Page 11 - MBF Supplement Demo

needed to negotiate the 14'3" low bridge at Newport. After Stansted Bus lost the contract for this route, V147 became the spare vehicle to the MPD Dart on the 301 (Bishops Stortford - Saffron Walden) where its extra capacity was ideal at school times (and the 301 also has to negotiate the same aforementioned low bridge) until it was finally stood down at the end of the Autumn 2016 term. There are plans to replace the MPDs on the 301 with larger single deckers to negate the need to source a low height low floor double decker.
The only activity on the vehicle side of things is the medium to long term hire of two Neoplan Cityliners (X104/24FEX) from Transmotion group for the Eurowide service mentioned in the last report. However, the operations side of the company has been particularly busy.
As hinted at the end of the last Supplement report, March saw the sequel to last years' Cheltenham National Hunt Festival Shuttle event take place, taking place this year on the 14th to 17th March inclusive. The event this year saw a significant increase in participant operators, standing at 19 compared to last year's 9. Thanks go once again to all who took part in this year's event.
This year's event was very much seen as a development of 2016 (see the Crossways website for more details) to try and mould the shuttles into a more cohesive transport strategy to try and reduce congestion on Cheltenham's roads as far as possible during Festival week. As a result, routes R1-3 (Cheltenham Town Centre - Racecourse, Cheltenham Railway Station - Racecourse and Gloucester South Park & Ride - Racecourse respectively) returned for a second year, albeit with the park and ride site changed for route R3 to a location adjacent to Crossways' Gloucester depot.
On top of these services, an extra route (R4) was added. Being the only route to not actually enter the racecourse, this is intended only as a temporary measure and uses 2 heritage buses to try and link the stations of Broadway and Toddington on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire steam railway (whilst track is laid to the new Broadway terminus), hence allowing passengers to take the train to the Racecourse.
Aside from shuttle bus services, use was also made of Crossways' coach route, the X10 (Gloucester to Cardiff), to tempt race goers from their cars. The route was temporarily extended to Cheltenham Racecourse and the frequency tripled for the duration of the races. In a similar vein, an agreement has been reached with Filer's Bus Group for their X1 service (Gloucester to Bristol) to stop at the route R3 Park & Ride (south of Gloucester) thus allowing potential race goers to also use this service.
On the final day of the shuttles, Transmotion Group jointly with Crossways organised a rail tour to the races, with Gloucester railway station being used rather than Cheltenham since Cheltenham is already overcrowded during the week with the standard shuttle services. Not only this, but Gloucester has the relevant sidings required to store the train during the day. To transfer the passengers to Cheltenham, a
Crossways Ryan Birch - Gloucester
V147 (R554LPB), a low height Volvo Olympian with Northern Counties Palatine 1 H82F bodywork was retained on school route 1 as it was needed to negotiate the 14'3" low bridge at Newport until it was finally stood down at the end of the Autumn 2016 term.
Some of the most recent arrivals in the Countrybus fleet are LSO119-27 (901-9NET) Scania Omnidekka/ East Lancs H80F. They are ex dealer vehicles and joined older LSO104/5 (EN58ATC/D) at Colchester for route 278 (Chelmsford - Braintree - Colchester) which underwent major expansion on 30th July 2016. This saw the 278 transformed from a local service operating hourly with two double deckers into a trunk route running every 20 minutes with eleven double deckers.
Since the last report, a number of operators have been in contact to advise that they are still operating services. These are, 411 (Weymouth - Newcastle) Northumbria & Berwick/Town & Country, 504 (Southsea/Portsmouth - Newcastle on Tyne) and 505 (Worthing/Brighton - Newcastle on Tyne) both Northumbria & Berwick/Virgin Southern Buses, and 642 which also remains operated by N&B.
Mid West Motors retain operation of services 416 (Chester - Carlisle) and 449 (Birkenhead - Nottingham). Service 717 (Liverpool - Leeds/Bradford Airport) operated in conjunction with Transmotion, has one journey each way extended to and from Hull Docks to connect with overnight ferry services to/from Rotterdam and Zeebrugge.
Countrywide Tony McClennon
11