South Riding Buses (Read 5,841 times)

[captainsharpe1]

May 25, 2008 17:07:12 GMT 22438 said:

May 25, 2008 13:36:54 GMT lboyle said:

85 Hunters Bar (poss. Banner X) - City - Stannington

It will have been Hunters Bar since there's nowhere to terminate a bus at Banner Cross. If there was I bet the 90 would use it!

bannerdale road then left and left?, or the turn round at knowle lane 30 seconds up the road from carter knowle road top.

[22438]

May 25, 2008 22:14:12 GMT @captainsharpe1 said:

May 25, 2008 17:07:12 GMT 22438 said:

It will have been Hunters Bar since there's nowhere to terminate a bus at Banner Cross. If there was I bet the 90 would use it!

bannerdale road then left and left?

Just seen your edit - the problem then is that you end up on a road signed as unsuitable for heavy vehicles.

[jswallow]

85's ran to Knowle Lane at Ecclesall.

[slimsid2000]

I read somewhere once that SOuth riding was set up by 3 or 4 ex STY employees who were either made redundent or left SYT. Is this true?

[captainsharpe1]

Mar 8, 2009 15:13:27 GMT slimsid2000 said:

I read somewhere once that SOuth riding was set up by 3 or 4 ex STY employees who were either made redundent or left SYT. Is this true?

Set up by Andrew gunning?-no connections with SYT.

[slimsid2000]

Where did he come from then? Was he involved with buses in another city?

[morrisminor]

Andrew Gunning
Peter Jenner
Peter Faulkner
Mike Grace

[busman3]

Mar 8, 2009 15:13:27 GMT slimsid2000 said:

I read somewhere once that SOuth riding was set up by 3 or 4 ex STY employees who were either made redundent or left SYT. Is this true?

Are you getting confussed with Yorkshire Terrier ?

[slimsid2000]

Maybe. And Sheafline

[morrisminor]

A couple of shots from South Riding's first day of operation, 27th July 1992, when SYT obtained an injuction to stop them using their planned route numbers:

Ex-PMT 4 (JJG 884P) in High Street, Sheffield


Ex-Northumbria 20 (SGR 120R) in High Street, Sheffield


Route numbers (1, 3 & 193) were introduced a few days later. The green waist band was extended to match the front of the vehicles during the first weeks of operation.

Ex-Pride of the Road 32 (EGB 83T) at the depot being prepared for service after acquisition and repaint

[jimmy75]

sum pics here

flic.kr/s/aHsjyPcaWi

[bususer]

In answer to the OP yes i remember South Riding. They were one of several independents operating in Sheffield in the early 1990s. I saw them mentioned on another thread (about Omnibus) and noticed the comment that they had a rather scattergun approach to choosing routes. From what I recall this seems quite a good assesment. I remember the 85 from Ecclesall to Stannington when ran peak times only Mon-Sat in competition with SYT.

I think a part of the problem for them was that they came rather late to the party re competition in Sheffield (1992)by which time all the best routes were already highly competetive. For example Terrier operated heavily down the south east of Sheffield out to Halfway etc via large estates as well as the ever popular 52. Omnibus seemed to do alot of north - south operation (eg Ecclesfield-jordonthorpe type runs)again taking in some major corridors. So SR had to try and pick up routes that only SYT operated which were by their very nature more challenging economicially otherwise they would have been competetive already. This probably explains why they tried out various routes and soon dropped them if they they found them unprofitable.

from what I remember they ran only Leyland Nationals. They were bought out by Yorkshire Traction late 1994 and soon after closed down entirely. Not sure if they evr made a profit of any kind during their 2-3 years of operation.

[alexander]

I think they bought buses from Halton whose livery they adopted .

[dougie]

Aug 25, 2015 15:33:01 GMT bususer said:

In answer to the OP yes i remember South Riding. They were one of several independents operating in Sheffield in the early 1990s. I saw them mentioned on another thread (about Omnibus) and noticed the comment that they had a rather scattergun approach to choosing routes. From what I recall this seems quite a good assesment. I remember the 85 from Ecclesall to Stannington when ran peak times only Mon-Sat in competition with SYT.

I think a part of the problem for them was that they came rather late to the party re competition in Sheffield (1992)by which time all the best routes were already highly competetive. For example Terrier operated heavily down the south east of Sheffield out to Halfway etc via large estates as well as the ever popular 52. Omnibus seemed to do alot of north - south operation (eg Ecclesfield-jordonthorpe type runs)again taking in some major corridors. So SR had to try and pick up routes that only SYT operated which were by their very nature more challenging economicially otherwise they would have been competetive already. This probably explains why they tried out various routes and soon dropped them if they they found them unprofitable.

from what I remember they ran only Leyland Nationals. They were bought out by Yorkshire Traction late 1994 and soon after closed down entirely. Not sure if they evr made a profit of any kind during their 2-3 years of operation.

That's a fair assessment.

They certainly found a niche with the 46 (which evolved from City - Base Green to Walkey - City - Crystal Peaks and then Hillsborough - City - Crystal Peaks back when the only service from Hillsborough up the hill to Walkley was the half hourly 31/63 and the only service from Gleadless to Crystal Peaks was the hourly 259)...

...but the other routes seemed to fall in to the categories of "short lived" (anyone remember the 181 from Meadowhall to Ecclesall?) or the randomly timed and irregular (the 51, the 193 to Blackburn).

Don't want to be too critical though - they had a smart livery, they produced their own leaflets (which you couldn't take for granted back in those days!), they tried some interesting routes (instead of just directly copying frequent Mainline routes - e.g. I think their 3 ran from the City - Shirecliffe- Parson Cross for a while instead of just copying the 33/34, their 46 gave a lot of new links.

Those colourful chaotic days twenty years ago make the present day seem quite tame/ stable/ staid - not sure I'd find it so easy to get enthusiastic if starting out nowadays!