Recent content by mb88

Pretty much always a Mellor Strata on it, yes. It’s certainly been a long time since I’ve seen anything different on it.

Spotted a Lothian Motorcoaches vehicle on a West Lothian Council school contract today screened for West Calder High School. Took me by surprise as I’m not aware of them having ever taken on schools work before.

Lothian Country X18 enters the Royal Bank of Scotland compound at Gogarburn at peak times.

FirstBus service 126 between Wells and Weston-super-Mare. Drivers from Wells depot seem to always do the Wells to Cheddar section and wait for the bus coming the other way where they swap with a Weston driver and continue back to Wells. Not sure if this is the case on every journey but I...

The fact the roadworks were 8 miles away is immaterial really as there could be no suitable diversion routes for the bus to take. I’d say if it was planned roadworks which started earlier than advertised then the bus company has reasonable grounds to say it was outwith their control.

Thanks folks.

Can anyone tell me what services used the turning circle on Old Dalkeith Road at Fernieside Drive please and roughly what year did it stop being used?

Back in the early days of Lothian Country when many of the running times were hopelessly unachievable. That 05:30 service X28 from Bathgate to Edinburgh scheduled for 1 hour 41 minutes gets 2 minutes shy of 2 hours these days!

Whether you think it’s ’tripe’ or not is neither here nor there. It’s happening, as has been confirmed both by internal comms and by an article in Route One magazine by the Lothian engineering director.

Yes I grew up in South Tyneside and our transport to and from the swimming baths during my primary school years in the early 90s was provided by a Catch-a-Bus Bristol RE single decker.

Trouble it there are very few bus stops in West Lothian where the centre door could actually be used.

I’m led to believe the ones for East Coast and Lothian Country will be shorter than the current XLB models in service, at 12.8m instead of 13.4m, and will be single door.

Struggling to see how XLBs could cope with any Lothian County services to be honest, with the exception maybe of the X18. All the other routes have at least one point that I can see being problematic: 43 turning at the bottom of the Loan in Queensferry; Scotstoun terminus. X27 Calderwood X28...

Well they’re all in favour of a deregulated market but then start greeting when there’s competition. Can’t have it both ways.

Back in my days as driver at Stagecoach’s Bromley garage I would regularly drive the route 269 and every time the bus announced the stop ‘Susan Wood’ I always thought to myself ‘I bet she would!’ At least I amused myself.