. . . . but it's easy to forget how dead some city centres could be on Sundays before Sunday trading laws were relaxed.
I remember the dreary Sundays back in the day - deserted town and city centres, all shops closed except for maybe local corner shops opening in the afternoon, a lot less traffic on the roads (unless you were at the seaside or a beauty spot in summer) and local railway stations, and whole lines, closed for the day, with a very sparse service from any main stations which did open.
The funny thing was, in my area of South Lancashire, this weekly Sunday shutdown didn't apply to nearly the same extent on the local bus network.
Most of the bus routes still ran on Sundays (albeit often starting mid-morning or around lunchtime) and frequencies might be reduced a bit but weren't slashed. We had some routes which ran every 15 mins during the week which were cut to every 20 mins on Sunday. Others which ran half-hourly or hourly on weekdays still kept the same frequency on Sunday (just with a later start).
Of course these buses usually carried only a handful of passengers at best, often with an under-employed conductor relaxing on the bench seat, watching the scenery go past and getting time-and-three-quarters, or whatever for Sunday shifts. No wonder the PTEs lost money.
