Britain’s most ridiculous bus journey just got more ridiculous

Thursday 15th June 2023

I blogged about the West Ealing to West Ruislip ‘ghost bus’ when it began back in January. Readers may recall Arriva owned Chiltern Railways’ rail replacement division awarded the contract to operate this useless single bus journey a week on a Wednesday morning to Diamond South East for an initial three month period.

Diamond fitted this waste of time journey into an existing bus schedule undertaking hotel and staff shuttle work for other clients at Heathrow Airport.

The bus journey replaced Chiltern Railways’ one journey a week ‘Parliamentary Train’ between West Ealing and West Ruislip which ended with the December timetable change. This in turn was an anachronistic hangover from the previous arrangement of a once a week journey between Paddington and High Wycombe on the old Great Western line running alongside the Central line through Greenford. That supposedly retained route knowledge for Chiltern Railways’ drivers as an alternative route in case Marylebone became inaccessible. It was last used for regular passenger trains during the remodelling of Reading station when GWR sent trains on some weekends from Paddington via the line to Banbury and then back via Didcot (also using that area’s rare west curve) to the normal route.

Running the Chiltern ‘Parliamentary train’ also avoided a lengthy closure procedure necessary if no trains ran at all on this section of line.

A few years ago the train was switched from Paddington to start at West Ealing and use the tracks via Drayton Green, Castle Bar Park and South Greenford to Greenford where it joined the former Great Western line from Paddington as HS2 works at Old Oak Common severed the old Great Western route further south. So effectively the tracks are not only closed, they’ve completely disappeared for a section of the route. Whether a closure procedure is followed or not, trains can’t run. You don’t get much more ridiculous than that.

But you can in the world of Britain’s railways.

Chiltern saw the ridiculous nature of the whole escapade and stopped running the Parliamentary Train last December but to avoid falling foul of the closure procedure arranged for a weekly replacement bus to run. So much for retaining train drivers’ track knowledge.

As I wrote in January, aside from blog writers like myself and fellow quirky bus route nerds, no one would ever use the bus for a “normal journey requirement” as it’s quicker to take the two-journeys per hour GWR train from West Ealing to Greenford and then the Central line to West Ruislip. If you really are a dedicated bus user you can also take the 12 minute frequency TfL route E7 which connects West Ealing with Ruislip and could easily act as the Parliamentary Train replacement in the through the looking glass world of rail operation.

But why am I blogging about this anachronism once again?

Because what is already a ridiculous situation has got even crazier. Diamond South East are no longer providing the contract and instead, Arriva’s rail replacement division has awarded it to Stagecoach who, just to add some spice, are using one of its high spec premium express coaches for the Oxford Tube to operate the journey.

I’d heard about this from eagle eyed correspondents and decided to go and check it out for myself on Wednesday morning last week.

The coach is timetabled to leave West Ealing at 11:17 and I arrived at the station in good time soon after 11:00 and found confirmation on the station’s real time departure display.

Readers may recall I’d been worried about where the Diamond bus would depart from but found it conveniently parked right outside the station’s exit in Manor Road.

This time no vehicle was sitting there so I patiently waited but as 11:17 approached and still no bus in sight I decided to move to a more strategic spot on the corner of Manor Road and Argyle Road in case the size of the coach prevented it accessing Manor Road and it might instead use TfL bus stop A for the E7 and E11 just after the junction.

I kept an eye on both locations and just as I was about to give up, at about 11:23, an Oxford Tube liveried coach came quickly into view over the railway bridge and sped past both me and then the bus stop and in that split second I realised I had no chance of attracting the driver’s attention.

Undeterred and now armed with this nugget of pick up information through that bitter experience, I returned again yesterday morning and this time planted myself firmly at the bus stop in Argyle Road ready to flag down the coach.

Before that, as I left the station I asked the Elizabeth line employee on the gateline if she knew where the bus picked up and she emphatically replied it would be immediately outside but seeing my quizzical look added a rider “well it did when I was last on duty”. When I explained it hadn’t done so last week and queried how long ago had she seen it she did admit it was “three or four weeks ago”. Just to be sure she asked her colleague in the ticket office who confirmed it did pick up outside.

But that was then, and this is now I thought, recalling last week’s experience and thinking I wasn’t going to get left behind again despite now having a morsel of doubt sown by the emphatic nature of this advice from seemingly knowledgable staff.

I headed to bus stop A in Argyle Road and waited.

And sure enough at 11:20 an Oxford Tube liveried coach came into view over the railway bridge and my arm was immediately firmly extended out with a very welcome acknowledgment of said gesture by the nearside indicator now in flashing mode.

I was greeted by a smiling driver who seemed a bit surprised to see me explaining it was her first time driving this route and she wasn’t entirely sure where she was going.

And then I noticed two other passengers rushing up from the junction of Manor Road who were obviously doing my trick from last Wednesday of hedging their boarding bets (you can just spot them in the photo above). Luckily they made it and the three of us enjoyed the coach to ourselves with an upper deck front seat view …

… enabling us to take in the delights of the journey through a filthy front windscreen as we headed north along Argyle Road …

… joining the A40 …

… passing Northolt aerodrome…

.. leaving the A40 at Hillingdon and arriving at West Ruislip a couple of minutes early at 11:40 …

… for a great view of the HS2 works.

Whereas the Diamond bus had been able to take the access road to the car park on the east side of West Ruislip station by the Chiltern Railways served platform, this would have been too narrow for our tri-axle Volvo so Sam dropped us off at the bus stop just over the bridge on High Road.

Sam had worked a journey from Oxford into London earlier yesterday morning, swapped vehicles at Victoria, driven to West Ealing for this Wednesday only journey and after dropping us off was heading back to Victoria to return to Oxford.

Which begs the question what the duty does mid morning on the other days of the week?

It had been anther quirky ride and I’d had the pleasure of meeting Alex and Christian – who it turned out are blog readers and travelled yesterday having read about the journey in my blog back in January, so thanks guys and good to meet you both.

And really, that’s the purpose of today’s blog as a service to the quirky bus riding community.

In case any other readers are thinking of taking this journey for its quirkiness sake – and after all that’s the only market this journey serves – don’t be fooled by what station staff say – you need to be at bus stop A in Argyle Road and not outside the station.

Well, that’s until the operator might change again, of course.

And while so ever this ridiculous state of affairs continues, comments by the Treasury and DfT at the high cost of running the railway and they can’t afford a decent pay increase for staff ring hollow. The costs involved in running this bus are no doubt minor in the grand scheme of things but it’s still money down the drain every Wednesday morning.

Roger French

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