thing that Red Rocket run the bus to the ground despite us e-mailing them to tell them otherwise!)

One day, I will realise that an 0208 number on my phone means just one thing - South West Trains Wimbledon Emergency Control Centre (I don't know if that's its real name but it'll do for now!)

After a pleasant evening out with friends Sunday evening, I was ready for a relaxed start to Bank Holiday Monday. Sure it was raining, sure I had to go into Eastleigh to see Ant off on the service 8 duty, but once he was gone I could sneak off for a much needed coffee and breakfast and plan the rest of the day from there.

It's 0810 and I'm just leaving the flat. My phone goes and it's the 0208 number!!! Bit early for a cricket enquiry methinks! As soon as I press the green button I can hear the hubbub in the background and my brain suddenly realises it's SWT Control before the lady can even say the words! Southampton Central station is flooded. They need buses! I need thinking time. I'll ring them back.

First need is to count to 30 to avoid the easy temptation to say "sorry, can't help", and enjoy the leisurely Bank Holiday upon which my heart was set.

Second need is to think about what I can actually do for them. Obviously there's me. First to call would normally be Taz, but his parents in law are staying so that's probably a non-starter. Next nearest is Jamie. He was out with me and friends last night but seemed to be ok and didn't get too drunk so could be a possibility. Take a deep breath and dial the number, and he sounds pretty awake and he's up for it. So that's one double decker each then - single deckers are better if we have to go through the New Forest, but SWT are going to need seats this morning I suspect. Ring them back - "two double deckers?" - turns out I'm a diamond!

On the way in to Eastleigh, think I'd better ring Taz and check there were no problems on Sunday (he was on call, I was having a rare day off) that might affect my vehicle options this morning. He's in bed. Nicki, his wife, wakes him and he rings me back. We run through yesterday's highlights and I tell him Jamie and I are going out on emergency for SWT and leave it at that.

As I arrive at the yard no more than 10 minutes later, who's walking in but Taz! In full uniform! Puts me to shame! He tells me he's not missing out on some train action, regardless of in-laws staying! I ring SWT back, offer them a single decker in addition to the doubles and they say no thanks, they've got enough!!! I tell Taz this, but tell him not to go anywhere because I suspect that's not the end of the story. Sure enough, five minutes later, is the offer of the single decker still available? Can we go to Eastleigh station - they want one of us on Eastleigh - Bournemouth directs and two doing Eastleigh - Southampton shuttles. Jamie can go to the seaside in 303 I decide.

Can't remember when 303 and 309 were last fuelled, and in fact 309 hasn't turned a wheel for a week or more, so I take 309 and Jamie and I stop off at the petrol station. While we are there, Taz roars past us in V7, which means that the last person to know about the job is first on the scene at Eastleigh station!

In fact, from an initial call by SWT at 0810 on a Bank Holiday morning, I'm pretty impressed that we've got three buses at Eastleigh station by 0900!

Taz loads up for Southampton and he's gone straight away. Jamie is no more than a minute or two behind with a load for Bournemouth. Within ten minutes I'm on my way to Southampton too. Southampton Road in Eastleigh is horribly flooded over a short section. There's a car stranded in the middle, marooned, helpless! The traffic is getting round it ok, but you have to pity the poor driver. Later turns out that he was the car directly in front of Taz, and Taz says he was going way too fast for the conditions and got caught out so he has no-one else to blame!

I go to Southampton, weighing up the dilemma of which side of Southampton station to head for. Rail replacement action is normally on the south side (platform 4) but there's not much room there and I know they've done big rail jobs on the north side before. From a distance, I can see a police car at the top of the hill leading down to the platform 4 side, so I guess the road's closed and head for the north side - I've guessed right.

Back to Eastleigh, then back to Southampton again. A good few Brijan vehicles around but not much else yet. Arriving in Southampton the second time, I catch up with Taz so he loads up for a service to Eastleigh and I'm sent empty to St Denys where there are loads of people waiting to come into town apparently.

They are supposed to wait at the junction between Belmont Road and the road that leads down to the station itself, because you can't get a bus down that road really. So where are they waiting? At the station entrance of course. So 309 goes to places a double decker may never have been before. I trust that I will find somewhere to turn round, and luckily I do.

Back into Southampton, where traffic is now getting very heavy indeed because Millbrook Road - the main road out to the west - is apparently also closed for flooding so everything to and from the west is being funnelled through the choked artery of Shirley High Street. Or so Ant tells me - his 0944 from Hythe should be in Soton by 1038 but he's adrift in traffic.

I unload and, thinking myself to be an Eastleigh shuttle, start shouting for stations to Eastleigh. A train person sidles up. Is there * any chance * (going into severe grovel mode now) I could go to Bournemouth. They are inundated with Bournemouth people and haven't had any coaches for ages. I must admit I'm not overjoyed. I never managed that coffee break and certainly had no food so I'm feeling a bit sluggish, and a gentle plod to and from Eastleigh quite suited my mood, but life is never perfect so it's a deep breath and of course I'll go to Bournemouth.

From leaving Central, going up Shirley High Street because I'd love to think of something better but just can't for the moment, it takes 45 minutes to reach the M27 - passing Ant on the inbound 8 approaching an hour late in Shirley. A lady says "are you going to Brockenhurst?". I'm not, because the station staff needed me to go non-stop and have told Brockenhurst people to get a train back from Bournemouth. Five minutes later she's back... "If you're not going to Brockenhurst station, are you going through the town of Brockenhurst". Of course I resist the obvious retort that if I was going anywhere near the town I'd be going to the station, and instead offer a second apology and a just slightly firmer statement that I'm afraid I'm not.

309's demisters are not up to the task of overcoming 70-odd wet people inside the bus and driving rain outside and they are not really demisting anything. Luckily, in a flash of inspiration before leaving the yard, I picked up the blue roll. For those that don't know, blue roll is basically blue tissue paper, thicker than your domestic stuff but equally absorbent. Blue roll is the lifeblood of the bus industry. Without blue roll, the industry would be in its death throes. It's more important than oxygen it seems, and I've got our supply. So I'm driving down the motorway with a handful of blue roll at the ready for occasional wipes to keep the windscreen clear.

Mrs Brockenhurst comes forward again, "would you like me to wipe the windows for you driver?". Ok, nice offer, but NOOOO. I'm ok thanks, honest. I'm living in a small little world of my own, just me and my blue roll and that pane of glass in front of me that will eventually guide me to the coast. I've shut out of my mind the audience of 70 wet people - it's just between me, the rain and the traffic now! I see 303 going the other way, big wave from Jamie so he's ok. I'm also aware of continual traffic jams the other way - that'll be me in an hour.

Somewhere near Ringwood, the sun comes out. As it brightens up outside and the rain stops, the windows clear, my mood lifts and it's suddenly the greatest pleasure to be crusing down the dual carriageway in my beautiful bus, totally unruffled despite its 19 years.

5 minutes from Bournemouth Station, here comes Mrs Brockenhurst again... "Is this all the heat you've got driver, or do you have any more to give us". All the heaters are on full pelt - the bus is roasting. "No sorry madam, you've got everything I have, but we'll be there in five minutes". She returns to her seat and I can see the theatrical shivering in my mirror - luckily the sentiment doesn't appear to be shared by anyone else.

I arrive in Bournemouth and it's a lovely sunny day! Pull up alongside the big queue of people. The station staff ask me if I can do non-stop to Eastleigh! Joy!!! Load up and away we go. As we cruise north in glorious sunshine, I celebrate in the certain knowledge that I will be dropping off in Eastleigh, the trains will be running again, we'll be stood down and all I have to do is take my bus round the corner and park u and I can finally go for my coffee! The traffic jams don't hold us up too much either - it's all good now!

Arrive at Eastleigh and three things are immediately apparent...

1) There are millions of buses - especially Stagecoach ones and indeed it appears that Stagecoach bus people are in control now (must be an afternoon thing?)
2) There are millions of people
3) There are no trains

Jamie and Taz are both there. Jamie is just leaving for another Bournemouth and Taz is nearly loaded for Southampton. Apparently I'm to be next. The 0208 number again - can I confirm my buses are still all on the job. Yes, in fact I can see them all! Apparently some buses have been sneaking off. Can't move for the damn things here!!! Take the opportunity to ask whether they have an estimate for when trains will be running again. They estimate the line reopening at 1700 hrs - that's nearly three hours away!

Loaded once more, within 20 minutes or so of my arrival I'm on my way to Southampton again. I'm sorry to say that the next two hours are a drag. I'm bored out of my brain, and all I can do is keep thinking of the money! Back to Eastleigh, then back to Southampton a second time. At Parkway station they have glued pictures of the flooding at Central Station on the front door. This is probably a wise move, I can guarantee there will be people who refuse to believe that there was ever any flooding and just think that it is a cunning ploy by SWT to ruin their day!

As we roll down the hill to Central, we see a train leave heading towards Portsmouth! A real, actual train, running on the real actual railway! In the station we are told that trains are running again to Portsmouth and Cardiff. Two people ask me for Bristol. I tell them there are trains. They say the station staff have told them there aren't. Bristol is on the way to Cardiff. I'm losing the will to live, but after suggesting they go back and talk to the station staff again they don't reappear so perhaps their luck is in. So's mine, we're off back to Eastleigh now for what must be the last time!

At Parkway station, two mouthy teenage girls get off and harangue the station staff. They need to get to Portsmouth. The station guy tells them the best bet is to stay on the bus to Eastleigh and get a train from there, or they could get another bus back to Southampton now that there are trains running from there. On hearing this latter news, the two girls stomp back on to my bus and one of them bends down and shouts in my face, "the station guard says there are trains running from Southampton now, so you've brought us here for NO REASON!!!" I remember them getting on but they never told me where they were going. This doesn't improve my mood, but I'm friendly and polite as always and they calm down and sit back down on the bus.

Back in Eastleigh it's a mess. There are trains, but no-one knows quite when. So they seem to be despatching buses at random intervals, with the odd train in between. One minute we are being told we will be kept on standby for 30 minutes, then an hour, then two hours. Then a train leaves for Poole (via Southampton) and this is treated almost as if it were a miracle by the rail staff. They still won't release the buses though. I wander off to refuel - there's nowhere near enough space to park, and then decide that it's now 1830 hrs, I'm supposed to be playing football at 1910 hrs, there are seven buses in the railway station and another five or so parked down various side streets. The trains are running again. They can surely do without us now. Not that I mind the money you understand, it's just that we were first on the job at 0900 hrs and we're flagging. They ask Taz to stay until 2000 hrs, he agrees, but he hasn't seen his in-laws all day so Jamie very kindly steps in to take his place.

Did I enjoy it? Mostly yes, but it just went on too long. A bit like this post perhaps! But next time you get turfed off a train and a magical bus appears from the bus printing machine, you may now know a little more about how it all happens!

Sunday driver

2008-05-18T21:50:00.006+01:00

It fell to me to do the Sunday duty on the 8 today! It was Steve's turn on the rota, but we were tight last Tuesday so I did a deal with him that he came in then on his rest day, in exchange for which I'd cover his Sunday turn. What that was supposed to mean of course was that I would find someone to do his Sunday duty, but there was nobody really available and interested, and to be honest I didn't try all that hard because I've fancied a day on the 8's ever since we got the contract!

Turns out it's exactly as most of the drivers have said - a really enjoyable duty. Four hours plodding up and down between Hythe and Southampton, half an hour off, then the same again on a very nice enjoyable steady route, half countryside, half urban.

One of the highlights was the bloke who got off in Hounsdown and said "that's a lovely bus you've got here - I take it it's brand new?" He was really shocked when I said it was 8 years old but newly refurbished. V12 it was - a very smooth effortless steed for a 10 hour shift. These DAFs really are awesome buses to drive.

The break is in Hythe Multi-Modal Interchange (aka the ferry yard) from 1339 to 1414. There was a chalkboard in the entrance to the ferry saying "no ferry at 1410 - Sunday break!" I don't know if this happens every week, but there is definitely a 1410 in the timetable. I wonder how our customers would react if we decided to cancel a journey with such casual nonchalance. Never mind the Traffic Commissioner.

"Dear Customer, there will be no buses for the next hour or so. We can't really be bothered. Tough!"

Not impressed! I kind of hoped this might push some business my way, since people would turn up in droves to catch the ferry, and then on learning of their stupidity for daring to turn up for an advertised sailing that happened to coincide with lunchtime, divert their attention to the lurid purple bus parked immediately adjacent with "Southampton" on the front, but sadly those few who did wander up seemed content to shuffle off down the main street, presumably feeling too abashed to dare venture into Southampton after realising their mistake.

All in all though, a very enjoyable day. I think I'll go to the pub to celebrate - haven't been in there for weeks and weeks!

I love Delays!

2008-05-18T21:23:00.003+01:00

If ever there was a band with a name with worse connotations for the transport world than "The Delays", I'd like to meet them!

However, all jokes aside, The Delays are truly an awesome band. It so happens they are from Southampton, but that was irrelevant when I first started following them in my Cheltenham days - it's pure coincidence that I now live in their home town - but it's amazing how many people even here have not heard of them, or have heard of them but don't know anything about them.

A couple of weeks ago, they released their new album "Everything's the Rush" - their third major album - and it's fantastic. Last night, they played live at Southampton Guildhall. They were brilliant - loved every minute. I've seen them live previously in London and Portsmouth, and they were really good both times, but for some reason last night they seemed on a different level.

The performance was jumping from beginning to end, with a slow bit in the middle when they sang one of the song's on their latest album - "Pieces" - which just tears me apart! Very emotional and brilliantly performed!

I don't know what else I can say about them - I think you get the message! :-)

Good Luck Year 11

2008-05-17T11:26:00.002+01:00

We quite like Wildern School students. Every day we take around 30 of them to school and bring 50-70 home again, and they are one of the best behaved, friendliest bunches of students I've come across.

We got wind of the fact that it was Year 11's last day on Tuesday, before they get let off regular school to concentrate on exams. (By the way, this makes me feel really old, year 11 didn't exist in my day - it was the Fifth Form in those days - at my school at least! I also did my GCSEs in the second year of their existence after they replaced O-levels.)

We therefore decided to programme the destination for the afternoon bus to convey our sincerely meant good wishes to the kids. Unfortunately, Year 11 came out at a different time to everyone else, so everyone else caught the bus - and not Year 11!

So, just in case any of Year 11 should happen to stumble across this blog (and you never know, one of them just might), this is what you missed....

Black Velvet Travel - Alison says "bye"

2008-05-11T09:42:00.002+01:00

On Wednesday, Alison became our first ex-employee! Faced with all kinds of domestic pressures, trying to keep the job going while travelling up from Portsmouth each day was clearly proving difficult and in the end proved to be an unsustainable situation.

I'd like to publicly wish Alison every possible success in her future career. She's a lovely person and deserves to do really well, and I hope she will be proud of the fact that she was a founding member of the Black Velvet team!

Good luck Alison!

Seeing the wood for the trees

2008-05-05T22:35:00.004+01:00

As followers of the gricernet (or indeed our website) will know, we've won some more contracts!

From Tuesday 27th May, we will be operating the Ringwood - Lyndhurst - Southampton corridor in place of Wilts & Dorset.

There are a number of reasons why this contract attracted me. Chief among them is the fact that Ringwood is a major town without a rail station, and I simply refuse to believe that there isn't a meaningful (if not commercial) market for travel to and from Southampton. While the town benefits from an excellent service to Bournemouth and Salisbury courtesy of W&D, and I appreciate that Southampton might take third place in order of importance, to only have two direct buses a day (as has latterly been the case) and then only via Burley and Lyndhurst - hardly all that direct really - must surely underestimate the potential market.

The tender as published invited quotes for various versions of present and current timetables. There was no mention of anything more direct between Ringwood and Southampton. This might partly be because Hampshire County Council invited bids for a direct service when W&D pulled their commercial X33 a couple of years ago, and either didn't receive any bids or at least nothing they could afford. At the time, I was very keen to offer something based on an extension of the Solent Shuttle, to create a Portsmouth - Southampton - Ringwood - Bournemouth corridor, but was told in no uncertain terms by Go South Coast High Command that our appearance on Ringwood - Bournemouth would not be welcomed. Heaven forbid we should actually do something exciting!

However, despite what some people would have you believe, I am not on a one man crusade against my former employer, and in lots of ways they do a good job, I wish them well and there is not a single member of the Go South Coast top team that I would not shake his/her hand and buy a beer. In the case of X35 however, they have steadily run the service down over a number of years, which says two things to me...

1) It's an area they have clearly decided is not remunerative for them and their attention is better focussed elsewhere
2) For this reason, they can hardly object if someone else steps in who thinks they can do better

Ringwood - Southampton is a corridor that seems to me to have some development potential. The successful package that we proposed as a "tenderer's alternative" to the options supplied is one that has been bouncing round in my head for a while...

- Look after the established 'unique' market with a Ringwood - Lyndhurst service that offers timings suitable for workers, shoppers and leisure travellers (to be the 35)
- Look after the Ringwood - Southampton market with an express service straight up the A31 (to be the 300. Where did we get the number from? Don't know really - I hate 'X' numbers, and I suppose a round number in the hundreds sounds perhaps a bit more expressy?!?)

Happily, there is a workable timetable that covers both with one bus and this is what we proposed.

The art of proposing "tenderer's alternatives" is a tricky one. My commercial instincts often tell me that we should be maximising the elements that are marketable and developable and not be afraid to throw away insignificant or declining flows. The local authority's social conscience will instruct it first to look after the people it already serves, and then see how it can improve on that. Logically therefore, in proposing a "tenderer's alternative", you have to find the point that gives the best of both worlds. I have wasted too much time in the past proposing tenderer's alternatives that - with the benefit of hindsight - could never have been accepted because they just didn't pay enough respect to what the local authority's priorities would be.

In the case of South West Hampshire, the cards are played by a chap called Colin Wright. I have nothing but the greatest respect for Colin. He is ultra-professional, experienced and knowledgeable. I suppose I would say that - he has just given us £xx,000 worth of annual income - but I mean it. He is not given to radical change, and sometimes I would argue he should be more open to this, but has proved in this case that he can spot a good thing when he sees it!

Not that I would suggest the decision was entirely his - clearly there are others within the county who have to have their say, and I am just glad that we have managed to propose something that seems to have struck a collective chord with them.

There are plenty of other declining markets that will come out for tender that will offer nothing more than the opportunity to oversee ongoing decline for a further four or five years. This is one of the rare ones where there seemed to be the opportunity to offer something genuinely better at a reasonable price, and that is why we put a lot of effort into it!

Now all we have to do is get the good folk of Ringwood out on our buses. Can't wait!!!

Playing trains

2008-05-05T17:36:00.003+01:00

Very kind of most readers not to point out the lack of activity here in a while! Truth is, the workload has been a bit overwhelming, among the reasons being (in no particular order)...

1) Financial year end
2) Winning new contracts (of which more anon)
3) Looking after Taz's cat

Tommy (Taz's cat) - or Thomas the Tank Engine to give him his full name (honestly, would you let a three year old name your pet? Oh ok, you would...) - was great company for a week, but tore my arms and hands to shreds. I now discover it is quite a normal feature of young cats that they will play with you with claws fully extended. Tommy will nuzzle up to you, let you stroke him for ages and then - completely without warning - take a swipe at you, often drawing blood, or - if he is feeling particulary playful, try to bite your hand off. Then, when you retreat feeling that you have perhaps upset him in some way, will come running after you looking for more attention. But I love him to bits and will gladly have him again when the time comes.

One other highlight of the last week has been our debut appearances on rail replacement for two separate train companies.

Much to our surprise, the Go-Ahead Group actually gave us a job on the Three Bridges to Brighton line the Sunday before last. This involved one double decker out all day, with two shifts - one early, one late. Jamie did the early, I did the late. Three Bridges is in Crawley, in case you didn't know, so it wasn't exactly local, but I've done the Brighton Main Line before in Solent Blue Line days and it's always fun. Needless to say it's a very busy line, and at times they were firing off two fully loaded double deckers at roughly ten minute intervals. It makes quite a sight, driving down the A23 seeing this procession of deckers from all over the south east trundling past.

We used F303 MYJ, looking resplendent with its new interior, and including the long dead journeys to and from Eastleigh at the start and end of the day, covered 464 miles in one day. It performed faultlessly, although 10 mph up Handcross Hill was a bit disconcerting! Easily made it back and more on the flat bits though!

I got back to Eastleigh at 0130 on the Monday morning and promptly drove in to the petrol station. The attendant was one of the ones who's regularly there when we fuel up in the evening. He didn't bat an eyelid when I presented myself at this time, nor when I reappeared ten minutes later with V384, which had been used on service 8!

On Wednesday last week, we got an emergency callout from South West Trains. Emergency, as in they wanted the buses on Thursday night. So at least we had some time to think about it. They wanted two buses - one each to do 0040 and 0140 Southampton to Bournemouth in the early hours of Friday morning. With me, Taz and Jamie all available and up for it, I decided to proceed on the basis that we would take three down, as I had a hunch that one bus each trip didn't seem like a lot for the numbers likely to arrive on the connecting trains.

So after a tortuous exercise to give everyone enough rest before and/or after to keep them legal, we were all set to go on Thursday night. At 2215 the phone rang - South West Trains - any chance of two more buses??? Well, I thought about it theatrically for a moment, looked at Taz, Jamie, looked myself up and down and announced that we could probably muster a third. A fourth was stretching it a bit too much though, and in the end they got Brijan Tours to provide the fourth vehicle. The guy at the other end of the phone took a deep breath and said, would one of us be able to go as far as Weymouth if required on the 0140? I took a deep breath and said yes, knowing that would be my job as I know where all the stations are!

Taz and I then wandered off to the office for a bit and when we got back to the compound at 2345, Jamie had got the three working DAFs - V7, V11 and V12 - up and running, all lit up with "rail replacement" on the destination. They looked absolutely stunning! At that moment I really wanted my camera to have a better phone! You'll have to take my word for it.

We all set off in convey into Southampton, getting to the station at 0015. By 0020, the first bus was full! So with the approval of the station staff we despatched Jamie, and made Taz the only bus for the 0040 - worried now about how he'd cope with the numbers. Luckily we had nothing to worry about - they'd cancelled the connecting train, so he left on time with three passengers!

That left me to do the 0140, and in due course Mr Brijan Tours himself - Brian Botley - appared with a coach called "Alfie" and we spent a pleasant hour or so chatting until departure time.

Anyway, despite being primed to go to Weymouth (a bit odd, since there wouldn't normally be any trains going anywhere near Weymouth at that time), Brian took the Bournemouth and Poole passengers and left me to go all the way to.... Brockenhurst and New Milton!

Thoroughly enjoyed the job though, and got back to the yard at around 0330, hoping for more soon!

Monday: Where are we going?

2008-04-23T09:24:00.003+01:00

Niggly, frustrating day with lots of little problems - nothing too major, just lots of those "oh for (insert word of choice here) sake" moments.

However, that's not the reason for the title - this isn't some reflective musing on the state of the universe. No, Monday's theme was destinations. All our buses (apart from V384 which has a piece of laminated card - albeit a professionary produced piece!) have electronic destinations. That means we programme the destinations we want on a computer in the office, transfer them to the bus using something called a "Portable Memory Unit" that looks more like a dodgy prop from a 1970's sci-fi movie, and then at the touch of a button the driver can display the destinations on the front.

On the basis that it's really easy to do, I'm surprised that more bus companies don't have a little bit of fun with what they show on the front. When you are running on service, the rules are very very clear. Service number (or letter) and destination. If you don't show those things you stand to get fined, because the lovely Traffic Commissioner (if he/she catches you doing it) deems that failing to show the service number (or letter) and destination effectively means you haven't run the service - because if the public can't see which bus it is and where it's going, how do they know it's their bus.

However, when you have a bus parked up in the bus station for ages, or running out of service then I think you can have a bit of fun!

All our buses are programmed so that each driver can display a screen showing "Black Velvet Travel - (insert name here) says 'hi'". Slightly to my surprise, this has been universally accepted by the drivers (and Taz and me of course) as the normal thing to display if you drive a bus between the yard and the bus station, especially if you are leaving the bus in the bus station for lengthy periods. Numerous passengers and bystanders have commented favourably on this.

We have also done special destination screens for Maria's birthday and Nickie's birthday (see below), and for Taz and Jamie in particular (who have most got into the spirit of this exercise) have developed a number of variations to this theme, such as...

Black Velvet Travel - OMG it's Taz! :-)

and...

Black Velvet Travel - Jamie spreads the love

Now some people will look at these and think we are completely barking (or just not understand them) and we really should have far more important things to concentrate on, but my view is that this kind of fairly simply touch makes a big difference in whether we are seen to passengers as an approachable, friendly organisation or an impersonal, anonymous corporation. The main audience is probably the students of Wildern School, who see one of our double deckers just after 1500 every day, and I *hope* this kind of thing is appreciated by at least a few of them.

The moral of the story is, why don't more bus companies do this kind of thing???

By way of an afterthought, writing this paragraph much later in the week, SBL have an open-top Volvo Olympian on hire from Southern Vectis for the special Docks Tours they are running this weekend, and the destination that has been programmed for that is fabulous, matching the 'Do the Docks' logo complete with outline pictures of ships - but nothing too detailed or fussy - so it can be done!

Three is the magic number

2008-04-20T16:41:00.003+01:00

Finally achieved it on Friday...!

V7 went out on S1, V12 went out on S2 and V14 went out on S3. They all stuck to their lines all day, did their work and came back in the evening!

Amazing that it has been so elusive - especially as we have not had any major mechanical issues - but finally route A was 100% purple and 100% low-floor, the first time we've achieved both those things on the same day!

And we did it again on Saturday!

And now, having proved that it can be done, we can relax a bit, so the sole remaining Dart (V384 - because W558 was collected by Dawson Rentals on Friday) went out on the 8 today by special request of Steve, and it may well creep back on to the scene a little more over the next few days, as we will be less preoccupied with running DAFs for the sake of running DAFs!

Thursday: Election Fever

2008-04-20T16:16:00.004+01:00

Elections are always held on a Thursday of course, and today I won two that I didn't even know I'd entered!

I don't think it's a secret that there are moves afoot to create a "South Hampshire Bus Operators Association", to provide an effective lobbying voice for the bus industry as a whole in the region. This is particularly important as Transport for South Hampshire, the emerging successor to the local authority consortium Solent Transport, should have a very strong strategic role in determining the future shape of the transport infrastructure in the region, and needs effective input from the bus industry to ensure that our interests and contribution is not overlooked.

The Bus Operators' Association has a Board which will include one representative for all the small operators in the region, and it turns out that's me - by the unanimous vote of all the small operators present at the meeting!

By the same token, George Fair of Uni-link has done an excellent job of representing small operators' interests on the Solent Travelcard Management Committee since its inception, but now that the Uni-link operation is to be swallowed up by the Go-Ahead Group, they won't be a small operator any more so a new representative is needed. Once again, it turns out that's me!

May I take this opportunity to thank my parents, my brother, Taz's pet cat, my election agent (if only I knew who it was).....

Actually Taz's pet cat, Tommy, might start to feature a little more regularly on here from now on, because having my offered my flat as temporary cattery when Taz and his family go on holiday in a week's time, I now find I've won that contest as well and I will therefore have a pet cat from Wednesday 23rd for a week!

In the real world of buses and passengers and roadworks and traffic lights, the lights that have been appearing on and off at Haskins for the last week or so are on this afternoon, and causing big traffic delays.

So once again we can't keep three DAFs out, because delays to inbound journeys mean that V384 eventually has to go out on the 1350 to keep the service running on time (which once again we did, with 100% compliance from Eastleigh Bus Station despite the hold-ups), so the late-running 1335 arrival becomes the 1420 departure, and the similarly late-running 1405 arrival becomes the 1450 departure. By this time the lights have gone and the traffic calms down, so when V14 comes in 20 minutes late at 1455 it becomes spare for the rest of the afternoon, as V384 is well in time for the 1520 and Maria can simply keep going in that.

Thanks to Mikey's hard work in the office, we make a successful end to the day as we finally manage to get the service 8 route map up on the website!

Wednesday: Three out, two in

2008-04-20T16:10:00.003+01:00

Started with three DAFs again Wednesday morning, and Pete our casual driver doing his first weekday stint for us (Alison is on holiday, so he's on duty 4).

V12 seemed to be running a bit hot though, so as a precaution we took her off at lunchtime to get the radiator cleaned out - the radiators on the DAFs are towards the rear on the nearside so in a prime spot to absorb all the muck and dirt on the road!

That solved the problem, but in the meantime V384 took over from 1420, so we'll have to wait another day to get three DAFs to start, stay out and finish their lines! Touch wood though, they're not showing up any new mechanical problems at the moment!

PlusBus? Not us!

2008-04-15T20:13:00.004+01:00

Eastleigh was beautifully calm and still (albeit freezing cold) at 0400 this morning. Don't ask me why I got there at that time, I just did, and liked it very much. Might do it again before long!

Had a bit of fun washing the bus windows in the yard at 0630ish. Did V12 and V14, Taz washed and I bladed the windows. Trouble is, we only had cold water available and it was freezing on to the glass so quickly that I couldn't dare let Taz do more than one pane ahead of me at a time - normally the washer gets on with it and the blader catches up in his/her own good time.

Lots of financial stuff to work through today so the morning was office-bound. All good though and very necessary, but was able to sneak away after lunch to Barton Park to check up on progress with the water hose on V7 and to put 303 in for safety service.

The bus service operated entirely uneventfully all day, with no changes required to buses, drivers or anything, and every bus observed on time.

We had an enquiry over the weekend from a gentleman who wants to use a Southampton Plusbus to get from Parkway Station to the Rose Bowl tomorrow afternoon, and wondered if we would accept it. My answer was of course that we are not in the scheme at present, but that I would make enquiries to find out how difficult it would be, thinking that it couldn't be very!

So after talking to everyone else on the planet I ended up speaking to Gordon Frost, good guy and Commercial Manager of First H&D. He said there was no problem joining, it was very easy, he would send me a formal offer letter and we could reply. That's all fine, only trouble is, provided we apply by May we will be admitted in September! Just in time for the end of the cricket season!

V7 emerged from Brenhaul late afternoon complete with new air bag to go with its water hose, so tomorrow we are aiming for the "three DAF trick" for the second time.

For those that care, as I've left it tonight, V12 is on line S1 (0708 B-E etc), V7 is on S2 (0738 B-E etc) and V14 is on S3 (0720 E-B etc) tomorrow.

A smooth operation

2008-04-14T22:07:00.003+01:00

At last, a quiet day where everything went to plan!

Started with the V- and W-reg Darts out together with DAF V12, 303 on the wall in Eastleigh Bus Station as spare bus.

V14's panel damage was repaired by lunchtime, so it went on for the 1450 to Botley in place of W558. The new hose for V7 is coming tomorrow, after Brenhaul managed to successfully track down the part they required (thanks to Volvo Bus rather than DAF, bizarrely) following a lengthy investigation by Shaun.

Not much traffic around this evening, so everything came home in good time, all fuelled and parked up without incident and nothing much to write about at all!

So all things being equal, tomorrow should see V14 on S1, V384 on S2 and V12 on S3, but then everything could change in the morning!

Nice comment

2008-04-13T11:46:00.003+01:00

Jamie is out doing service 8 today.

He just rung me from Southampton to tell me of his conversation with a woman who boarded at Millbrook Station.

There are about a zillion buses between Millbrook Station and Southampton City Centre on a Sunday, of which we run four - a mere drop in the ocean.

This lady has just told Jamie she always likes to wait for our buses, because we are such a nice company with such nice drivers! Aw bless!!

I hate Saturdays

2008-04-13T11:01:00.003+01:00

Why are Saturdays so difficult? In most places I've worked, they are quiet, uneventful days where nothing much seems to happen and you can relax a bit. For us, they've been a nightmare. Jamie had the big accident in 303 on a Saturday, we've had two Saturdays where the traffic has been evil (one due to motorway problems, the other due to Southampton Rd roadworks) and we always seem to have lots of niggling problems.

Today started well. V14 started fine and sounds as smooth as silk with its new alternator bracket, so V12 and V14 trundled off out in service with Jamie and Maria in charge.

On Saturday, we have just over an hour between the second and third duties signing on, and that gave us just enough time to fit the ticket machine to V7, so Steve took that one out.

Yes indeed, we have three DAFs out in service for the first time ever, so service A is 100% DAF this morning! It's looking good!

At 1050, Steve goes to set off on his second trip in V7 and finds the bus won't move! He calls us, Taz and I run round from the office to the bus station and find that V7 has a 'halt brake' fitted that the others don't. We don't quite understand how it works, but Taz manages to overcome it so off Steve goes. One problem averted.

At 1250, Alison goes to set off on her second trip on V12 and finds that a warning light has come on that she's never seen before! I run round from the office, Taz says he'll follow me round in a few minutes (he's busy playing with his new phone, bless!) I get round there, don't recognise the light either, better safe than sorry, turf all the passengers off the DAF and into the spare bus (Dart V384) and send Alison off in that.

Meanwhile, while I've been sorting the bus swap, Taz has arrived, recognised the light as something similar to the 'halt brake' on V7, knows it's completely harmless and just disengages and re-engages gear and it goes out! By now we've swapped the passengers over and we can't swap them back again, so our 100% DAF target for the day has just gone by the board, all completely needlessly due to me over-reacting!

Over lunch, we come to the conclusion that the DAFs have various warning systems to try to avoid drivers either leaving the bus in 'drive' when stopped for lengthy periods, or trying to engage 'drive' without pressing the footbrake first.

At 1445 Alison finishes her break and arrives at the stop to relieve Jamie on V14. Just before getting on, she notices some body damage at the rear. It looks like the back end has grounded on something and slightly buckled a couple of panels. Unfortunately, one of them looks loose and we can't take the risk, so with all the passengers seated ready to go (our policy being for the incoming driver to let them on before they do the changeover) we have to turf the passengers and Alison off again and onto the spare bus (which is once again V384). Jamie and I take V14 round to the yard - it won't do any more work today, so our 100% DAF target is well and truly gone.

I take W558 back round to the bus station as the new spare bus, and at 1720-ish, Maria rings me from Hedge End to say that the low water light has come on in V7. The temperature's ok and there's water in the tank, but it must have a leak. I tell Maria to carry on and I'll meet her on her way back to Eastleigh with the spare bus. Later she rings me to tell me that the temperature is edging in to the red, but I'm almost with her by then. It's clear the situation's getting worse, but I'd really like to get the bus back to Eastleigh if I can!

Eventually we meet in Mansbridge, I start following her back to Eastleigh but with the temperature gauge in V7 now showing 110 degrees, Maria decided to transfer herself and the passengers to W558 at Parkway to be on the safe side, so I pull up behind and we do the swap.

So that's now three busloads of passengers we've made change buses today! Not good! Doesn't look professional at all, although in no case has there been any interruption to the service which is one consolation. I decide to limp V7 back to Barton Park keeping a close eye on the temperature gauge, which hovers around 110 but doesn't go higher.

When I get back, to my amazement I find Rob and Shaun still in at Brenhaul. It's not just us that have frustrating days - it has just taken them 5 hours to change the header tank on a truck!

Despite having washed up and changed ready to go home, they immediately set about V7. We find that the water tank is empty, Rob puts the hose on it and as fast as he's filling it it's emptying out again, with water cascading out underneath the bus. So the bus goes over the pit and we find a split around 5 inches long in one of the main hoses! It's one of those things that just seems to happen from time to time, can't be helped, but it means that I've now got two DAFs off the road for Monday, until Brenhaul can find a piece of hose that will fit!

So, a frustrating day with a very frustrating end. Here's hoping for better this coming week!

About the only good thing is that I finally managed to get the website updated with all the team's photographs!

Friday: Losing it at the end

2008-04-13T10:14:00.003+01:00

Ok, I'm a couple of days late with this but didn't feel like writing much Friday or Saturday evening so here's a bit about Friday.

How is it possible for a day that proceeds pretty smoothly throughout, to result in one of the most chaotic and badly organised returns to the depot that I have presided over?

The normal script goes:

1750 Phil waves off last departure to Botley in Eastleigh Bus Station, then takes spare bus to yard, fuelling en route if necessary. Spare bus is in bed around 1800.
1800 Phil walks down to petrol station ready to meet first two buses
1810ish First two buses in from service arrive at petrol station from opposite directions, usually around the same time
1840ish Last bus runs in to petrol station having come back dead from Botley. Phil fuels and hitches a lift back to the yard
By 1900ish all buses fuelled, swept and tucked up in bed

All day Friday the operation proceeded without hitch. All the buses stick to their lines, all drivers complete their duties without problems. Taz is doing the first part of duty 4 because Maria has the day off, and Matt is finishing it as overtime, but that all happens on auto-pilot and everyone knows what they are doing and just gets on with it.

Meanwhile in the office, our newest team member Mikey is in for the day to help us out (he's a Wildern School student who's interested in buses and what we are doing and how it all works, and we're happy to give him the odd day's work while he's on school holiday). It's his first proper day with us and he ploughs through the work I ask him to do, in a fraction of the time I was expecting, so it's all good!

The only slight hitch is that the power keeps going off, which is a bit of a pain but not a show-stopper, although it is for some shops in the High Street that have to close completely due to power failure (even though Southern Electric deny all knowledge of any failure)

So having waved off the 1750 with Matt driving, I head over to the yard in 303 (the spare bus) and make the fatal mistake of showing an interest in V14 which has just had its new alternator bracket fitted, but needs charging up. Quick conference with the electrician and Rob and Shaun from Brenhaul resolves that the best way forward is to bury V14 at the back of the yard and leave it ticking over for a few hours to build up the charge. I'm out for a meal in Bishopstoke tonight so can easily pop into the yard on the way back through to switch it off.

Unfortunately, someone's left a van parked in such an awkward spot in the yard that although we've got two parking lanes, everything has to squeeze in through a gap one bus wide, so that means V14 has to go in first so that it doesn't end up blocking anything else in. Unfortunately we can't move it yet, as there are vans parked all around it and tools all over the ground. Also, V7 had its pre-service inspection earlier and is now parked in the spot at the back of the yard where V14 needs to go. Also, the time it has taken to sort this out means that the first two buses are now waiting at the petrol station and I'm not there!

So I run down to the petrol station and fuel them - the two white Darts - and come back up the road with them. They can't go in the yard yet because I have to get V7 out and put V14 in, and V14's still surrounded, so we put the two white Darts temporarily in two of the truck spaces which happen to be empty, and hope the trucks don't come home in the next half hour or so.

Meanwhile Matt had warned me before going out on the 1750 that some of the interior lights are out on V12, and I'd forgotton to mention this to Rob, Shaun and the electrician, so I wander back over to Brenhaul to mention this. They then decide to start taking apart the light fittings on V14 to see what bulbs they are (we think they are common or garden flourescent strips that you can buy in any good hardware store) and needless to say we can't see how to get the light covers off.

I then realise that Matt is about to arrive at the petrol station with V12 so I send Jamie off down to meet him with the fuel card, and go back to V14. Eventually we decide that we can't work it out and that it would be easier to do the whole exercise on V12 since that's the one with the problem. So the vans get moved, the tools get scooped up and V14 is free. I decide there's not a lot of point getting V7 out after all as it's not ready for the road until we fit the ticket machine anyway, so put V14 in the yard and park up the two Darts around it.

All that's left now is for V12 to roll in having been fuelled, we'll put that on the front of the line and it's all done!

Sure enough 5 minutes later V12 rolls up, so I tell Matt where I want him to park it, it's a bit of a tight squeeze so it takes a bit of shunting but eventually it's in. Matt assembles his gear and heads off to get the broom. At that moment, Jamie rings up from the petrol station and asks whether Matt is going to come in to get fuel at any point!

Turns out Matt hadn't seen me at the petrol station (which I wasn't), didn't spot Jamie so carried on up to the yard, then when I told him where to park assumed I wasn't planning to fuel him so didn't say anything! Nobody's fault, just a misunderstanding all round, but grrrrr!

So I leap in V12, dig it out of its parking space, head back down to the petrol station, meet Jamie, fuel up, take V12 back to the yard following Jamie in his car and begin the painstaking process of parking it up again. Being in a bit of a huffy mood and quite impatient by now, I misjudge all the angles (not like me, one thing I'm pretty good at in a bus is going backwards!) and nearly demolish Jamie's car, V384 and Steve himself in one single manoeuvre. Luckily I don't, and much shouting and hand waving later V12 is finally in bed and I can go!

At about this point, we learn that the guy who owns the van that has screwed up our parking, had left the keys in it all along in case we needed to move it!

Now of all the nights for it to descend into chaos, it would be the one where me, Jamie, Louise, Steve and Nickie are all going out for a meal so having kept everyone waiting (although to be fair Jamie and Steve mucked in as always to help out) we're finally eating a bit later than planned. Very enjoyable and convivial, but we don't finish late because Steve and Nickie have to go to Winchester to pick up one of their other daughters, so Jamie and Louise head off and I go back to the yard to switch off V14, which you will recall we left running to charge up the battery.

It has gone dark while I've been away, and I now discover that we'd left all the interior lights on on V14 so while it's still running ok I wonder how much charge it will have built up! Will it have enough to start again? Find out in the morning I suppose!

The atmosphere is electric

2008-04-10T23:39:00.005+01:00

At last, a normal day in the office for the first time since Thursday last week, and it was all about the vehicles today.

Only V14 has decided to throw a strop and have alternator trouble. After the 'no charge' light came on at around 1700 last night and the electrician arrived within the hour and thought he'd put it right, V14 went back into service on the 1120 from Eastleigh this morning (was kept off before that for a photoshoot) and within 25 minutes the 'no charge' light was back on, so it got swapped for W558 and went back to stand in the naughty corner at Barton Park.

The electrician now thinks he has diagnosed the real problem so it's off tomorrow for a new alternator bracket (or something like that) to be fitted.

Meanwhile V7 GMT went in for inspection today prior to entering revenue service, so my guess is early next week to see that one on the road.

Finally, F303 MYJ came home from Salvador Caetano having had its accident damage repaired and also an interior retrim. It looks stunning, having been transformed from this...

to this...
Jamie brought it home, which I was pleased about given that he was driving it when it had the accident, an experience that was understandably very traumatic.

Turns out it wasn't only V14 that was having electrical trouble as the whole of Eastleigh High Street was without electricity when I got back from meeting 303. Perhaps Eastleigh needs a new alternator belt.

Jamie and I then took off into the countryside and spent an enjoyable evening posting the remaining bus stop timetables for service 8 on the Waterside around Hythe and Marchwood.

All of which meant that we weren't around to fuel the buses so we've only just done that now, causing some surprise in the sleepy petrol station when the entire Velvet fleet descended in a ten minute period at around 11pm.

Off home now at 2350, plenty of time for beauty sleep before the 0445 alarm!

I'm still here!

2008-04-09T23:51:00.003+01:00

Hi. I haven't been around much the last few days, because I was up in the Lake District at the weekend (in a hotel with no internet access but one or two other interesting features, of which more anon) and was then out of the office yesterday and today.

So I just thought I'd reassure you that the blog is still very much in progress, but there is so much to write about from the last few days I just haven't had enough time to get fingers to keyboard, so stay posted!

I've lost my gear!

2008-04-03T23:21:00.002+01:00

I'm off to the Lake District tomorrow with my brother for a weekend of walking. Right now I'm trying to pack. Only trouble is it's ages (years in fact) since I last did any serious walking, and I'm struggling to locate my stuff! So far I have found one sock and one glove, neither particularly useful in their own right!

Most annoyingly, I have not found the waterproof jacket that cost me over £100 last year, and I have not found my walking boots although I have a pair of walking shoes that will probably do just as well.

I can see a morning raid on one of the outdoor equipment shops becoming a necessity!

Meanwhile, back in the land of buses, today was a bit hectic but went mostly to plan.

V12 did the 0708 Botley - Eastleigh then came off for a professional valet, along with V14.
V12 went back on for the 1220 E-B-E, 384 then dropped back a trip so that W558 could come off for its replacement windscreen.

Various bits of work were done on V14 so that now the only outstanding problem is that the rear number blind doesn't work, but this will be enough to keep it off on Friday as we're not sure exactly when the electrician is coming to fix that!

Luckily the petrol station was working again so we managed to fuel all the buses tonight! KU02 was fuelled for probably the last time before going off hire and I may well take it on a farewell tour of Botley and Hedge End on the 0708 tomorrow morning.

We're doing this special offer over the next two weeks of a flat 50p child fare for the school holidays, so my late evening task this evening was to programme that on to the ticket machines.

All a bit mundane I'm afraid, but it goes like that sometimes!

Back to the packing!

My petrol station jinx

2008-04-02T22:40:00.002+01:00

It turns out I'm not a good person to be around if you want to buy petrol.

It took me 40 minutes to get from home to Eastleigh at around 6am this morning. Normally 20-25 minutes.

The problem? I pulled in for diesel (for my car that is) at the Shell station in Thomas Lewis Way and the till promptly broke down. So, having obtained the diesel, I then stood in a long queue for an age while the friendly but technologically challenged guy behind the counter pressed every button on every machine in the building in the hope that one would magically un-freeze the till (guess what, it didn't) then set off on a mission to find his colleague who shuffles round the forecourt with a yellow jacket on, so that he could put the cones out across the entrance to close the site. He then wrote down all our credit card numbers longhand on a piece of paper to process them later, which means one of two things...

i) It won't happen because he didn't make a note of our names or the card expiry dates or anything like that
ii) My card number is, even now, being used for all kinds of nefarious purposes

While stood in the queue, I watched a van and two cars weave through the cones, which clearly didn't apply to them, to get into the garage and pull up optimistically at the now-switched-off pumps.

This evening, I toddled off to my usual haunt on the corner of Bishopstoke Road and Chickenhall Lane in Eastleigh to greet the Velvet armada as it sailed in from a successful day's hunting, and while I was fuelling the buses, the till broke.

When I went in to fuel bus number two (Jamie, in V12) the situation was only moderately serious - the cashier couldn't dispense card receipts, which didn't bother me too much as our snazzy new fuel cards have an internet information facility that tells us precisely how much fuel we have put in which fictitious vehicle (because, curiously, the cashiers always mistype the registration numbers) so we don't really need the receipts.

By the time it came to bus number three (Maria, in 384 - her adopted second home!) the cashier had realised he couldn't open the till either so had a small mountain of cash gradually building up on his desk. Finding himself unable to reach his boss on the phone, he made the decision to close the site.

Only thing is, Esso don't seem to bother with someone shuffling round the forecourt with a yellow jacket on, so quite how he was going to close it with a queue of ten people and more cars arriving by the second was a bit beyond me. With hindsight, he's a nice enough guy, I should have offered to put the cones out for him, but you don't think of these things at the time.

So bus four, Alison in W558, went straight to the yard and will now have to be fuelled in the morning.

A few weeks ago, we had the rare honour of running the petrol station dry, halfway through fuelling W558, so I'm surprised they haven't barred me yet.

In between times, we kind of blundered our way through the day really, more by luck than judgment. Certainly this morning's ragtag army wasn't a pretty sight...

- One of us (me) about 20 minutes later than planned having cast my spell on the Shell garage, not that that mattered, still got out in plenty of time to meet my public on the 0708
- One of us turned up with a bad stomach
- One of us turned up having not slept all night (didn't quite get why, I must admit)
- One of us didn't turn up at all, having overslept and still being asleep when phoned 12 minutes before supposed departure time on the first trip, so Taz had to get that one started

So that just left one, Steve, who managed to turn up on time, in a good mood, and get the day off to a good start.

Meanwhile, W558 has now sustained a bad crack on the nearside windscreen so that needs replacing, so we a good old discussion about that in the yard and eventually booked it in for a replacement tomorrow afternoon. Bizarrely, the crack is on the inside! V12 and V14 are both off for a deep clean (by a proper cleaning company, don't you know) tomorrow morning so there'll be some juggling there. Still, it means I get to use V12 on the 0708 so that can't be bad really.

V14 finally managed to get its rigorous pre-service maintenance inspection today, and came through with flying colours. The only outstanding issue is with the 'start' button in the cab (which, in simple terms, doesn't) so that and the deep clean are all that stands between V14 and the adoring public!

With all this in mind, KU02 YUH goes off hire on Friday so Dawson Rentals will collect at their leisure. And that's definitely good for the bank balance!

In the middle of all that I managed to press on with some year end financial accounting issues (our financial year ended 31st March), and there'll be plenty more of that to come in the next few days!

Happily, the numbers are looking ok, but to be a bit adventurous we've decided to do a special deal to all young people aged 5-18 of a 50p flat fare for any single journey on route A during the school holidays. Now all we've got to is to promote it!

Alls well that ends well (awwwh!)

2008-04-01T21:54:00.003+01:00

Today started with a bit of a ticket machine disaster.

Took 02 out on the 0708 Botley - Eastleigh. I must admit I didn't check the ticket roll, but I knew it had plenty in it yesterday so wouldn't have been top of my mind.

Get to first fare-paying passenger at Hedge End Co-Op - asks for a weekly. Awesome, £12 in the bag and I've hardly started! Press the 'issue' button and nothing comes out! Open up the ticket machine and peer into it from several different directions but no, there's definitely no ticket roll there!!! Check around the cab and there's no spare knocking around either. Obviously I don't carry one myself because I'm not that organised.

Now I'm well cheesed off 'cos I know someone further up the route had a weekly that expired yesterday, so that's another £12 I was looking forward to and can't now collect.

So off I go, selling singles (while apologising for no tickets) and asking return passengers to keep their money and pay when they come home.

I usually meet the 0720 Eastleigh - Botley between Haskins and the Texaco garage. Today I'm in luck - Matt's stopped at Haskins as I pull up opposite. And he's got a spare ticket roll! Only downside is it's in his rucksack. His rucksack is so big the bus practically needs a trailer to carry it! So, with our two buses blocking the traffic in both directions (sorry, traffic!) I run across the road and start rummaging around in his rucksack. Several hours later, success!!!

The two weekly ticket buyers both decide to buy their tickets from me as they get off the bus, so I still get the £24! It's looking up! Turns out to be an ok trip revenue-wise, I just look totally unprofessional!

Taz and I then head off on a secret mission for a bit - more anon perhaps. In our absence, the operation proceeds mostly without hitch.

I managed to do my good deed for the day/week/year on the 1750 trip. Jamie was driving, with Louise riding with him to 'learn the route'. I wave him off on time, a minute later one of our regular customers comes bowling up to the stop, frustrated at just missing him. Luckily, I had 309 spare on the wall. So a quick call to Louise, Jamie pulls up at the third stop down the route, I chase after him with regular passenger and pass her over, so she gets home on the 1750 after all!

Um, nothing to report really...!

2008-03-31T22:03:00.002+01:00

All a bit weird to be honest...

Everything ran to time
All the drivers were able to keep to their duties
All the buses stuck to their running lines all day (ok, I did the 0708 Botley - Eastleigh in the 02 reg just to help duty 1 ensure an on-time departure on the 0750, but that's pretty much the norm)

All the buses were fuelled and put to bed by 1850, which is quite a good thing really because Taz and I had to be on the football pitch at Parkway for a 1910 kick-off! (We lost by the way, roughly 4-0 or something like that, but that's nothing unusual and it was a good match!)

The Abba Story was good fun last night by the way!

Nickie's Big Birthday Bus

2008-03-30T15:42:00.007+01:00

Yesterday was all about Steve's wife and Louise's mother Nickie, who celebrates her 50th birthday tomorrow.

The family had arranged for a party to be held at a venue in Eastleigh and, as a surprise, arranged for V12 to transport her and her family from their house to the venue.

So Jamie used V12 for the first part of duty 101 (0753 - 1135) then brought it off with him when he came off for his break ([geek] 02, which had been spare, went on in its place - actually for the 1120, with Matt keeping W558 for both parts of 101 [/geek])

We then met Steve and Louise (and also my mum who is down for a long weekend), took V12 round to the yard and washed and decorated it.

This meant that V12 had to stay off for the afternoon, so sod's law dictated that a car would now break down in the middle of Botley and cause traffic chaos.

[geek]This resulted in 309 making an appearance on the 1350 E-B-E, 384 dropping back to the 1420 E-B-E with Taz driving to allow Maria to take her break, and 02 dropping back an hour to take over from 309 on the 1520.[/geek]

I did the 1650 from Eastleigh to allow Jamie to get off early to help with the party preparations, and after fuelling the buses turned up at the appointed place to pick up the party-goers - having first run through the bus station to show off to all the waiting buses and passengers - only to find a grand total of zero buses and 2 members of the public sat on benches looking bored! (and pretty unimpressed by the big purple party bus!)

The evening was first class, huge fun! Well done to all the family and friends who put it all together, especially Louise who did a magnificent job as chief organiser!

The all-action weekend now continues with me and some others from work off to see Voulez-Vous - The Abba Story at the Mayflower Theatre in a bit, can't wait! :-)

Smooth afternoon

2008-03-28T21:33:00.004Z

The world seemed a lot brighter this afternoon.

In fact, the whole day would have been smooth as silk operationally, but V12 had a problem with its door around 0930 this morning so Taz took 02 out to meet it at the White Swan, transferred the passengers (very sorry about that, passengers!) then took V12 off to Brenhaul, where they (as usual) sorted it in double quick time.

V12 went back on for the 1220 E-B-E and stayed out quite happily for the rest of the day.

Managed to do some work on the website this afternoon for the first time in ages - it's in serious danger of being updated this weekend :-)

Bills, bills, more bills and traffic lights

2008-03-28T12:03:00.003Z

The post arrived about an hour ago. The first envelope contained a cheque for £50, a deposit for a private hire booking. I got briefly excited. The remaining envelopes contained invoices adding up to a total of more than £3,000! Joy!

On a brighter note Esso have confirmed we should finally be receiving our fuel cards in the next few days so I won't have to loiter on Bishopstoke Road every evening waiting to fuel buses for much longer!

Meanwhile, just when we thought the end might be in sight for the roadworks at Southampton Road, Southampton City Council have told us that there will be temporary traffic lights in the vicinity of Haskins for around a month from 8th April!

It all goes with the weather really!

Just another eventful day

2008-03-27T23:45:00.002Z

So I went home last night thinking that we'd had quite a good run with the M27 the last week or two.

First sign of trouble this morning was a phone call from Maria at 0545 to say that she and Trevor were stationary on the M27 due to the closure of the M3 just before the Eastleigh turn off.

So, as usual when that kind of thing happens, the schedules go out the window, I forget any thoughts of getting any normal work done and we go into improvising mode.

Happily, both Jamie and Matt arrived at work with no trouble at all, coming from the east, and Taz managed the 200 yard walk from his house without encountering any deadly perils

So everything left the yard on time, with me starting Maria's duty (she was still stationary 1 hour 40 mins after that first phone call). After that, we made it up as we went along:

Matt did the first trip on his own duty (duty 1 0708 Botley - Eastleigh, arriving about 30 late) then dropped back on to the 0850 E - B - E, then back on his own duty at 1150

Jamie managed to stick to his duty, but was about 25 late on the 0855 arrival in Eastleigh, just in time to go back out on time on the 0920.

Maria arrived just in time to take the double decker (309) and pick up Matt's scheduled second trip at 0750 E - B - E, leaving about 10 late, getting back to Eastleigh about 20 late and going back on to her own duty at 1020.

I did the 0738 Botley - Eastleigh in the V reg, arriving about 30 late, then did the 0950 E - B - E to enable everyone else to get back on to their duties.

With all the above underway and starting to look too easy, what we needed was a fresh challenge, cue a phone call from Alison's partner to say she was unwell and wouldn't be in for duty 4. So out come the scrap paper and the familiar sight of me recutting duties on the fly to get the trips covered.

Matt agreed to come off his scheduled afternoon Wildern School dupe to do the 1450 and 1620 E-B-E instead from duty 4, finishing at 1740, with Taz doing Wildern School and then the last trip on duty 4 at 1750 E-B.

Steve agreed to come in on his rest day - his second in a row - to do the first two trips on duty 4 at 1120 and 1250 E-B-E and hey presto - everything covered! And Steve still got to go home to do his painting in the afternoon!

Now unless you are seriously into this kind of stuff, most of this will have passed you by, but it gives me some satisfaction when I'm doing it and I guarantee there will be some readers who will actually be interested to see how it all comes together when things go pear shaped.

Cutting a long story short, every trip operated despite the motorway chaos and one out of four drivers going sick, albeit that the 0750 from Eastleigh was about 10 minutes late, so with enormous thanks to our drivers for their flexibility our customers will hopefully have experienced the minimum possible inconvenience.

With all this sorted, Taz and I were able to escape to MC Truck & Bus at Nursling at lunchtime, where the first DAF - V12 GMT - had been on holiday since Tuesday morning having its speedo replaced. Having brought the now fixed V12 back to Eastleigh, we were able to put it on for Jamie's 1520 and 1650 E-B-E and should now be in regular service on an ongoing basis.

We also managed to get both the DAFs that we have with us - V12 and V14 - booked in for a deep clean and valet on Thursday next week, which should lift the interiors considerably!

All the above shenanigans left me with five buses to fuel and three to sweep this evening, so didn't get away from the depot until about 1945, a late finish by my standards. Skulked back to the office, pushed some paper around for a while, snaffled the rest of the Fruit & Nut bar that was given to one of the drivers by a passenger yesterday, snaffled the Caramel Dairy Milk that a passenger gave me this morning, then came home!

This is going to be tempting fate big time, but as I left it tonight we actually have a spare low floor tomorrow - a very rare luxury - so if all goes to plan, the V- and W-reg Darts will be out in service (running cards S2 and S3 respectively), DAF V12 will be out in service as S1 so we should be able to park the 02 reg Dart spare in the bus station along with 309, until the latter does its afternoon stint on Wildern School.

Meanwhile, I see it's past my bedtime, so that'll do for tonight!

Jump aboard the purple bus blog!

2008-03-27T13:34:00.000Z

So I've been toying with the idea for ages and it's finally time to welcome you to the Velvet Bus Blog. This is where, if I manage to keep up my enthusiasm, you get to find out all kinds of stuff about daily life in the world of Black Velvet Travel, and probably a fair amount of stuff about my personal life mixed in.

Logically this would be the first post, but I got a bit carried away when I was setting this up last night and imported a story about my pigeon rescuing exploits that I'd posted on the gricernet to make sure it all worked.

So hello, anyway.

This could all be quite random - let's see if it works!

Black Velvet Travel - your first choice for pigeon rescue

2008-03-26T23:21:00.001Z

Today was an uneventful day - everything ran like clockwork and there would have been nothing interesting to report, until I left the office at 1740 to see the last bus go and head off to do the fuelling!

Clustered round a shop front just a few doors up from BVT Worldwide HQ was a growing gaggle of passers by, looking and pointing upwards. As I drew near, doing my best to keep a low profile in my lurid orange jacket, one of them remarked, "what we need is a tall person", and 20 or so pairs of eyes turned to confront me!

Turns out that a pigeon had slipped off a ledge and was now stuck fast in a narrow gap between the shop facia board and the building itself, wedged so firmly it could not move its wings, and legs paddling frantically in thin air, with nothing to grip.

Luckily I was just about able to reach the stranded bird, and with some coercion (and at the cost of a few scratches) managed to push it up clear of the narrow gap in which it was wedged, until its feet could once again grip on the ledge and the day was duly saved!

I left the scene to murmurs of approval (but possibly not the wild applause and devoted media attention that such a brave rescue attempt should surely have warranted!) reflecting with satisfaction on another challenge met and overcome and another string in BVT's bow!

So now you know, if you need any birds rescuing, please don't think of us!