Seen Around

Tuesday 30th June 2026

Halfway through 2026 and time for another month end round up of miscellany spotted on my travels during the last few weeks.

Its very first Nationalised journey

And first up is the irony of spotting the very first GBR branded Southern Class 387 train calling at Hassocks station on the very first weekday morning of the new nationalised regime of the former Govia Thameslink Railway on Monday 1st June ….. on the 08:06 Brighton to Victoria which is….. a Gatwick Express journey…. so, of course, …. “tickets marked ‘Southern only’ are not valid on this service”.

Nice one. And then inside I noticed the brand colouring and seat moquette is for the former GWR services the train used to operate…

… and then I noticed the train stayed on Gatwick Express workings all week. I’ve been told there are “security reasons” for this, but won’t repeat them here as they seem too far fetched but interestingly I’ve yet to see it on an actual Southern working.

The Blackwater Link

A far more positive travel experience came from a journey on Stephensons bus route 90 between Witham and Maldon in Essex as I made my way to travel on route 99 featured in Sunday’s blog. Five smart new Enviro200 MMC buses have recently been introduced on to the route with four branded as The Blackwater Link and I was very impressed with not only the informative internal marketing…

… and maps…

… but also with the busy nature of a mid morning journey.

Stephensons took the route over as a tendered operation in 2003 and has gradually built it up to now being a largely commercial service with a doubling of the frequency from hourly to half-hourly and investment in new buses in 2003, 2010, 2016 and again this year. Well done to the team at Stephensons. It’s great to see the SME sector investing, expanding and succeeding.

How well do you know the Overground names?

Introduced in 2024, I must admit I’m still struggling with them, and so it seems is the auto-announcements on the Victoria line…

… which still refer to the “London Overground being part suspended” rather than using the individual line names. Which I thought was the whole point…

… of having the line names.

(It’s the Suffragette line).

Even Thameslink now acknowledges the new names on its on board status updates.

Stagecoach opens a new ‘Travel Hub’

I know it sounds impossible to believe but, yes, Stagecoach has gone against its usual trend of closing Travel Shops and a couple of weeks ago opened a ‘Travel hub’ (very on trend) in Fleming Way, Swindon where the town’s transformed bus station reopened last summer.

Stagecoach used to have a Travel Shop in the old bus station but now the helpful member of staff who looked after that facility is back again looking after the wonderful new Travel Hub.

Except don’t get too excited. It’s just a window in a wall in a tiny office in a huge office block where Stagecoach has rented part of the ground floor as a staff mess room facility.

But it’s a welcome addition to the Fleming Way facility and a shame Go-Ahead’s Swindon Buses couldn’t be part of the new arrangements especially as the timetable display looked somewhat pitiful when I called by yesterday having bumped into blog reader Tim who told me about it, otherwise I wouldn’t have known it was there…

… especially from the rear of the building where you can spot drivers through the tinted windows enjoying their new rest area and facilities.

Little Don

Among the varied bus routes operated by South Pennine Community Transport across South Yorkshire are two routes introduced last July with funding from the Stocksbridge Towns Fund. One is a daily 20 minute frequency town circular route 35 linking Stocksbridge with Fox Valley Shopping Centre and the other, a two-hourly route 34 linking the area with Barnsley. Both are operated by three Mercedes-Benz Sprinters with Ilesbus i-City bodies wearing this eye catching Little Don branding which I spotted while passing through Barnsley recently. Nice.

Slow and steady loses the race

I had time on my hands while in central London the other afternoon so took a ride on route 26 from Liverpool Street to Victoria. Even though it was as long ago as April 2023, I still think this journey as the preserve of the famous route 11 but in one of many shake ups to the Central London bus network that famous route got diverted at Parliament Square to serve Waterloo instead. So, guess how long the three and three quarter mile length journey took on what was an early afternoon in glorious sunshine with no extraordinary delays, even the approach to Trafalgar Square along the Strand was behaving?

It was 50 minutes, which wasn’t bad compared to the scheduled 45 minutes for the journey. But that works out at a speed of 4.5 mph. Tortuous. And the main reason why I and many other passengers have largely abandoned travelling by bus in central London. Back at Liverpool Street later in the early evening I was going to take a 149 down to London Bridge but seeing the traffic, I walked instead – and beat the 149 in the queue you can see in the above photo.

Levelling Up hasn’t reached Liverpool Street

Back at Liverpool Street I must say I hadn’t realised all the plaudits for Greater Anglia’s train fleet with level boarding is all very fine when the platforms can accommodate this, but here a Class 720 makes for a non accessible gap with the platform. Are all the accolades a little misplaced?

Witham sign

Back at Witham station there are two exits to streets either side of the tracks so if you don’t know which exit to use from the footbridge to catch a bus you have a 50/50 chance. Passengers using a taxi are guided to the right, but what about bus passengers? They too should head to the right, so why not add “…and BUSES” to the notice?

Cheltenham’s George Hotel double shelter

When in Cheltenham recently I was waiting for a bus back to the station at the George Hotel bus stop in the town centre and aside from wonky bus departure listings frustratingly covering up the very route information I wanted…

… I wasn’t sure which of the two bus shelters to wait in and where the bus would stop. I also noticed the wooden bench seat was positioned in exactly the place where if you sat you on it you wouldn’t be able to see if the bus was coming.

Perhaps that shelter furthest away from where I took the photos could usefully be moved elsewhere.

Meanwhile at Cheltenham Spa railway station I saw another of the refurbished Cross Country Voyager trains and I still can’t understand why the bright red front and rear carriage livery gives way to boring grey for the middle carriages.

It does look very odd to me

Large screens are wasted

I can’t understand why bus companies keep specifying these large screens at the front of new buses. The ones on the upper deck just spoil the view out of the front windows while this one on a Stagecoach lower deck Enviro200 was so intrusive passengers have to be advised to “mind your head”.

It didn’t display anything useful during the entire journey either. Useless. All they do is get in the way.

Air conditioning keeps you cool… and wet

It’s a bonus to be on air conditioned trains during the recent excessively hot days but while travelling on a Chiltern Railways class 165 the other day I began to feel an embarrassing damp patch on my behind only to discover it wasn’t me, but the seat I’d inadvertently chosen was positioned under a leaking unit in the roof.

I made my way to the toilet to see how wet my trousers had become to find myself in a rather nicely decorated accessible toilet area. The wonders of vinyl wrapping.

And talking of Chiltern, while travelling between Aylesbury and Buckingham on the X6/X60 the other week we passed through Winslow where the brand new station for the much delayed East-West railway line looked rather sad and unloved sitting behind its security fencing.

Hopefully one day in the next year or so we might see trains carrying passengers start to run on this line which has been sat ready and waiting since ….. late 2024. No rush then.

Lots of options from North Dulwich

I passed through North Dulwich station on Southern’s network the other day and must say the options for travel south from platform 2 from the line diagrams on display are impressive. Sadly though, in practice the direct journey possibilities are more restricted with a daytime half hourly service via Norbury to East Croydon and another half hourly service via Crystal Palace to Beckenham Junction and a peak journey via Mitcham to Sutton.

A sign of things to come?

Manchester seems to be leading the way these days and while in the city the other day I noticed the penalty fare for travel without a ticket on the Bee Network is £120 which is even more than the £100 penalty on National Rail.

Carbon savings mystery

I was intrigued by this display by LNER at York station not having a clue what it was saying. I’m sure some PR person thought it was a good idea though. It mentions something about football pitches and woodland at the bottom right with the wording on the left advising “the LNER Carbon Saving Departures Board compares the carbon emissions of trains versus planes and cars and equates it to some easily recognised objects.” The only problem is it was showing the number of football pitches of woodland as zero.

Meanwhile outside the station the once bustling area where passengers could catch a bus immediately outside has now been turned into a tranquil area with benches and bollards while passengers move further along to where the newly sited bus stops and associated ‘public realm’ are still under construction…

… making for quite a squeeze for waiting passengers and passers by.

The first stop is for rail replacement buses/coaches, National Express, Sightseeing and East Yorkshire’s bus routes to Hull and seemed very busy when I passed through…

… only to see why, a few minutes later, as the Ghost Bus Tour Routemaster arrived.

The other side of the road looked more organised.

Back in the station I was going to catch the TransPennine Express hourly train to Scarborough – very popular with holidaymakers – so why is this yet another example of a train ready in the platform but passengers having to stand waiting for someone to come and unlock the doors?

We were let on with six minutes to go before departure, so I suppose it could have been worse. And at least it was a six car train rather than some departures which leave with just three.

Marylebone toilet news

A black mark to Chiltern Railways which manages Marylebone station in London and where not only were all but one toilet cubicle out of action in the Gents but so were two of the three hand dryers.

A poor show.

Back in Brighton

Back in Brighton I was pleased to see Stagecoach hasn’t yet obliterated its attractive Coastliner livery for the famous route 700 along the coast. Let’s hope it’s some time before its replaced with the boring steel blue national livery, but it’s unfortunate the route map depicted on the side and rear doesn’t reflect the fact this long standing route was split into three separate sections last April (Brighton-Littlehampton-Chichester-Portsmouth) with the Portsmouth end split off as far back as 2023.

It’s also only the eastern end of the route that runs “up to every 12 mins”.

A shout out to Lloyds Coaches

Following the initiative by the Omnibus Society to publish a timetable for Powys, I was delighted to hear from Daniel King, Assistant Operations Manager at Lloyds Coaches in Machynlleth letting me know “we have developed our own guide to our services across North and Mid Wales including those of other operators on the Network Map with an initial 5000 copies to be distributed on bus, at local accommodation providers, local businesses and an initial leaflet drop and is also available to download at https://lloydscoaches.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Explore-North-Mid-Wales-with-Lloyds-Coaches-Summer-2026.pdf“

It’s a brilliant timetable with not only a great map but a full range of ideas of places to visit across this wonderful part of North and Mid Wales.

Well done to Daniel and the team at Lloyds – I’m sure it will attract more passengers this summer to the network.

A shout out to Northern

I was also impressed by the above simple and effective way of letting passengers know which coaches to alight from at stations where the train can’t fit into the platform. Well done to Northern as well as for the signage celebrating the historic background to the ‘bishop line’ between Bishop Aukland and Darlington…

… although the inclusion of CrossCountry’s logo initially threw me until I realised they probably sponsored the 200th Anniversary celebrations last year so needed to have a presence on this signage.

A South Notts Centenary Celebration

My thanks to blog reader Andrew who let me know about next month’s celebratory weekend on 18/19th July to mark the 100th Anniversary of the former South Notts bus company. As the above news story from West Bridgford Wire reports, there are plans for a cavalcade of preserved and associated South Notts vehicles as well as an open day at the Ruddington heritage museum and full details can be obtained by clicking on this link.

Preston’s historic shelter

And finally, I’ve featured it before, but travelling around Preston earlier this month I once again was pleased to see this historic bus shelter still survives at the bottom of Black Bull Lane.

More miscellany at the end of next month

Roger French

Summer blogging timetable: 06:00 TThSSu