Trivia: Current/historical serves that swap driver's back to 'parent' depot

I read something that some service years ago swapped drivers back to the 'parent ' eg a service London to Sheffield, a drivers would swap say Milton Keynes so doing Sheffield to Milton Keynes , swap over and return to Sheffield.

What example ate there historically and any currently ?

Maybe you need to correct your title

MotCO said:

Maybe you need to correct your title

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Indeed - it's not clear what the OP actually means

Northern Scottish service 306 (Elgin - Aberdeen via Huntly) was the "stopper" that ran alongside the limited stop 540/960/560 (Inverness - Aberdeen route). As far as I recall, drivers swapped over at Huntly and returned to base while passengers remained on the bus. I think it happened on the 305 coast route too, but can't be 100% sure. It must have been a fairly common practice up and down the country, especially on some of the longer routes.

GusB said:

Northern Scottish service 306 (Elgin - Aberdeen via Huntly) was the "stopper" that ran alongside the limited stop 540/960/560 (Inverness - Aberdeen route). As far as I recall, drivers swapped over at Huntly and returned to base while passengers remained on the bus. I think it happened on the 305 coast route too, but can't be 100% sure. It must have been a fairly common practice up and down the country, especially on some of the longer routes.

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You're interpreting it as drivers who only operate part of a route whilst the vehicle does all of it?

In that case, the old Cymru Coastliner L1 in North Wales. Not only did vehicles not have the same driver throughout, the vehicles ended up at different depots in the evening!

The X52 (before dereg) from Aberystwyth to Swansea would see not only drivers swap (I think at somewhere like Lampeter or Pumsaint) but the drivers were from two different firms so a Crosville driver would give his vehicle to an SWT driver and vice versa.

I can think of quite a number where this sort of thing happened.

Transpeak has two buses that operate from Derby and three from Buxton. One of the Derby buses finishes in Buxton each day and one of the Buxton buses finishes in Derby, but all Derby drivers return to Derby and all Buxton drivers return to Buxton.

TheGrandWazoo said:

You're interpreting it as drivers who only operate part of a route whilst the vehicle does all of it?

In that case, the old Cymru Coastliner L1 in North Wales. Not only did vehicles not have the same driver throughout, the vehicles ended up at different depots in the evening!

The X52 (before dereg) from Aberystwyth to Swansea would see not only drivers swap (I think at somewhere like Lampeter or Pumsaint) but the drivers were from two different firms so a Crosville driver would give his vehicle to an SWT driver and vice versa.

I can think of quite a number where this sort of thing happened.

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Yes, I interpreted it as the bus doing the whole journey while drivers swap over at certain points en-route and take the other bus back. Perhaps @Simon75 could clarify if this is what he meant.

GusB said:

Yes, I interpreted it as the bus doing the whole journey while drivers swap over at certain points en-route and take the other bus back. Perhaps @Simon75 could clarify if this is what he meant.

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Yes your correct

TheGrandWazoo said:

You're interpreting it as drivers who only operate part of a route whilst the vehicle does all of it?

In that case, the old Cymru Coastliner L1 in North Wales. Not only did vehicles not have the same driver throughout, the vehicles ended up at different depots in the evening!

The X52 (before dereg) from Aberystwyth to Swansea would see not only drivers swap (I think at somewhere like Lampeter or Pumsaint) but the drivers were from two different firms so a Crosville driver would give his vehicle to an SWT driver and vice versa.

I can think of quite a number where this sort of thing happened.

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I remember it as being normal when I lived in Wales in the early 70s. In one case, on the last bus from Machynlleth to Aberystwyth, passengers were swapped and the two buses turned back to their home depots.

Other examples

The driver from the Hawes outstation never reached Richmond on a Saturday. If you check the timetable, the buses would meet at Bellerby at 0850 and 1150, and in Leyburn at 1545 and the drivers would swap buses


I think something similar happened in Morpeth with Rothbury drivers back in the day

A now historical example is Stagecoach South West 6/6A.

From Exeter: The Exeter driver would take the bus as the 6A from Exeter through the likes of Tedburn St Mary and Sticklepath to Okehampton & Okehampton Station. Here, the bus changed into the 6.

From Bude: The Barnstaple driver would take the bus as the 6 from Bude to Holsworthy, Halwill Junction, Okehampton & Okehampton Station. Here, the bus changed into the 6A.

The Exeter driver would then take the bus that has arrived from Bude as the 6A back to Exeter, whilst the Barnstaple driver took the bus that arrived from Exeter as the 6 back to Bude. For all except one journey, no change In bus was required for passengers and through tickets were available.

This no longer happens as the 6A is now Dartline 66 and the 6 is a stand-alone bus between Bude & Okehampton Station which connects with the train to Exeter.

I'm not sure if it's still the case, but there is/were instances on the TrawsCymru T2 where the North and South buses get to Porthmadog and the drivers run over the road to swap over so then the Carmel driver finishes at the north part of the route and returns the bus to their yard, and Lloyds driver finishes at Dolgellau/Mach (for anyone not aware, while the T2 is managed by Lloyds and buses are operated by Lloyds, some duties have staff provided by Carmel Travel and a few buses will overnight in Carmels yard each night).

I'm not sure there are many 'bus' services long enough for this to happen now, but would have thought it's not uncommon with coach services to avoid overnight stays being needed.

Although Reading Buses' 701 / 702 (Reading - Legoland - Slough - London) used to (may still have) some duties done by Slough based Thames Valley drivers and Slough based buses, but they all seemed to take meal reliefs at Slough, so some change-overs would involve a Slough driver handing over to a Reading driver or vice versa. I'm not sure if any buses changed ends from one day to another for maintenance purposes, but buses (until recently) only started from Reading early mornings and got back late evenings, so there must have been some Reading drivers needing to travel from / to Reading without a bus - not sure if this involved a staff car or travel by train.

Historically, there used to be some quite long distance services operated jointly between Southdown and Maidstone + District, as well as the 'Heathfield Pool' services, route 122 was Gravesend - Tunbridge Wells - Brighton. I understand that buses worked through, but crews / drivers didn't do the full journey, with changing over at Tunbridge Wells, so part of a M+D crew's duty could involve a Southdown bus and vice versa.

During the MAP revisions around Aberdare new express services X5 Cardiff to Swansea and X6 Cardiff to Merthyr were created. The X5 was a simple replacement of the previous 175 but the revisions saw the X6 replace the South Wales 160 service from Merthyr Tydfil to Swansea. As a consequence one South Wales vehicle was introduced into the workings and I think ended up working both the X5 and X6 as a consequence as they inter-worked in Cardiff. Both X5 and X6 were otherwise worked from Aberdare depot which, in about the middle of the route, was quite good from a rostering point of view with a lot of journeys changing driver at Aberdare. This also applied to the South Wales drivers who would presumably only work the Aberdare to Swansea section, however their bus continued on its through journeys. I think it was my last ride one one of the former Red & White RESLs with the original front (very much associated with Aberdare depot) when I rode to Swansea and got an Almex ticket instead of the usual Setright as it was the South Wales driver.

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 certainly observed it happening on a number of occasions. Resulted in quite a significant delay once when the other bus was late coming from Weston. Seems an odd set up as it’s not a particularly long route - around an hour and 40 minute each way.