In my Inbox

Thursday 1st October 2026

Time for another delve into my inbox and feature some of the emails readers have been sending to busandtrainuser@gmail.com over the last month or so. But first something that dropped through my PostBox just a couple of days ago…

Shrewsbury Area Bus Timetables

… yes, it’s another Omnibus Society produced comprehensive timetable book and this time for the Shrewsbury area.

It’s been compiled once again by Keith Shayshutt, together with Gary Nolan, and features every timetable for town routes, inter-urban routes and Park and Ride and as you can see from the above image, features all nine bus operators that now run into the town including the recently established Hotspur branded operation – from the same stable that brings us Centrebus, D&G Bus, Select Bus and Chaserider.

Timetables are laid out across the 26 pages in the booklet together with a network map showing Arriva’s routes as well as the Shropshire countywide map from Bus Atlas thanks to Brendan Fox.

As with both the recently produced timetable booklets for Powys and Dumfries & Galloway it’s to the Omnibus Society’s huge credit it’s stepping in to oversee publications of this kind in the absence of anything useful from the local authorities.

Well done to both Keith and Gary on another great production.

The timetable booklet is available to purchase on ebay for £4.99 and here’s a link which takes you directly to the relevant page.

Hotspur on target

And talking of Hotspur, Derek wrote describing his recent very positive experiences travelling on the newly won tendered bus routes in the Shrewsbury area which D&G Bus won from Arriva. As already highlighted, D&G have reintroduced the Hotspur branding and Derek was very impressed.

“I took the opportunity last Saturday to ride on Hotspur service 64 from Shrewsbury through to Hanley and return. In both directions, at stages throughout, both the 09.15 from Shrewsbury, and the 13.15 from Hanley were loaded to capacity. Clearly however the overwhelming bulk of the trade is to and from the excellent shopping facilities available at Newcastle under Lyme. On departure from Shrewsbury the EVoRa displayed Hanley, something Arriva never did! Likewise on return Shrewsbury was displayed.
However, with the number of other frequent services to and from Newcastle to Hanley. It’s begs the question, would it not be more viable to terminate the 64 at Newcastle? On my outward journey, after the mass exodus at Newcastle, only I and three other passengers remained. On the 13.15 from Hanley, only two other passengers and I joined, until the bus filled up again at Newcastle.
The drivers I encountered clearly appeared to be entering into the spirit of providing a good service with their newly won venture. The vehicles were nicely turned out both inside and out. I earwigged on a conversation, basically saying a lot of Shrewsbury drivers are hoping the service will fail under Hotspur. What Arriva drivers need to understand is the service was allowed to fail under their employer. Thank goodness we have the likes of D&G in the guise of Hotspur to salvage the situation!”

And, yes, Hotspur is not a new name for the area. Midland Red used it as a brand name in the Shrewsbury and Ludlow area from 1979.

Double Vision

Mike emailed just yesterday to point out one of those “why on earth do they do it like that?” phenomena at Tamworth station. He wrote: “I thought you might find the attached photo of information screens in the waiting room on platform 4 of Tamworth station of some note (and I think there’s similar on other platforms). As you can probably tell, the full display consists of two pages of information and, helpfully you would think, there are two side-by-side screens to display them on. Except that, less helpfully, both screens show page 1, followed by page 2 on both, and so on. You’d think it would be a fairly simple task to get them to display page 1 and page 2 side-by-side, but it’s been like this for several years to my certain knowledge. What a waste of expensive screen space!”

Why on earth do they do it like that?

Better buses for Southwark?

Tim got in touch to let me know about the “London Borough of Southwark, with a huge sum of money from the Mayor, is doing a staggeringly complex and drawn out consultation process on buses through the borough.” Tim provided a hyperlink to the Council’s website which gives full details of the proposals, yard-by-yard along the corridor between London Bridge, Elephant & Castle, Camberwell Green and Dulwich to the South Circular Road. The extensive consultation, which even included an invitation to evening guided walks along the route during August, has now closed.

It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of all this, but as Tim points out “this is an area with no tubes and very reliant on buses and yet there’s no mention in the proposals of the things which annoy passengers and have made the buses almost unusable to reach central London in recent years – the 20mph limit, constant regulation of the service and above all repeated reductions in services. Ironically given the proposal is for the London Bridge to East Dulwich corridor, this is a journey which cannot be done by direct bus since the 40 was diverted to Clerkenwell to replace the 45 a few years ago cutting off a direct link to the City.”

Tim adds “even more ironic, just at the time this expensive and drawn out consultation is going on, TFL is doing a consultation on cutting another very longstanding link to the City, the 42, which will terminate in a no-man’s land south of Tower Bridge (since we know these consultations are always a foregone conclusion). The grounds – that Tower Bridge causes delays – are highly spurious based on my experience of using the route, especially as the 343 was recently extended just to go over the bridge and terminate on the north side, which surely TFL wouldn’t have done if it causes such delays!”

WESTLink’s Demand (Un)Responsive Transport

Patrick wrote to let me know about his recent experience booking a journey on the WESTlink DRT. Following changes to the Wrington zone in North Somerset, Patrick emailed WESTlink to let them know despite specifying the Sandford Station East bus stop as his desired pick up and Yatton railway station as his destination on the App, the software wouldn’t let him book with the following message…

….this struck Patrick as odd, not least as the stop serves the Sandford Station retirement village on the A368 and there’s a clearly marked bus stop at this location used by First Bus routes 126 to Wells and U2 to Bristol (as can be seen below).

Undaunted by not receiving a reply Patrick followed up his email with a reminder and received the following reply: “although Sandford and Winscombe have now been added to the Wrington zone, the Sandford Station East and West bus stops are not currently recognised by our system as safe/eligible WESTlink pick-up or drop-off points. This means, for the time being, you can only board or leave the WESTlink vehicle at the virtual bus stop offered by the system. This may change in the future if the stop locations are reviewed and added to the system, but unfortunately we are unable to manually override this at present.”

Patrick had also asked for clarification if the new five mile radius limit for a journey is ‘as the crow flies’ or ‘by the route taken’ which elicited the reply: “regarding the 5-mile cap, this is a limit applied automatically by our system to journeys starting or ending in the Wrington zone. The system automatically checks whether a journey falls within the permitted mileage, so unfortunately we cannot manually approve a journey based on the distance shown on a map or whether it appears to be within five miles as the crow flies.” Which means you need to know the length of your desired journey before booking.

Patrick pointed out in his reply to that reply that the WESTlink online zonal maps don’t show any “virtual bus stops” so understandably asked how is one supposed to be able to book from and to a location that’s a mystery. Patrick suggested someone give him a ring to explain things.

Back came the reply: “we understand the information shown on the different maps can be confusing, particularly when they appear to show different coverage and you are unable to identify the available pick-up and drop-off points. Unfortunately, we are unable to call customers directly to guide them through the booking process. However, our Live Support Team will be happy to assist you over the phone and can walk you through the available options and help you with your booking. Please give us a call on +44 117 457 8561 and our team will be happy to help.”

Undeterred by this continual fobbing off, Patrick persevered with his query with a phone call to the “Live Support Team” as suggested and followed up with an email explaining what happened…

“Good morning, I rang Westlink this morning on the number you gave below – the book a ride number. Very helpful American woman answered. I tried to book a ride from Sandford Station East bus stop in the Wrington Zone to Yatton Rail Station to arrive tomorrow at 10am. She was unable to locate Sandford Station East bus stop but located my address (less than a ‘stone’s throw’ away’). She said there are no pick-up points for that address and I would need to use regular buses. I asked her if I should report this, given that I now live within the Wrington Zone. Yes. She texted me the email address (which is the one I am already using for this conversation). So, I am reporting it!“

“1. I still don’t know why there are no pickup points (real or virtual) listed for my address, given I live (according to some of the maps – see below) in the Wrington Zone? 2. Even if it did work, I don’t know if Yatton Rail Station is within the mystical 5 mile radius.”

Ignoring a banal reply to that which missed the points Patrick made entirely, he followed up with another email asking for answers which was acknowledged with the response…“thank you for getting in touch. We’re very sorry to hear about the situation you’ve described. Your enquiry has been forwarded to the relevant team, who will review it as soon as possible. We will get back to you as soon as we have an update.If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.”

Patrick has promised to let me know when the WESTlink Team eventually do reply with an answer and I’ll gladly update blog readers in due course.

Slinky’s Unresponsiveness

On a similar theme Peter sent me an interesting full page article from the online magazine ‘The Somerset Leveller’ reviewing the county’s DRT branded Slinky and featuring Susan Rose “who uses the bus to travel from her home in Huish Episcopi to tend her livestock in Long Sutton”. She explained how she sometimes uses the bus two or three times a day and “had noticed a variation in services in recent months”.

Susan told the magazine “it seems the system doesn’t work and has been a shambles …. some people have been back and forth on buses, away from where they want to go, to pick up other passengers.” Welcome to the world of DRT, Susan.

The Fixed Timetable DRT … that still makes you book

And one more DRT update comes from David who points out the anomaly caused by this month’s replacement of Misterley Motors route 745 in Shropshire between Pontesbury, Bishop’s Castle, Aston-on-Clun, Craven Arms and Ludlow by Shrewsbury Dial-A-Ride (aka Shrewsbury Community Transport) running the now branded ‘Three Castles Shuttle’ one shopping return journey to a fixed timetable on MWFS…

… except requiring passengers to register and book their travel in advance.

And just to add to this non sensical complication, four weeks into the new regime and the Book Here link still doesn’t work.

However, bookings can be made by phone or email but what’s the point of adding this complication to a shopping journey to Ludlow and back? Crazy.

Weardale Motor’s heritage

Paul got in touch following the blog about route 99 operated by Weardale Motor Services and sent the above photo with the added comment: “although I haven’t travelled on Weardale’s contemporary buses, I did have the pleasure of riding on one of their earlier buses whilst visiting the Beamish museum during August this year. The 1949 All Leyland PD2 performed effortlessly around the museum circuit and was one of many other old buses the museum operates.” Thanks Paul.

Cambridgeshire’s Integrated Timetable Book

Ben got in touch after the recent Blog about Berkshire’s comprehensive timetable for the Reading area to remind me of the great timetables Eastern Counties used to produce including this example of comprehensive coverage of operators (including British Rail) from May 1980.

15 years on…

Meanwhile, in the out-of-date timetable on display stakes is this example sent to me by Troy from Carlisle’s Kingmoor Park displaying “times correct as of July 2011”. I’m sure they were!

Summit to think about

John emailed with a fascinating idea …. “we started to put together a list of the potential bus summits in England. The top 20 that emerged are here, but it starts to get a little murky as you go on. We were intrigued as to how many might be DalesBus. The Northern DalesBus does 2 in one route! The Little White Bus Dales Jumper is included and comes in at No2 but is a bookable service and thus may not qualify. Incidentally the highest bus rail interchange in the country is …. well you can probably guess where (1150ft)!”

And thanks to John’s research, here’s the list…

A stop that’s survived

Blog reader John is always on the look out for quirky things to spot and got in touch to tell me he spotted one of the original London Transport bus stop poles still doing great service in Park Street Luton the other day.

The above images are from Google Street View but John managed to get a photo through the bus window as he passed by which shows it’s even still got space for route numbers.

They don’t make them like that these days.

Avoid East Croydon between 06:00 and 06:02

Robin wrote to let me know of an oddity at East Croydon rail station where “you cannot tap in or out (wonder how people will know that given the notice is outside of the gateline) between 0600 and 0602″ due to a ‘gates reset at this time’.

Robin asks, quite pertinently “why cannot the reset be done earlier?”. A good question.

Robin also spotted an Irizar ie tram (ie it’s a bus) on Kent’s Fastrack network recently pointing out it “really thinks itself is a tram”.

He also let me know “TfL Rail and Overground orange live on on 701’s information screens’.

The wrong 310

On a similar out-of-touch theme, Barry emailed me to point out “while waiting for a 310 bus for Hertford at Waltham Cross Bus Station today, I noticed a poster on the bus stop informing me of ‘Important changes to your Route 310’ so I thought I had better read it, only to be informed there would be alterations to the route between Golders Green and Stamford Hill.” If anyone living locally can send me a photo, this one really is deserving of an end-of-year Award in the BusAndTrainUser Awards.

Can you help trace Andy for Lyn?

And finally, Lyn emailed me to say….

“I have been trying to find someone who used to work as a bus driver for Western National in 1974. His route was driving from Penzance station to Guavas Estate in Newlyn. I only remember him as Andy he was in his mid twenties. Would love to find him and hope you can help in some way. Thank you.”

If any blog reader knows Andy (who must now be in his late 70s) can you let him know someone called Lyn is trying to get in touch and if he’s interested I can let him have her email address.

Thanks for all the emails to busandtrainuser@gmail.com.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS