Extreme Bustitution

[whole diary]

[Sixty3Closure]

Newcastle to Edinburgh which is about 120 miles. I was travelling on to Stirling but apparently dumping us in Edinburgh late at night was seen as sufficient. The train's final destination was Inverness and there was a coach laid on but to save time skipped all the stops before Kingussie.

[Worcester_Passenger]

Köln - Bruxelles (130 miles aka 209 km). Don't get me started about the incompetence of DB^» (Deutsche Bahn - German State Railway - about).

Yes, I've done that too, in the other direction.  There was a Belgian rail strike.  I was going to Aachen - the bus stopped at a service station outside Aachen (which was no good to me), so I ended up going into Koln and getting a train back!

In the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), the longest for me is Plymouth to Bristol, a few years ago now.

Are you following me around as a sort of reverse doppelganger? Our Köln - Bruxelles journey was also due to a Belgian rail strike, in 2014, which DB should have told us about. Ended up with a night in Bruxelles.

But I have also done Bristol - Plymouth by bus.

For diversions, I've done Glasgow - Birmingham via Newcastle to avoid a coach to Carlisle, provided because the wires were down over Beattock.

[martyjon]

Due to financial circumstances of my parents in 1953 the family, 2 Adults and 3 Children (1 Under 3) travelled Bristol to Doncaster by bus/coach and return for less than the cost of a single adult rail ticket between the two. Bristol to Cheltenham on Black and White Motorways then by luck, Cheltenham to Doncaster on a vehicle from the operator Yorkshire Woollen Mills. By luck because the family had already transferred to a Yorkshire Traction vehicle at Cheltenham when dad noticed the Yorkshire Woollen Mills vehicle and enquired of the driver who was going through to Doncaster whereas had we stayed on the Yorkshire Traction vehicle we would have had to change again at Sheffield, this was in the days when the national coach network went under the name of Associated Motorways. That was a hell of a journey, no motorways then and about 8 stops en-route. Took from 08:30 am arriving in Doncaster at 6:00 pm. We had the return journey to make two weeks later.

[chuffed]

When I was a student commuting backwards and forwards to Worcester Training College by coach in the early 70s,one of the features of the trip was the 2.30 departure of ALL the coaches from Cheltenham coach station. As they all revved up in turn, the blue cloud of exhaust fumes was enough to make any potential GCHQ employees think World war 3 had begun !. I dread to think what sort of nasties we were breathing in, back in those days!

[rogerw]

Not a bustitution but I did have a taxi provided from Shrewsbury to Pwllheli following a missed connection. (Guard gave "right way" without authority from station dispatcher) Got in 45 minutes before the train

[grahame]

Lesson learned that I will never get the provided bus to replace a cancelled long distance train and do what a lot of others did that day and wait for the next train and make arrangements to change my ticket.

Wise under most circumstances.   There's an issue with the rail companies just saying "sorry - wait for the next train" if it's over an hour away in that the public think they (rail companies) are not looking out for the passengers - but sometimes the sourcing and running of alternative transport via a slower route means the next train will overtake it, or passengers will have the (and this is personal) discomfort of a bus only to get to final destination a few minutes ahead of the next train.