Reading and Maidenhead rejoined by bus

Thursday 6th March 2025

It’s been quite a few years since Reading and Maidenhead were linked with a regular direct bus route. The connection was once a mainstay inter-urban route operated by the old Thames Valley Traction Company Ltd (inevitably numbered 1 in its extensive network across Berkshire) but excellent rail links between the two towns pretty much killed it off.

In more recent times the 21st Century version of Thames Valley (part of Reading Buses) has run a two-hourly tendered route 127 on Saturdays for Wokingham Borough Council between Reading and Maidenhead via Woodley, Sonning, Twyford and Wargrave with a 65/67 minute end-to-end journey time.

However in a surprise development on 24th February, Carousel Buses filled the long established weekday void with the introduction of a new hourly route, also numbered 127, between the two towns.

Just to add a touch of confusion, unlike Thames Valley’s Saturday 127, Carousel’s Monday to Friday 127 takes a more direct route missing out Woodley, Sonning and Wargrave diverting off the A4 only to serve Twyford, and as it enters Maidenhead, it serves an area to the north of the A4 including St Mark’s Hospital (also served by Thames Valley’s routes 3 and 9), whereas the Saturday version of the 127 takes a direct route into Maidenhead on the A4. I’ve added Carousel’s 127 (in red) to Thames Valley’s Maidenhead network map below to show that variation.

Carousel’s hourly frequency across a 07:00 to 18:30 operating day takes two buses with a 50 minute journey time eastbound (53 minutes westbound) giving a comfortable 7-10 minute stand time at each end.

Between Reading and Twyford buses replace one journey each hour Carousel had been running as part of its 20 minute frequency route 850 between Reading, Henley and High Wycombe. In a change to that route at the same time as introducing the 127, buses now run at a reduced half hourly frequency between Reading and Henley from where a new improved 15 minute frequency applies to High Wycombe.

Although not an even 20 minutes, the three buses an hour between Reading and Twyford (routes 127 and 850) run to a coordinated 00-15-30-00-15-30 etc minutes past each hour pattern in both directions.

I took a ride on route 127 on Tuesday of last week, its second day, to see how it was doing.

I caught the 11:00 departure from Reading which arrived on time from Maidenhead at 10:50 with five passengers alighting.

There seemed to be some late running afflicting the 850 that morning with the 10:15 departure for High Wycombe leaving as late as 10:40 and the next bus due away at 10:45 not far behind it.

The bus I caught was a short E200 wearing Carousel”s ‘Country’ branded livery now being used for routes radiating out from High Wycombe. The driver was very friendly and it was good to see supplies of a promotional leaflet on board which I saw passengers help themselves to as they alighted.

Reading Buses and/or Carousel had updated the smart timetable display at bus stop FC in Friar Street…

… although the bus stop flag will probably take a little longer but at least it mentions the 127 already for the Saturday journeys and it’s clean and full of information.

Compare that with a bus stop along the route in Wokingham Borough Council’s area…

… and the contrast is stark. But good to see Carousel had updated its timetable information in the frame below.

It had also added the new 127 timetable to the display at Maidenhead’s terminal point in Frascati Way, but, oh dear, you can see the contrast with local authority involvement in bus stop displays once again.

Back in Reading having got the four waiting passengers on board…

… we left on time at 11:00 picking up a couple more as we headed out of Reading’s town centre with one of those alighting at Cemetery Junction where another boarded. As we hit the outskirts of Reading two alighted at Shepherds House Lane but then as we continued towards Twyford it became obvious the woman who’d boarded at Cemetery Junction was expecting us to go via Woodley telling the driver “that’s where it goes on Saturdays” bringing home the confusion caused by using the same route number for two different variations of route. (I understand the Saturday version may be in line to receive an added A suffix soon to overcome this problem.)

Two more of the Reading passengers alighted in Charvil as we entered Twyford and then, after where the 850 heads off to Henley and High Wycombe, we continued into virgin Monday-Friday territory and immediately picked up two passengers making for three on board including one who’d boarded in Reading and went all the way to St Mark’s Hospital and we also picked up another passenger making a local journey in the Maidenhead area.

The most impressive thing was passing the other bus at Hare Hatch heading towards Reading which I reckon must have had around a dozen passengers on board. For day two, that struck me as being very encouraging.

Arriving in Maidenhead, a relief driver was waiting in a car, having presumably driven over from Carousel’s base in High Wycombe, indicating the challenge of running a route such as this away from a base.

The bus left at midday with three on board to set off on its circuitous route around Maidenhead’s town centre before heading back to Reading via St Mark’s.

It’ll be interesting to see if Carousel can defy the domination of the rail service between Reading and Maidenhead. For those living a long way from a station I’m sure this new version of the 127 will be very welcome.

SInce taking this photo I’ve been told the £2 sticker is being removed on the advert for Flightline 102

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS

41 thoughts on “Reading and Maidenhead rejoined by bus”

  1. Seems a shame Reading Buses and Carousel can’t jointly operate the Reading – Henley – High Wycombe route since there are now four buses an hour throughout its length (with the 28 and two of the 850s turning at Henley from the south and north respectively).

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  2. It does seem as if Carousel had done some good pre-publicity. Perhaps also running a route from a place like Reading, where – ‘good-bus-territory’ or not – the local area is very competently served, so that the average inhabitant, let alone regular bus-users, are more likely to know where to find bus information, understand it when they see it, and keep up with bus network developments.

    I’m not sure that the ‘council vs bus company’ distinction is very fair, though it may be in this particular case of upkeep of bus stops and information. When I was young, some commercial companies made little attempt to ease the parts of journeys which were not actually on a bus. Even today, the difference between one company and another and one council and another may be greater than between companies and councils overall. Certainly the funding cuts councils have had to cope with in the last decade will have had an effect. But so also may the political colour of the people who get elected (e.g. a ‘Green councillor will probably take a bigger interest in getting more people to use public transport). But I’m sure your theme of getting councils and bus companies to talk constructively to one another should be the best way of getting improvements happening on the ground. Re publicity, perhaps they should all make a journey on the London Underground, where signage is big and clear, and the familiar map makes it hard not to see how to get where you want to go; even TfL’s bus people could learn a thing or two…

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  3. It seems almost inconceivable that the former trunk Thames Valley service 1 faded away without replacement on this section and so many decades ago. A re-instatement of a bus service now with OAP free travel certainly stands a better chance than it would have done two decades ago. Another odd case of two adjacent towns not being linked by a once frequent bus service anymore. Think Sevenoaks-Bromley as another example.

    As a small matter of interest, Reading Mainline, complete with Routemasters tendered for the Saturday 127 back in the 1990s, so that would have brought some good Enthusiast loadings at least!

    Whilst the bus stops bring shame upon Wokingham Borough Council, we really cannot knock them too much, as until very recently, have continued to produce three good quality area timetable booklets, and still produce a very comprehensive bus map, their area boundary stretching almost into urban Reading.

    Terence Uden

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    1. I visited Sevenoaks a while back and was shocked by the total lack of buses everywhere. The only proper service was the 402 to Tunbridge Wells. Recently the 3 was introduced to restore a link back to Orpington but it only runs 3 times/ day plus 1 school journey. Routes run to Swanley, Gravesend and Westerham but are only a handful of journeys a day as well and service is mostly over by 4pm! Sevenoaks is well served by trains but I remember local road traffic was awful. I imagine the town was well served by bus when it was all London Country as apart of one network. When it was cut off from the wider London network, it clearly withered away and died (to a lesser extent, the same happened where Herts and Essex meet London).

      By contrast, nearby Westerham still gets a London bus and they run to 1am! It’s bizarre that the wider area isn’t better connected as I doubt it’s much less populated than the Thames Valley and the rest of Kent has a fairly decent regional network that compliments the rail network. Sevenoaks like most towns just outside London clearly needs to be apart of the same regulated transport system and it’s good to see contactless finally available on the trains there, hopefully this will eventually expand to the buses in places around London too. It seems many of the smaller places provide decent demand when they are integrated properly.

      I’d say this is also true with bus routes that appear to parallel the railway but if routed properly actually hover up all the places that trains can’t serve, as is likely the case with this new 127 route.

      Aaron

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    2. @Terence Uden

      As Roger mentions, there is a long-established established public transport link between Reading and Maidenhead. It runs several times an hour, journey time less than 20 minutes, running seven days a week, all day including late in the evening.

      Bearing that in mind, is there a need for another public transport link between the same two places, but taking three times as long, running only once an hour, only until 17:00, only four journeys on Saturdays and nothing at all on Sundays? If the 127 deserves to succeed, it will be for the opportunities it opens up for intermediate journeys rather than end-to-end.

      Similar can be said for the Bromley <> Sevenoaks link. Public transport already links the two towns. Admittedly, Sevenoaks station is distant from the town centre, but a sensible solution (in my opinion) would be a reasonably frequent local bus link between station and town, with through ticketing, rather than a relatively infrequent bus running through open countryside where potential passengers are few in number.

      Malc M

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      1. Indeed MalcM, and the railway was there long, long before the Thames Valley 1.

        But clearly both the Maidenhead-Reading Road, as with Sevenoaks-Bromley, was able to support major trunk bus (plus Green Line in the latter case) services in addition. My point being that these have faded away to nothing, so it is good to see at least one return.

        And however good a railway link may be, not everyone lives outside a station.

        Terence Uden

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  5. There are service updates for 6 April for the Windsor and Maidenhead areas here:

    https://www.rbwm.gov.uk/transport-and-streets/public-transport/bus-routes

    https://www.thamesvalleybuses.com/new-services-maidenhead-windsor-and-slough

    https://www.carouselbuses.co.uk/new-services-windsor-maidenhead-6th-april-2025

    Probably the best one is the RWBM version . . . it’s slightly more comprehensive. All in all, the service patterns do appear to be much improved than currently. Roger has highlighted the confusion between the routes 127 . . . the Saturday operation is contracted to Wokingham BC, who aren’t involved in the RWBM changes.

    There are a couple of competitive instances between Thames Valley and Carousel in Maidenhead . . . one potentially damaging, one much less so. The big news is the restoration of a through service between High Wycombe, Maidenhead and Windsor . . . I can only say it must be 45-50 years since this was cancelled!! Timetables imply that a bus from Wycombe will, on arrival in Windsor, continue to Staines via Datchet!! Carousel in Surrey!!

    I don’t think there has ever been a link between Wraysbury and Windsor . . . at least not since the 1940s. Mind you . . . I can’t see huge numbers of passengers travelling,

    Carousel have also taken the Chesham and Amersham rural contracts from the Aylesbury Reds, although full details aren’t yet available. They do appear to be taking over in South Buckinghamshire! If I were FirstBus in Slough, I’d be looking over my shoulder just now . . .

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  6. To me there should be scope for later journeys 1800 1900 through with 2000 as the garage journeys. Given the passenger comment is there enough to run a 127a weekdays too hourly or two hourly. I note running time would increase giving some clockface problems but would fill in the missing mid half hour departure with the 850.

    JBC Prestatyn

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    1. A large chunk of the 127(A) has an hourly service to Reading on weekdays. On Monday to Fridays the 128 runs hourly from Reading to Wokingham via Sonning and Tyford. The 127A is a Saturday variant replacing alternate 128s which runs from Reading to Tyword, but then runs to Maidenhead instead of Wokingham.

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      1. Thames Valley 128 actually runs every 65” across the middle of the day, with departures from Reading (e/b) and Twyford (w/b) running in the 30’ gap between 850s when 127 doesn’t run. However, the 65’ frequency means that only the 1230 ex Reading and 1300 ex Twyford precisely split the difference, with surrounding departures from Reading, for instance at 1020, 1125, 1335 and 1440. Could be worse, but it’s a shame the 128 can’t be made hourly somehow to create an exact 15’ frequency over the section.

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  7. Particularly impressive was that, so far as I could see, every bus stop on the entire route had the eye-catching timetable already in place on the first morning. The electronic displays at the Maidenhead terminus also included the new route on the first morning.

    With Carousel taking on much of the town service network in Maidenhead from April 6th, it will be interesting to see whether they take on a local base there, since, as stated in the article, the 127 is currently operated with drivers ferried from Wycombe by car.

    As part of the April 6th changes, the long-standing Whitebus route 01, uniquely operating through the Royal Park at Windsor, and recently featured in this column, will be changing to Thames Valley operation losing the distinctive ‘zero’ prefix to the route number in the process.

    Bob Westaway

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    1. Of particular interest in the alterations to the 01, is that the Saturday service becomes a 1A, and will run via Old Windsor to enter the Great Park on the east side, something only done previously by school journeys (which remain). The Saturday service will also serve Savil Gardens when a suitable turning point is arranged.

      Liked by 1 person

  8. FlixBus and Transport Made Simple partner up

    TMS (Vectare) is to add five new FlixBus specification Yutong GT12 coaches to the network, with its first routes due to go live in mid-April.

    Operations will also be run by the Nottingham depot of Transport Made Simple’s Central Connect division, which delivers school and local bus services across the East Midlands, Essex and Hertfordshire.

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  9. In combination with the wider changes in Windsor/Maidenhead/Wycombe this seems like really positive news which makes a nice change. Are we turning a corner in bus provision?

    I completely get the desire to test the market with new routes but I do think anything less than half hourly isn’t enough to attract substantial custom. A few case studies in rail where doubling frequency has caused passenger numbers to triple, does the same apply to bus?

    Surfblue

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    1. The challenge is, surfblue, about who bears commercial risk. To introduce a 60 min headway on the 127 is a £300k+ punt… Imagine being the manager who wants to make a £1m gamble on a route that has no current service.

      Stagecoach did such a gamble on the SW Falcon but that is/was very rare.

      Remember that on rail, many of the costs are already fixed. For buses, many more are direct operating costs.

      BW2

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    2. I’d say it depends on local factors but when the X26 was renumbered to SL7 in 2023, TFL doubled the frequency from every 30 to every 15 minutes and the ridership was reported as doubling without really taking passengers from other routes in South West London, so it can happen. The route was once hourly! The increased frequency actually grew the overall passenger base and I think the Elizabeth Line has done the same for rail as well. I see bus ridership as a delicate balance, getting the right level of service for an area is difficult but once it’s there, the passenger base seems to be self-sustaining. Making people aware of what routes actually exist is as important as it being reliable. Drastic changes or cuts make it very hard to recover. I’d like to see more routes in more places run on Sundays and later Mon-Sat before increasing the weekday frequency.

      Aaron

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      1. Thanks all for the replies. I generally enjoy reading the comments at much as the main blog thanks to the wealth of knowledge various individuals have. It’s nice that there’s still a few corners of the internet like this with considered discussions where people are respectful to each other!

        Surfblue

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  10. An hourly timetable is enough to test the market … as Roger’s report mentions, one bus did seem to have a reasonable load of passengers.

    Carousel have already increased frequencies on some routes in High Wycombe, which demonstrates their determination to grow where appropriate.

    The other factor in play on Route 127 is that the number of ‘chimneys’ along the A4 is pretty low, so the success or otherwise of the new route is going to depend on longer-distance passengers … and lots of them.

    If the service does well, then an uplift in frequency can be introduced in 3 months …. on the railways that’s more like three years!!

    £300k or £600k …. I know which I’d gamble on !!

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  11. it is a shame that the Carousel 127 leaflet does not include the Thames Valley Saturday times. In big letters under the M-F timetable it says No Service on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays. Few would then bother reading the small print underneath that mentions that Thames Valley run a Saturday service via a different route. A contact at Carousel said that the plan was to run double deckers on the 850 journeys that have the 30 min headway at the Reading end, but to date that does not seem to have happened on a regular basis. He also said they were looking for a base in the area.

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    1. I can’t see how it helps the passenger to use the same number as an established service but using a different routeing, and not providing information about the Saturday service of the same number.

      How are passengers (and potential passengers) meant to get their heads around that? Pity the passenger who Roger reports expected the 127 bus to go to Woodley (aha, but this is a different 127 bus, not the 127 bus you thought it was). I wonder what impression that passenger has of buses now?

      Malc M

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  12. The Saturday only 127 was one of my early ENCTS projects in the days when Courtney ruled the roads in the area. I got to Maidenhead on a Courtney 15 from Slough. The enormous herd of cattle encountered crossing Dorney Common delayed the journey considerably! YJ62FAM refers. After drinks in Maidenhead, I went forward to Reading on the 127. I did not know the route and it was almost interminable the way we served all the estate roads in Woodley. YJ13HKW refers. Drinks in Reading were essential before I needed to head home to Surrey. Route 4 to Bracknell (Car 216) started my rush for home. All this on 21/07/2018!

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  13. Meanwhile in Arriva’s latest attempt to make bus travel as difficult as possible, the 2, 20 and 322 in Hertfordshire will move to a MF daytime frequency of every 20 mins on school days and on non schooldays will operate every 30 minutes.

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  14. Electric BYDs join Uno

    University of Hertfordshire-owned operator, Uno, has launched the first five of its zero-emission electric buses on its newly branded Electric Shuttle. The five buses, which will run on the route between campuses at the University of Hertfordshire and the site’s park and ride, are the first of 27 being delivered over the next 12 months.

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    1. I believe this was the Herts CC Zebra money that was originally planned to electrify the Arriva network in Stevenage. An excellent result for Uno who I assume will be able to replace their fleet of Citaros many of which are getting pretty old.

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  15. It will be interesting to see what TfL do with their old electric buses. Typically TFL have replaced old buses after 5 to 7 years

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    1. I read a quite interesting piece recently saying that the traditional market for a lot of mid-life buses of independents and other operators using them for school runs may not exist for electric buses as the charging infrastructure doesn’t exist. I would not be suprised to see TfL move the same model as they have for the NBfL of keeping them for the life of two 5-7 year contracts with a midlife refurb.

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  16. The first eclectic bus in London commenced service in 1907 and ran between Victoria and Kilburn and was operated by Electrobus. IT appears the finances of the company were a bit suspect and it did not last long

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    1. The dodgy person behind Electrobus was also involved with one of the predecessors of the Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company, which was better known as Midland Red. BMMO’s early history involves some ‘interesting’ characters who would certainly not pass muster nowadays.

      It’s long been asked if the history of buses would have been very different – with electric being the standard by WW1 rather than petrol – had Electrobus not been, ahem, affected by their dodgy investor.

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  17. Another thing we could learn from the Austrian, Swiss, Germans etc is to stop the ludicrous use of the same route number for different routes in the same area! This is hugely confusing and does nothing to draw anybody, other than those who are absolutely have to, use bus services.

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  18. By coincidence I was on the 127 at 11.00 from Maidenhead which Roger saw at Hare Hatch and indeed there were very few empty seats which suggests a good start for the new service.

    As for the long term viability, given the challenge of the Elizabeth line and with the future expansion of Carousel services in Maidenhead perhaps they should consider extending the 127 to Heathrow T5, reinstating the link abandoned by First 2 years ago. Although a longer journey time than First’s RA1, it would be considerably cheaper at £3 (RA1 typically £24) and so potentially attractive to both airport staff and travellers.

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    1. The train from Reading to Heathrow, with one change, is “only” around £15, without a Railcard.

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  20. It might make sense to reopen a part of the abandoned North London Heights line from Finsbury Park to Muswell Hill. A lot of the infrastructure has gone at the Finsbury Park end so that would probably need to go into tunnel

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  21. I travelled on it Tuesday 4 March between M’head and Reading. Great on time service, friendly helpful drivers and a lot quieter than the rattlers that Thames Valley use in Maidenhead. Beats the cancel ridden Elizabeth line service. Many thanks Carousel buses how about pitching to RBWM to run the services in Maidenhead.

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    1. Not long to wait actually – from 6th April Carousel are taking over the tendered Maidenhead town services from Thames Valley (see Greenline727’s post of 6th March@0802). There is an excellent new RBWM all-operator map of the new network on their website at https://www.rbwm.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-03/transport_map_of_bus_services_in_rbwm.pdf

      This is produced by Carousel to the same format as their ‘Wycombe SMARTZone’ map and will presumably appear in due course on the Carousel website. Looking at the map’s list of services, it seems amazing that Carousel will be running more services in RBWM (13) than any other operator – the others being Thames Valley (11), Reading Buses (1), White Bus (2), First (2) and Red Eagle (3).  In Maidenhead itself, Carousel will have nine departures per hr from Frascati Way on services 3/A,4,7A,9,37 and 127 compared with Thames Valley’s six on 7, 16 and 53.

      The main downside of all this is that White Bus will no longer have any routes in Windsor itself, but these have been very much in the minority anyway since their expansion into Surrey. In fact, I’m not sure which would have seemed more unlikely only a couple of years ago – Carousel running 37 hrly from High Wycombe to Windsor or White Bus every 30′ from Woking to Hatton Cross !

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  22. Thanks to those informing me of other services out of Reading on the main corridor filling in part of the clockface.

    I would disagree that a 2nd bus would be a £300k risk, depending on age and driver costs the actual amount at least to test the water would be relatively modest on a weekly basis – even a hired vehicle in dealer white to see if revenue gained exceeds the costs.

    As to frequencies doubling exceeding passenger gains of more than 2+ the obvious was the Harry Blundred Minibus services, first in Exeter / Devon then elsewhere where the number of seats per hour was retained but smaller buses at more frequency increased beyond the number of bus multiples of passengers. Changes to disabled access have made smaller buses not really viable in a mass fast transit area now , with the rise of vehicles such as Carousel are using.

    The only other thing I feel of note is why Reading Transport didnt try such a service in the recent past

    JBC Prestatyn

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    1. Bear in mind it is 70 days to deregister, so how long do you give a service to prove itself before taking such action? Six months with a hired-in vehicle will easily chew up more than £150k, for probably revenue of considerably under 1K per week (new routes don’t automatically get refunded for the Bus Fare Cap).

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  23. I have to say the timetable booklet for the 127 looks strikingly similar to the new booklets that Sanders Coaches have been issuing in North Norfolk. Maybe a common trend in the “design language”, or maybe same design company, but welcome either way.

    The timetable posters at the bus stops are better, though

    MilesT

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