Who Was Sydney Anyway?

Ironically, Syd never set foot in Australia, his underlings having planted the flag near where distinctive bit of ironwork, illustrated above upper left, stands guardian over the famous harbour. 

Sydney has a significant suburban rail network, too extensive a map to fit on a legible blog page, so an extract will have to suffice. So here is a map of the central area.

… although the stops have a flavour of proper stations.

Again the  L  network map is a bit too big to squeeze in a blog post, so an extract is shown below.

The L1 zooms off westbound to a terminus at Dulwich Hill. Typically the L1 runs every ten minutes …

And How Much?

The Other Shiregreen Half?

As a minor aside, from September 1st, passengers from Bellhouse Road, used to flagging down a 76 to City will now need to understand that their bus is now a 75. Probably they will never notice.

So what has happened to the 76 (clockwise)?

Although the 76 is unchanged south of the city centre it has vanished from Shiregreen.

Here is the PTE’s explanation

Services 47, 48

From 01 September these services will be introduced, providing journeys between Shiregreen, Sheffield and Herdings in a circular loop.

Journeys operate every day of the week, and up to every 10 minutes (combined) on Monday to Saturday daytimes. These services partially replace services 75 and 76 in Shiregreen and services 1a and 11 in Gleadless Valley.

Here is the First’s explanation/

Services 47 and 48

These new services will operate from Shiregreen, serving Gregg House Rd, Hartley Brook Rd and Sicey Ave – via Firth Park, Firth Park Rd, Firvale, Burngreave, City Centre East Bank Rd, Newfield Green, Hemsworth and Herdings.

There is more obvious detail for routes to the south of the city.

At First glance, however, that looks like the western leg of the Shitegrenn circle, some of it unserved by the re-jigged 75.

Sensibly, fbb will quietly ignore the routes south of the city centre for his sanity and that of his readers. He will return to this change when he has recovered from the work on today’s and yesterday’s offering.

Does the timetable help? Not really!

First’s timetable is not much better. It has too much white space and therefore is more difficult to read, but …

But he did turn, hesitantly to the PTEs route and/or stop list, a weird mixture of both – that is not a complete list of either!

Likewise the new 47 uses Firth Park Road …

… rather than the old Shiregreen route via the Northern General Hospital.

Confusing, innit?

But, again according to the PTE, the 48 serves exactly the same roads in Shiregreen as the 47. 

Cleverly (?) fbb has recreated the route in Shiregreen for his readers who have not yet lost the will to live.

This means that the original circular Shiregreen loop of fond memory and long long history no longer operates. There is no loop round the whole estate.

That will bring cheer and rejoicing to residents (NOT) who will have lost the opportunity of going “the long way round” (on the traditional loop) when the frequency is low, or, indeed, by just getting on the first bus that comes if it is raining or the shopping is burdensome.

This route is confirmed by the First Bus late-arrival map.

So fbb did get it right.

In the past, if course, the original 47 and 48 ran alternate ways round the estate “loop” and there will be many, many residents who will assume that the same will be happening from 1st September. First Bus even introduced its early reporting of the plans at “consultation” (snigger snigger) as “returning to the popular 47 and 48 routes of old” which it isn’t!

What Has Happened to the 76?

And this is exactly what fbb was expecting. But is it and does it?

Keen readers can pick out the 95/95a on the two maps quoted above and you would expect the new 76 and 76a will follow the same route via Rock Street and Hucklow Road just like the new 75 and 75a.

Oh no they don’t!

Instead of forking right on Hucklow Road like this outbound Stagecoach service 1 …