Sunday Variety

Yesterday, Roger French reported on the third and fourth new routes offered by Herefordshire. The route numbers have been chosen, presumably, to reflect the ancestry of route 724 which runs from Harlow to Heathrow. Green Line does have a noble ancestry, being the long distance limited stop coach network of London Transport.

The brand is now owned by Arriva although the owning company only has a couple of routes left, namely the 755/757 from Luton and the aforementioned 724.

The others are in the hands of Reading Buses (702/703) and Carousel’s 103 which may be rebranded Green Line.

The network began its inexorable declined in the 1970s but services via Stevenage had remains pretty stable over the years. But they bore no relationship to the modern 724 or to the 721 and 725 newcomers! Here is the map for the 716/717 combo in about 1960 …

… and a timetable for the remaining hourly 716 in the mid 1970s.

More on this in tomorrow’s blog.

It is good to see some positive promotions from this group. Extra evening buses for Christmas …

… and a chilly open top tour in Harrogate.

There’s back end posters …

… for Harrogate on a bus in Burnley livery! But best of all …

… there is a printed leaflet to reinforce the back-end.

A Large Wee Knitting Bus

A delightful design from the Bearded Bus Beautifier from the Bush, no doubt sticky-backed plastic but very much a gorgeous Christmas jumper!

Brooks Bus beautiful? GoAhead Oxford Bus won the contract to provide buses for Oxford Brookes University (the modern academic upstart, not the proper one!).

Fir those who are really ancient, like fbb, there are TWO Semesters in an acdemic year, not the three terms of old.

Three services are operated; the 100 U5 evert 20 minutes term time …

and evey 30 in vacation.

There is the 400 U1 (also headed Park and Ride) every 10 …

…which runs every 20 all year round.

Where’s the engine?

Much nicer!

For most of his railway modelling, fbb uses either PVA glue (usually “No More Nails” or an equivalent) for wood, paper, card and bodging OR polystyrene cement for  plastic kits. But some things don’t stick using either of these.

Rarely he resorts to Cyanoacrylate (Superglue to you) but as it is very good at sticking fingers, hair and anything made of human tissue, he uses it with care and only when absolutely necessary.

And it is not very good on shiny nylon type plastic like the sleeper bases of OO gauge track. For this he uses two-part epoxy resin/

The idea of the Gorilla version is that the “two parts” are in separate tubes, expressed by a conjoined plungers then mixed together. That’s the theory. But if you get the pressure wrong, or one of the nozzles is a bit blocked with old gunk, you don’t get equal amounts to mix.

Which is why some bits of track did not glue down.

With memories of an old rhyming couplet which used to refer to a delicious adjunct to a savoury meal, fbb revrites the verse as:

Press and press the G’rilla bottle

First none will come and then a lottle! **