Exploring the coast

Our latest exciting network development broke this week after Easter Monday. From May, Southwestbus will be adding more vehicles to it's Minehead operation as we commence operations along the Exmoor coast from Somerset into Devon.

Possible for us to thunder up Countisbury with a Leyland Leopard coach too. That'll make a lovely noise. 

It's all part of our expansion into a new market following the horrible events of last summer. The Minehead operation was initially meant to be a few buses but some other events with a real coach operator on a school trip has seen Somerset Council engage other operators for a number of their schools contracts as that coach operator comes to terms with what happened, and they've decided to reduce the size of their business.

Southwestbus is primarily a coach operation and it undertakes a lot of school transport contracts.  Adding in college services on top, just over 100 vehicles in the fleet are used on this work. That is slightly bigger than our bus service requirement which is around 80 vehicles. So, when we're asked to take on additional schools work our answer is usually yes, no problem and then the hunt begins for suitable coaches. We have a well honed vehicle purchasing policy tended to midlife two axle vehcles that can double as private hire vehicles when the need arises. And we do a lot of that. That is where having flexible workers who do other things helps massively. 

So, the Exmoor coast is the final piece of that jigsaw and a presence we need to have in the market. There is a parallel service operated with new generation open top buses (by this former friend and another friend) so the offering I've come up with nods to history, but with some additions intended to target the tourist market over the busiest part of the route. 

We'll do some more background, first because I'm brain dumping as I write this. 

At the present time, a high summer service is offered by FirstBus, it having been scaled back in the last couple of years. The operation is entirely subsidised unlike their initial venture (2021-2024) which was commercially provided out of Minehead. 

Historically the corridor has been subsidised before ending up with Cawlett group in the 1990s and ran from two ends. Through journeys ran from Taunton up to Minehead then across to Lynmouth, Lynton, Combe Martin & Ilfracombe and extended to Barnstaple. The Taunton end was run by Southern National, the Barnstaple/Ilfracombe end worked by Red Bus. 

This continued into the First era post 1999 but in 2005 there were a number of service withdrawals as First deemed the routes unviable. Only issue with that form of route costing is that it then spreads your overhead over fewer and fewer vehicles and you eventually hit a point where the entire depot isn't economic to run anymore and you close it. 

The main beneficiaries of those 2005 changes around Minehead were Quantock and Webberbus. The '300' went to Quantock who decided that double deck open top buses were a fantastic idea, and they promptly went out and bought a new part open top Scania Omnidekka. Along with a ragtag and bobtail selection of Leyland Lynx, Bristol VRTs and a sensible set of Leyland Tiger/Plaxton Paramount coaches. Eventually, some low floor Darts came into the fleet to run the 'through' services. 

This was when the short workings to Lynmouth started from the Minehead side. Devon County partly subsidised the contract and told Quantock in no uncertain terms they wouldn't permit open toppers to be run on their side on safety grounds. Because of those things called trees. They usually hit a roof, but if there isn't one they'll hit a passenger's head just as happily. Cue lots of red stuff, forms to fill out etc. 

Eventually the route was severed at Lynmouth and Devon engaged Filers Travel in Ilfracombe to provide 'their side' of the route. And provide it they did for many years.  Quantock ran their side a long time, but around 2012 decided merging it with the Porlock Weir service was a brilliant idea, and thus created a timetable where no one remembered anything and the resulting mess was completely unusable to any visitor. 

They backtracked in 2013 expanding the '300' operation using some very sensible Alexander PS bodied Volvo B10Ms and the Omnidekka was sold to West Coast Motors and replaced by a semi open top Alexander PS B10M, now in preservation with other friends after a couple years of operation and being retired thanks to DDA requirements. I wonder how much the conversion work cost the company?

A later iteration of 300 from Quantock used a classic Bristol L with a front entrance on three round trips, but this didn't persist either. Devon continued subsidising their end and it was post Covid that the management at First South West thought up the rather clever concept of catering for the 'staycation' market with a Minehead - Ilfracombe service. 

This morphed into an hourly Lynmouth-Minehead service and through to Ilfracombe every two hours by 2023 when Senior Management and I sampled the route. This was a good choice as 2024 didn't see the return of that timetable thanks for First's wonderful approach to running a business. 

The 'additional' buses for the 2023 timetable were ex London Enviro 400 part open tops fully branded for the Cornwall services but which were in practice completely unsuitable for the service they'd been dumped onto. 

There were two long wheelbase Scania Omnicity part open tops branded too - one of which was off the road and eventually scrapped. Both of those had adequate power for the service and made short work of the hills, but were too long to go into/out of Lynton so Lynton simply wasn't served.  There were even two open decked Enviro 200s which ran one or two seasons and were sold after the management team moved on elsewhere. 

Staffing this timetable was another issue too - volunteers from Taunton were working the route whilst the company pulled random journeys on service 28 due to 'no driver'. All summer.  So you *could* have gone over from Taunton and then got the bus out of Minehead, but how easily do you get back? 

So you had a route which on paper did a lot of things, but worked with totally unsuitable vehicles. The bulk of demand was between Minehead and Lynmouth and in hindsight some shorter vehicles perhaps should have remained on the quieter part with them meeting in Lynmouth and offering some sort of interchange. 

The route also had a lot of low trees - as no one's trimming trees for a summer only bus service. So there was much glass and roof banging on the buses used.  This did little for senior management's nervous disposition on the day we sampled it. 

You can sense from my writing that I think the idea of the route is a very good one, but First's execution of things has always been a bit all on all off. Lots of good ideas in the place, terrible execution of them. Would the current situation exist had they properly promoted the service and found suitable vehicles with which to work it? It'd have carried more people. Open toppers work on 'visibility' - people spontaneously deciding to make a trip on a bus. Thus you need to tell people what it is all about. You need to market the product. 

As my route is going up against an all singing, all dancing modern fleet I need to bring something different to the party.  My timetable targets the through customers. The ones from Bridgwater and Taunton who don't want to change vehicles. Backpackers. People more senior who really don't want to move a lot. Possibly the bus enthusiast who wants to bash a Bristol VR in the wild. 

The route is effectively two different ones in one. 

So there are through journeys from Taunton and Bridgwater, to Ilfracombe onwards from Lynmouth and short workings between Minehead and Lynmouth. Those 'shorts' will use double deck open top buses with a difference. They're drawn from our classic fleet of London Routemaster and Bristol VRs. 

They've got semi automatic gearboxes which mean they're quite comfortable climbing Porlock and Countisbury hills as the driver can hold them in a gear suitable for terrain (rather than an auto box hunting for another gear, finding a totally unsuitable one, screaming it's nuts off and promptly terminally expiring on Porlock Hill thus needing an expensive bordering impossible recovery). 

I've even produced a moderately professional looking timetable leaflet for this new service. With the benefits of AI, I've managed to depict a classic bus coming out of Lynmouth, up Countisbury back to Minehead and a geriatric open top bus doing the same thing. 

Not that either driver thinks they need to tell intending users that they're going TO Minehead..... :D Bit like the real world, isn't it? 

The actual photos of Countisbury were taken on a cold December day whilst Senior Management and I died of hypothermia in a force 9 gale. I then asked AI to make it a beautiful sunny day. The following two are some of what's produced. 

 

I did say 'cold'

The 'vehicle pool'

 It'll be an interesting 'addition' to the marketplace. It's highly likely to not make money, also. If it does, we'd need to pay tax on that. And who wants to do that?  The summer service will also give us time to work out what we do for the winter, as there is a demand between Minehead and Lynmouth all year round.