It’s As Easi As A B C – NOT! (1)

These three communities, plus Skellow., Sutton and Norton, lie to the north of Doncaster between the A1 and the A19. Historically, these roads were served by a joint operation between Doncaster Corporation …

… and Yorkshire Traction …

… as were most of the services leaving Doncaster via the A1. Note that Traccy showed route numbers (as here with 52) , but Doncaster …

This all worked out very happily and led to that joy of a passenger’s life, namely a good reliable and stable service. Sadly he creations of the PTE and later privatisation led to much re-jiggling and a good few changes. 

The detail is beyond the wit of fbb in a brief blog and so we need to look at the outcome.

And the outcome was, of course First Bus, who bought out the management buyout of South Yorkshire PTE. The Doncaster area remained complex but we join the A1 amd A19 “V” shape with First Bus somewhat dominant. 

Here is the PTE as 177 to Woodlands, for example, a destination we shall meet below.

The corporation routes …

… had become 177 and 178 under the PTE numbering scheme.

Ultimately First Bus had a tidy up to create a sensible block of routes all running our of town along the A1.

But now the 54 just went one way round the Woodlands loop, not alternately as with the 177 and 178.

The 50 and 50a served different bits of Carcroft …

… but, to add to the fun, a 50B now served both bits evenings, Sundays and early mornings. This is a chunk of the current Saturday timetable.

But this blog will now focus on the A B C of Askern, Burghwallis and Campsall as in the maps at the head of this post.

The terminus of the then 51/51A was given as Instoneville which is a sort of detached estate at Askern.

As far as fbb can tell, with no corroborative evidence. buses just reversed at an innocuous junction in the middle of the housing. The time point was Avenue Road Green Lane …

… with no turning facility, so just a reverse.

There is no evidence of the terminus now; buses no longer serve Instoneville estate but only stop on the main road.

fbb has unearthed an old PTE timetable on line and it is surprisingly (NOT) very helpful.

The outward run shows all buses as going DIRECT to Instoneville …,

… which, of course they didn’t! 

If you are good at Maths you can work that out; because the 51A journey takes 17 minutes from Skellow to Instoneville whereas the 51 does it in 9 minutes. The map confirms these routes.

In the opposite direction there is some help from the point times 

So that is a brief and incomplete history of the services via the A1.

So what served the A19? From the map it would appear there was plenty.

Historically these were West Riding bus routes to Selby and Pontefract which sort of skulked into a small bus station north of the railway bridge, called, surprisingly, North Bridge bus station.

The 412 was a local-to-Doncaster route, the X45 was an occasional evening variant so we are looking for 405, 408, and 409. These are services that passed to Arriva on privatisation.

fbb will conclude this tale, including the latest development, in tomorrow’s blog.

There were big happenings in October 2022.

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