Dateline Sunday 29 May 1949 The two bus operators, Portsmouth Corporation and Southdown, started the first services to Leigh Park at the end of May 1949. Both operators chose a fairly low key advance into the embryo housing estate. Southdown’s 46 an 46a provided a somewhat more complex service to Hayling Island. The company simply extended one journey an hour to…
Episode 1 – A New Life Proposed Because of its status as a navy base, Portsmouth was badly battered during WW2. Each dot above is a bomb strike and some of the pictures of destruction are horrific. The above was Kings Road. So it was that the City Council resolved to achieve two things with the rebuild. Of course new…
The thing about Switzerland’s affordable, hyper-reliable, hyper-integrated and hyper-ubiquitous public transport system is that the regard in which its phenomenal operational expertise is held can overshadow the architectural successes it also demonstrates. Even when transport architecture does enter consideration, thanks to Switzerland’s reputation for scenic delights it can be hard to shift the mental picture […]
It Always Used To Be 25 A significant number of years ago fbb took the two kiddies belonging to a good friend over from Ryde to Southsea on The Hovercraft and then to the Sea Life Centre at Southsea on an open top bus. It was route 25 which, since for ever, had been the number of the Portsmouth Corporation’s…
Leigh Park – Is fbb Chicken? Yesterday, fbb seemed unwilling to look more closely the history of buses to Leigh Park, north of Havant. He claimed that it was all too complicated for a short blog, and too complicated for his weary brain. It is unusual for fbb to flinch at an omnibological challenge BUT … Here is just a…
Press Queries Results of Several Tenders (1) “The News” reporter, one Freddie Webb … … penned a purple passage of prose back at the tail end of July, of which the above was the headline. fbb was alerted to the coming happenings by one if the many Alans who contribute news to the this blog. This Alan knows all about Portsmouth bus…
• Rows over ‘anti-motorist’ ULEZ & LTNs lose perspective: They save lives (Guardian) • What Underground Venetian Masts station roundels have to do with the Illuminati: Video (JagoHazzard) • Moving two A4 Pacific Mallard siblings to the UK for display: Video (HugeMoves) • 300 year history of data visualisation in the style of Ogilby’s Britannia road atlas (InfoWeTrust) • The…
It Was To Be he Future Of The Railway! fbb is not sure how the irrelevant horses gor into the picture – poor editing maybe? The gas turbine propulsion was soon abandoned and a more conventional power system was used and the revised train was launched with due ceremony on the West Coast main line. It look impressive! But it…
Remember Branscombe? Axe Valley Mini Travel service 899 appears just west of the Mason’s Arms on its way from Seaton to Beer, Branscombe and Sidmouth. This is the main stop (the only stop!) for the centre of the village – The Square. Facilities for waiting passengers are hardly lavish … … but it is but a short step to pub…
Passengers travelling by train in England have just experienced another week of ‘action short of a strike’ – in other words an overtime ban – by members of the train drivers’ union Aslef. As a result, some train companies have scaled back the timetable – for instance running hourly instead of half-hourly. And passengers have still faced cancellations on top…