Bus wise my era was the Sixties so I found it a bit odd when I saw City of Oxford buses in Coventry like this ECW bodied Bristol VR YBW 487V. In my day Midland Red came in occasionally on a shoppers service from Banbury which was about half way but one of the good things about the NBC was it had no worries about crossing traditional boundaries and limited stop services linked many of the main towns.
I only ever travelled on the X59 once, probably around 1980, as part of a day trip to Oxford with my mum going out from Birmingham on the X50 (and probably using Midland Red's Family Weekend Ticket, which even then was great value at a fiver). I have a feeling that we should also have gone back on the X50, but I convinced mum to get the X59 because it went a different route and it was a different company (COMS VRs being as unusual a sight to me as they were to you).
ReplyDeleteI also have a feeling that was the day we nearly got stranded in Coventry because the driver of the X66 Leicester - Coventry - Birmingham service wouldn't let us board to go from Coventry to Brum, and we didn't have enough money to pay the fare on the WMPTE 159 back, but we got back somehow; perhaps my mum fluttered her eyelashes at the WMPTE driver!
It's interesting how my photos bring back memories, I suppose the X66 was full but it's a bit of a nightmare if it means you get stranded.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm remembering correctly, the X66 wasn't full but the driver was adamant that Coventry was set-down only, passengers weren't carried locally between Coventry and Birmingham and he wouldn't let us on.
ReplyDeleteLooking back I'm almost certain he was wrong; after the old X96 was split through fares were available across Coventry connecting between the 596 ex Rugby and the X66 to Brum, so passengers must have been allowed to use the X66 between Cov and Brum.
Unfortunately some bus drivers back then were plain awkward; I recall that a few years ago the Family Weekend Ticket came up in discussions in a forum somewhere and a number of people mentioned a driver in the Stratford area who flat refused to admit they existed and wouldn't let people on his bus with them, even when an inspector told him categorically that the tickets existed and were valid.
Not that much has changed: I had an Arriva driver have a humdinger of a rant in Bradford last year because I was using a £3-odd PlusBus ticket which he considered was ridiculously and unacceptably cheap. I'm too old to be diplomatic nowadays, I just walked away from him and went upstairs, leaving him to rant at the next three people who got on (who I'm sure were utterly bemused!)
Awkward bus drivers, they were even more commonplace in the former East Berlin where even if they let you on they found ways of finding tickets from tourists from the west invalid.
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