Letters to 'Omnibus'
Hospital Beds
Does anybody know what happened to the Midland Red sponsored hospital beds in Birmingham? Were they absorbed into the NHS, and are the plaques still in existence, hopefully with us?
Phil Crook, Tamworth
Joint Services
Reading your article on joint services (Omnibus no.145) and noticing the mention of East Midland's joint operation with Sheffield reminded me that some of these included a rather unusual arrangement.
In the 1960s new services between Chesterfield and Sheffield, numbered 62 / 64, were introduced, jointly operated by East Midland, Chesterfield Corporation and Sheffield Joint Omnibus Committee. All three operators provided buses. However the journey time of just over an hour and a half-hourly frequency obviously gave the schedule compilers a problem if they were to make best use of the buses and crews. This was solved by interworking the joint services 62 / 64 with a non-joint, Sheffield Joint Omnibus Committee, service (26 to Killamarsh) and using the East Midlands and Chesterfield buses on hire. The Chesterfield buses certainly had 'Killamarsh, on hire to Sheffield J.O.C.' on their blinds and Sheffield Transport timetables of the period for service 26 warn that 'Certain journeys operated by Borough of Chesterfield Transport or East Midland Motor Services Ltd.'
I believe there was a similar arrangement on another joint service with East Midland (99 Sheffield - Ford - Chesterfield) that saw Sheffield buses running on hire to East Midland (possibly on route 59) rather than stand idle in Chesterfield for nearly 50 minutes.
Phil Ireland, Solihull
Leicester On The Web & Tendered Services
I thought members online might be interested in the stories and transport paintings to be found by visiting www.leicesteroverseas.com. One of the paintings is of an IM4, a BHA ‘FEDD’ and a tram, from a Leicester artist, printed by a studio in Exeter. Stories include bus trips to Coalville and beyond and Days of a LCT bus conductor.
Picking up on a point on today’s (muck up of) tendered services, mentioned in this month’s Omnibus, it can be a get-out for tendered services as when someone travels say to work with one company but has to return home on another, return tickets are not transferable so the service is withdrawn. I doubt if this has caused concern where the larger companies operate longer days than 8am-6pm, but in rural areas routes have a timetable served by a number of operators, mainly tendered trip by trip, so the service becomes void, certainly not integrated.
Colin Gittins, Felixstowe
A Jigsaw Puzzle
I recently bought a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle “100 years of buses”, published, if that’s the correct word, by Citadel Puzzles of Petersfield, Hampshire. Most of the buses depicted, and the types stated, appear fairly accurate and authentic (except some of the dates are incorrect, e.g. a Bedford VAL14 is given as 1960). However, I am baffled (puzzled?) by the Midland "Red" bus.
This is a 1932 Crossley Condor, registration CW3226, on route S15 to Bromsgrove, via Catshill. Is this correct or a demonstrator? Could someone please enlighten me? Thanks.
Brian Dicks, Leicester
This sounds like Fantasy Bus Spotting, so we would be very interested to discover if there was such a vehicle used by Midland Red. During 1932, a Crossley Condor with Crossley double deck body was demonstrated to Nottingham and later sold to Northampton, but its registration was RG1676. Curiously, RG is an Aberdeen mark, while CW is a Burnley mark. Also, the “S” prefix on the route number suggests a Stourbridge local route; Bromsgrove and Redditch based services were normally numbered in the mid-300s.
“Omnibus” asked Stan Letts if he could help unravel this mystery, and this was his reply:-
The nearest I can get to your conundrum is that "S15" could be a mis-reading of a poor photograph of "318" which was certainly Stourbridge to Bromsgrove via Catshill (it still is). I probably know less about obscure vehicles than you do - a Crossley Condor on a Midland Red service? However, I do recall seeing during the war a very ancient looking double-decker, still lettered for "Manchester Corporation" running down Bearwood Road from the Kings Head. Could this have been a Crossley?
Thank you, Stan. If anyone else can cast light on this curiosity, please write (or e-mail) to the address given on the back page. Editor
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