There always seems to be something newsworthy going on at Trent Barton, these days. Since we felt “obliged” to take down that post on Trent Barton, Wellglade & the Nottingham statutory quality partnership, things have been moving along. On the engineering side, Wellglade’s four operating subsidiaries are up before the beak. More on that, later...
On the operating side, Wellglade is on the offensive. Whereas 99pbus Bargainbus 99pbus Bargainbus was purely reactive, in the face of Premiere’s Long Eaton 4, due to start on 15th November, Wellglade’s Kinchbus has over-registered a service on Premiere’s X9, between Nottingham and Loughborough. This has never been a Wellglade route. Kinchbus’ 9 starts on 13 December 2010 and avoids the SQBP by serving Broadmarsh bus station, though it remains unclear as to whether it uses any of the SQBP stops towards Broadmarsh. Premiere’s X9 terminates more centrally in Nottingham.
Premiere’s X9 started in July 2009 following the withdrawal of Arriva’s hourly 99 service. Premiere upped the frequency to every half hour. One can assume that, since the 99 didn’t meet Arriva’s operational indices at hourly and Premiere has already doubled its operation, there isn’t a commercial argument for Wellglade ploughing this particular furrow. But, then again, when was it ever about that? There is, of course, a certain irony here. Pre-Wellglade Kinch had a bit of reputation as a competitive irritant.
Back to the engineering side. This time next week Trent Barton is before the traffic commissioner, following allegations about is maintenance systems, a reported incident of a parked bus rolling into others and, more alarmingly, a claim that one of its buses lost a wheel. Though rare, the last is not something the commissioner can easily choose to ignore, though in view of Trent Barton’s reputation to date, I suspect that the available remedies of curtailing the number of vehicles, a licence suspension or revocation are probably unlikely.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Of War & Wheels
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8 comments:
"...Premiere’s X9, between Nottingham and Loughborough. This has never been a Wellglade route."
In the late 1970s it was operated by Trent, who then had a depot in Loughborough, albeit not as frequently as the current Premiere service. I presume that Trent's operations in that town (including some local services) were transferred to Arriva at some stage.
trent route 66/66a/b/d/ used to run two hourly with shorts to ruddigton in between.
Trent abandoned the route before privatisation, so it hasn't been a Wellglade route.
In, from memory, 1987, Midland Fox diverted the Birmingham - Nottingham X99 to run from Ashby via Coalville and Loughborough to Nottingham. This provided a more direct Loughborough - Nottingham service than other routes. X99 was soon abandoned south of Coalville, but Arriva retained the rest as 99 until last year.
Perhaps trentbarton should now be renamed...
The wheely good bus company!
Or a new Stenning-esque slogan could be 'It's good to torque' !!
anon @ 0753 and 1225 are no doubt similar to the same forms of people who understand nothing of what is required, but preach upon the seriousness of these types of incidents yet hypocritically feel the need to use "humour" (within their "social" circles at least) at the same time.
I seem to recall that a London Central bus lost a wheel a while ago, and a senior engineering manager lost his job over it owing to poor supervision of wheel nut tightening and bad record keeping. The company also lost some 'O' discs if I remember correctly.
Why does Omnibuses assume that TB will get off lightly simply because of its status, when lives could have been at risk, and if the alleged incidents are confirmed at the forthcoming public enquiry?
Stagecoach subsidiaries in Scotland are in for a PI due to wheel loss incidents also
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