Bus route suffixes

[Ken H]

Scanned a 1962 oldham timetable today. Short services in Oldham had letters. Longer services had numbers.

 

[Mal]

Scanned a 1962 oldham timetable today. Short services in Oldham had letters. Longer services had numbers.

Gt Yarmouth used numbers for town services and letters for Gorleston routes

 

[Simon75]

Crosville has prefers for different areas
Eg
C Chester
E Northwich/Macclesfield
K Crewe/Congleton

 

[duncanp]

Just had a rummage through some paper timetable archives before throwing them on the bonfire. Think I've uploaded them correctly below.
When the main Balerno route extended to Penicuik there weren't suffixes at the time my example was taken. Just numbers from 64 to 67. But I'm pretty sure I used services with numbers like 64A and 65B at some point.
But when running the Balerno route to East Lothian it's interesting that both prefix and suffix conventions applied.
As an aside (a little outside the prefix or suffix topic, apart from relevance to the 53A), I found a 61 diagram showing its extension from Currie up to Balerno and also a fare table and season ticket summary illustrating the seemingly sharp increase in cost for journeys on the rural fare stages. Nowadays of course the whole route would be in one zone.
A mid-1980s service 68 diagram from Eastern Scottish showing Balerno to Edinburgh via Colinton is attached along with LRT's 45/47 route, these being very similar to the previous 53 and 53A services.

Onne of the things that was preventing an increase in services to Balerno in 1984 was the lack of a turning circle at the terminus.

Before the turning circle was built, buses had to reverse 90 degrees from Mansfield Road into Cockburn Crescent, and then do a left turn from Cockburn Crescent back into Mansfield Road.

I can remember the council having negotiations with the farmer who owned the land where the turning circle now stands - eventually they "persuaded" him to part with the land for a suitably large sum of money.

 

[ElBoiii]

In South Yorkshire routes that are basically the same get grouped under the same number with a letter after them e.g. 50, 50a, 50b. Some "basically the same" routes have different numbers e.g. 97, 98. In Rotherham there is a 22x service to Barnsley with the suffix probably to emphasise the service (I don't know). Some suffixes are weird probably because of removed services (e.g. 28a, 28c in Barnsley).

 

[EuroRail]

Yep, as said by @TheGrandWazoo in the quoted post.

They also ran a circular service at one stage (A6Y and C6Y via Nortfhield and Solihull) which was unique as it was the only Midlands service to have both a prefix and suffix (until the late 2010s when NXWM introduced the X51S)

And possibly unique too in that the letters denoting which way round the circle the route was going (A & C) were prefixes. From memory, most Yourbus service numbers followed whichever route number they were competing with. The service morphed into what is now the 76, which didn't really exist before.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Nov 2022 ==

Incidentally, now that Nat Ex West Mids 11 Outer Circle route is split, do the vehicles still show 11A / C, or is it simply 11? Again from memory, there were of course 3 circular routes in Birmingham - years ago there was also the 19 City Circle. Which ceased in the 1960s???

 

[duncanp]

Incidentally, now that Nat Ex West Mids 11 Outer Circle route is split, do the vehicles still show 11A / C, or is it simply 11? Again from memory, there were of course 3 circular routes in Birmingham - years ago there was also the 19 City Circle. Which ceased in the 1960s???

The buses show 11A or 11C depending on whether they are travelling anti-clockwise or clockwise round the circle.

Similarly for the 8A/8C Inner Circle which is still a proper circular route.

 

[WAB]

Suffixes are probably easier for the public to understand than multiple route numbers as long as they are structured sensibly.

 

[Ken H]

Did Lincolnshire Road car have suffixes around 1960. I am sure I remember Mum talking about a bus route with a C suffix. I was 4 in June 1960!!

 

[Mal]

Did Lincolnshire Road car have suffixes around 1960. I am sure I remember Mum talking about a bus route with a C suffix. I was 4 in June 1960!!

Lincolnshire had loads of routes with suffixes. A timetablle for Lincolnshire Road Car for 1969 in Timetable World shows all their services including some like 103A, 110A, 136A and many more. As a thought, how were these shown on 3-track number blinds?

 

[Jordan Adam]

First Aberdeen have a Service 17K to Kirkhill Industrial Estate starting next Monday - https://bustimes.org/services/17k-faulds-gate-kirkhill-ind-estate

There also was in the past a Service 3G to Gateway Business Park.

 

[Mal]

The buses show 11A or 11C depending on whether they are travelling anti-clockwise or clockwise round the circle.

Similarly for the 8A/8C Inner Circle which is still a proper circular route.

Similarly, Newport Transport use A and C for direction round their circle services.

 

[Dai Corner]

Similarly, Newport Transport use A and C for direction round their ccircle services.

And once used D for a variation of the 30 to Cardiff serving the Duffryn area.