Talk:Tillingbourne Bus Company

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Tillingbourne Bus Company has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 5, 2011	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on October 27, 2010.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that a fall in bus passenger numbers in Hampshire between 1999 and 2001 was partly attributed to the collapse of the Tillingbourne Bus Company (bus pictured)?

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Issues, comments etc

A fantastic article, and long overdue. Well done! However, there are a few things I need to say:

"Arriva Guildford & West Surrey took over the majority of the operations in Guildford and Cranleigh," - I would add the Surrey Hills routes (Guildford - Dorking) to that as well.
"while the Arriva Surrey & West Sussex division took over services in Horsham". Hmm, Arriva Surrey & West Sussex is the trading name/strap line of Guildford & West Surrey (see the sign over the depot in Guildford). The services run out of Horsham depot were run on the "Arriva West Sussex" license until 7 March 2007 when the operations were moved onto the Guildford & West Surrey license. Is "Arriva West Sussex" what is meant? Of course, the fact the two licenses were merged in 2007 (and then Horsham depot was sold off in 2009) confuses things somewhat.
"Operations in and around Woking were taken on by Tellings-Golden Miller and Reptons Coaches". This is a difficult one. I was quite young at the time, but remember that firstly Arriva lost the contract to Tillingbourne. Tillingbourne went into receivership, and Arriva ran it on an emergency contract, and then Countryliner took over permanently (they still run the route today). No Tellings-Golden Miller or Reptons involvement. I do remember though my mum caught the second to last journey!! The rise of Countryliner's bus services seem to follow the demise of Tillingbourne, so perhaps is worth a mention?

I have also made some other minor changes to the article and added some images. What do you think about the points above? Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 19:30, 17 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, nice images btw. The info about who took over what comes from Buses Magazine's May 2001 issue, so I'm fairly sure it's right. Looking again, "Arriva West Sussex" seems to be the correct form, so I'll happily change that. The Reptons and TGM stuff is definitely right, but they might well have been temporary contracts, which could explain a lot. I can't find any mention of Countryliner, although possibly they only became involved later, in which case they would be in a later issue. I know Countywide became involved and they aren't mentioned, so it's definitely worth a look. Alzarian16 (talk) 21:44, 17 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, we've confused each other! When I said about TGM and Reptons, I was talking only about one route in particular. That Woking route in particular went from Tillingbourne, to Arriva temporarily and then to Countryliner. Reptons and TGM probably did do other things, though to be honest I cannot remember that far back. Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 18:06, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Buses gives us the following: "Tellings-Golden Miller picked up Tillingbourne's services in the Woking area, though Reptons Coaches, previously purely a coach operator was also operating bus and school services in Woking.". So most of the operations in that area seems to have gone to them. Where did that particular route run to? It might be covered by the previous sentence, which reads: "Arriva Guildford & West Surrey and Surrey & West Sussex picked up most of the work in Tillingbourne's heartland in the Guildford/Cranleigh/Dorking area and also around Horsham." Interesting to note that they definitely use "Surrey & West Sussex" and not just "West Sussex", which suggests that the name might have been used for Horsham prior to its current adoption in Guildford. Apparently White Rose, whoever they are, took something over in Staines at first. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:23, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes, and getsurrey mentions Bicknell Coaches as well. Where they fit in I have no idea. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:25, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Woking - Chobham, so not really covered by the other sentence. White Rose were another operator, if you say they took over Staines - Camberley that would be route 500. White Rose collasped too. In fact Surrey Buses died within weeks of Tillingbourne. A tough area to run buses is Surrey! Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 20:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Surrey CC vehicles

It's good to see further improvements being made to the article, I'm afraid I can't really help as I don't have the sources, and my knowledge is all from memory really. However I've noticed some fleet information has been changed. "Four vehicles remained in Surrey: two Dennis Dart SLFs leased from Surrey County Council were passed on to Arriva Guildford & West Surrey, while two of Tillingbourne's Optare Excels were bought by Safeguard Coaches of Guildford."

A third Dart, T593 CGT, (sisters to T591 CGT and T592 CGT with Arriva) went to and is still with Stagecoach. There was also a forth, T594 CGT, which was an Optare MetroRider, which did go to Countryliner, and after sitting for ages in the Surrey CC shared with the Ride Pegasus buses, has now moved on for further service. Can sources be found for this? Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 22:02, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tricky one. This self-published source says that the Dart went to Stagecoach in May 2001, the same time as the Arriva ones, but unlike the others doesn't appear to have been noted in Buses' fleet news (at least not that I could find). I'll keep looking, but don't expect anything. The Metrorider is even stranger - the same self-published source has it new to Surrey CC without mentioning Tillingbourne, moving to Arriva in February 2002 and Countryliner six months later. This one has it first operating with Eltimart of Byfleet. Are you sure Tillingbourne used it? I would have expected at least one of the two to mention it. Alzarian16 (talk) 15:54, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I did wonder whether Tillingbourne used the MetroRider, and going by what you've come up with, it looks like they did not. I do wonder about the reliablilty of the Ian's Bus stop site, for example it shows the MetroRider being bought by Arriva and then Countryliner. Considering the bus spent a good couple of years dumped the the County Council's depot, I doubt whether it ever left Surrey CC ownership. I've checked the archives of some Yahoo groups, and it's shown as being leased to Surrey Buses, the operator who died withing weeks of Tillingbourne, so it's probably best to ignore this one.

As for the Dart, BLOTW does actually show it has being new to Stagecoach in March 1999. I'd always though it was with Tillingbourne at some point, but maybe it did start wiith Stagecoach - which might explain why it didn't appear in fleet news? Oh well, best to leave it then until we find something certain. Maybe the line "Four vehicles remained in Surrey: two Dennis Dart SLFs leased from Surrey County Council were passed on to Arriva Guildford & West Surrey,[30] while two of Tillingbourne's Optare Excels were bought by Safeguard Coaches of Guildford." ought to be re-worded to make it less specific, such as "Some vehicles remained in Surrey, including two Dennis Dart SLFs leased from Surrey County Council, which were passed on to Arriva Guildford & West Surrey, and two Optare Excels which were purchased by Safeguard Coaches of Guildford." Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 16:42, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good idea. Done. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:03, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent. That covers all posibilities then! Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 21:47, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]