A Small Celebration—Five Years!

Though the date of Omnibuses’ first post was 25th September 2003 and though there was a handful of posts in 2004, it wasn’t till 1st September 2005 that I really got going with any regularity. The most observant among you will have already recognised that’s five years ago today. Crumbs. Added to which, this is our 1,813th post.

How things have changed. On 1st September 2005, I referred to the “local” Traffic Area Office. Back then, I mainly focused on south east Dorset. This, regulars might recall, was the time the council was selling its Yellow Buses. This blog understood both motivation and imperative. Indeed, it documented the Wilts & Dorset encroachment and subsequent retrenchment but, TBH, I was never really happy with the prospect of the sale. This was to change as Transdev began to make its mark. Four years after TYB and you can’t help but be impressed, even if TYB’s “brightness” has dulled just a little lately.

Five years plus and 1,800 plus posts. That’s quite a commitment. Between 2005 and 2008, we posted five, six and sometimes seven days a week. Since 1st January 2009, we’ve managed a post every single morning, though this isn’t without its current difficulties.

The graphic on the upper left of the old format was taken from the 1985 government publication on how to register bus services. It was one of a number of pictures and images used

What’s equally remarkable is that during this time we’ve changed the look and feel of the blog only once. The original started off with a sombre dark blue background, made slightly better after we dumped the childish watermark polkadots. The major change came in July 2007 when we adopted the current design.

What influenced the start of this blog? Well, one reason was a now defunct shopworker’s blog that offered remarkable insight into her profession and into life in general. And I confess that it was also the early work of Plymothian Transit in commenting critically upon local changes that convinced me there was a room for a bus blog. And, we can only conclude that the oft copied Omnibuses has, in turn, resulted in others taking up the pen, the results of which can be sagacious, sapient or sadly somewhat sickly.

Omnibuses remains the longest-running, serious bus blog and probably the most read in terms of a mix of professionals and enthusiasts.

As of today, we’re dropping the Omnibuses2.0 title by which we’ve condescendingly called ourselves following the July 2007 “2.0” makeover. In reverting simply to “Omnibuses”, most people know it as such, anyway.

A sincere thank you to all contributors, commenters and readers, no matter your length of time here. It seems to me that here we have something of a community.

Busing