Trivia: Current and Historical route which are letter only

[SCH117X]

West Yorkshires 'Hoppa' Services, in Harrogate at least, were lettered. Passed to Harrogate & District who eventually got rid of the lettered routes IIRC following the merging in of the fromer competing 'Challenger' Harrogate Independent Travel services (those were numbered). Whilst the small buses were fine for some routes, it seemed that nearly every through road of any note had at least an hourly 'Hoppa', on the more popular routes they quickly reached capacity leading to intending passengers being left at stops.
Hoppa route A in this flickr photo susbsequently came route 7, then 1 & 2 operating cross town to Knaresborough being renumbered 101 and 102 before the cross town workings were scrapped and 103 adopted. Now route 3 worked offically by Volvo 7900 electrics but avaialbiity issues often currently see a B7RLE or Scania OmniDekka. A big change from the Hoppa days.

HARROGATE

Explore Neil.VR4's 2637 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

 

[Roilshead]

Middlesbrough, with I/1, II/11, and O/0 coordinated with Stockton.

South Midland used letters within Thames Valley's express series after they were placed under common management following nationalisation.

 

[computerSaysNo]

McGill's Scotland East currently use "AIRX" (referring to AIRport Express) in Edinburgh, although the buses don't show that on the screen; instead they just show "Fast to Airport" or "Fast to City Centre".

 

[PaulWC]

In the late 80s Crosville in Macclesfield renumbered local services as A,B, C,D E,F,G,H,J

In Warrington, Crosville had Mini Lynx A and B between 1987 and 1989. All the other Mini Lynx networks used either just numbers or the number with letter prefix.

 

[Pyewipecarshed]

East Yorkshire's "Little Bus" minibus services in Bridlington used letters from introduction in the 1980s up until around the end of the 90s iirc. For example W was West Hill.
In the modern era Stagecoach's "Sherwood Arrow" route from Worksop/Retford to Nottingham doesn't have a number and buses show SA in the side and rear blinds; from (limited) observation the full name shows at the front.

 

[Deerfold]

When Metro in West Yorkshire relaunched the Hebden Bridge local services (including using 2 ill fated Optare Aleros) they renumbered the services A, B, C, D etc

Some of the nice to have services later in the alphabet were withdrawn fairly quickly, and the ones that stuck around have since been renumbered into the normal big bus 500s sequence that applies in this area

Hebden Bridge has had 2 non-standard renumberings.

It went from routes in the 500 series to H1- H6 (the standard for small town networks in West Yorkshire at the time) then to A-I which was unusual then the A-E which remained went into the 500 series again (except for the C which became short runs on the 900) which was unusual as the standard at the time was to use a bunch of 900 series numbers.

Holmfirth in the 80s and 90s had daily services H1 to H6 and additional A to E services which ran several trips, but only on Thursdays, the local market day.

Trent busses (now highpeak) used to run the transpeak service which did not have a number as such. Where a short code was needed it was abbreviated "TP". IIRC the service originally ran from Manchester to Nottingham but was cut back to Manchester to Derby a long time ago.

More recently though, the service seems to have been split into seperate parts TP1, TP2 and TP3, and then the TP1 part (manchester to buxton IIRC) seems to have been discontinued.

The Tramspeak only showed TP. It was just registered in 3 separate sections. Nottingham to Derby was removed in the late nineties, replaced by the R1 (not the current R1) which increased to hourly from the roughly two-highly Transpeak then every 10 minutes as the Red Arrow).

Transdev York and Country (coastliner), used to have 2:
CAS, York to Malton via Castle Howard.
TAD, York to Tadcaster shuttle.

And the ZAP (CityZap York-Leeds express, half hourly in its prime).

In the modern era Stagecoach's "Sherwood Arrow" route from Worksop/Retford to Nottingham doesn't have a number and buses show SA in the side and rear blinds; from (limited) observation the full name shows at the front.

That changed its name in stages. The 33 (which only went from Worksop) started to be called the Sherwood Arrow for several years before the number was dropped. The section from Retford-Ollerton used to be run by a variety of 90-odd routes combining to be roughly hourly.

 

[mikeg]

Do letter only names which make up or almost make up a word count? The cutest naming I can think of are the First Kernow services between Penzance and Mousehole, CAT and MOUS, serving the old coastguard and Mousehole harbour respectively.

 

[Taunton]

From the Stagecoach South West thread, Exeter has letter only routes in the city.
What other place currently or historically have/had letter only routes

Exeter Corporation always had letters for its bus routes, which went back to the old trams in the 1920s.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

In Dartford, Arriva runs the FastTrack routes A (to Blue Water via Stone Crossing) and B (to Gravesend via Darent Valley and Blue Water). That's alongside the conventional routes, which have numbers.

 

[Pyewipecarshed]

Some other examples from the time of minibus mania in the 1980s are the Charlie's Cars routes around Bournemouth and Poole which were lettered, some Cambus (and later Viscount) routes in Peterborough; I've seen photos of buses on A and C routes, and there may have been more, and the Southern National town routes in Weymouth which retained letters when I visited the town in the early 2000s.

 

[DGP]

When Middlesbrough and Stockton had their separate Corporation run bus services, Middlesbrough used letters for their services to avoid confusion with Stockton's numbers. The two authorities were amalgamated into Teesside Municipal Transport in 1968 (which became Cleveland Transit in 1974) but it took a few years for the lettered routes to become numbers.

 

[daodao]

Oldham Corporation used letters for their tram routes.

Bolton Corporation also used letters for their tram routes.

 

[Wolvercoter]

Exeter Corporation always had letters for its bus routes, which went back to the old trams in the 1920s.

Looking back at some old timetables, I think Exeter has used every letter at least once with the possible exception of Q. Happy to be corrected.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Green Line used letters until it ran out of alphebet, and then switched to the 7xx series, some time after ww2 İ think?

İ seem to recall Crosville used letters in parts of North Wales?

 

[Bovverboy]

Lancaster Corp used numbers but also used O as well!

Was it letter O or a zero?

It was a zero.

 

[Dai Corner]

Cardiff Bus have a seasonal service aimed at tourists between the city centre and the bay called Sky.

 

[Mal]

Green Line used letters until it ran out of alphebet, and then switched to the 7xx series, some time after ww2 İ think?

İ seem to recall Crosville used letters in parts of North Wales?

Until dereg, all Crosville routes had letter prefixes and numbers, eg S46, M37, P4, F17 etc. There were some joint routes with municipals and PTEs that were only numbers.

 

[noddingdonkey]

There is FTB for the Huddersfield Free Town Bus. (Team Pennine)

Looks like the Wakefield equivalent is WCB (Tetley's) Dewsbury is DTB (Station Coaches). Looks like the former Leeds one was registered with the service number "City Centre Circular"

 

[Dai Corner]

the former Leeds one was registered with the service number "City Centre Circular"

Which reminds me that Bristol once had a City Centre Circle service.

 

[Deerfold]

There is FTB for the Huddersfield Free Town Bus. (Team Pennine)

Looks like the Wakefield equivalent is WCB (Tetley's) Dewsbury is DTB (Station Coaches). Looks like the former Leeds one was registered with the service number "City Centre Circular"

It used to show LCB.

It's allegedly now part of the 5. https://www.wymetro.com/buses/leeds-citybus/

Bradford was the BFB then BCB .