The Birmingham Megabus stop is in The Priory Queensway. Every time I arrive there I’m amazed at the number of buses which use this stretch of road. On Friday I arrived early so got myself a cup of coffee and then counted buses :-( But only for ten minutes which saw 35 buses pass me, this equates to 210 buses per hour. It was around 11:00am on a weekday morning, I wondered if there would more per hour during peak times?
The vast majority of buses were Travel West Midlands, followed by Diamond Bus and then Claribels. It has always been apparent to me that there is a fourth operator but I can’t identify them. The buses don’t have either a name or a livery style/colour! The common factor to the buses of this fourth operator are that they are old and look very tatty! Then, on Friday a bus appeared which met the criteria of belonging to this fourth operator, execpt it carried a name – Midland Rider. Is this a fifth operator? Or, is that the name of the fourth operator?
In typical Thandi style last time I checked they had 3 totally different and separate websites.
http://www.thandiinternational.co.uk/
http://www.thandicoaches.com/ (and several other domains which all lead to the same site)
A place to you could try looking to identify the scruffy vehicles is Tony Hunter’s excellent West Midlands Fotopic site, which has pictures of virtually every bus operator in the Birmingham area and beyond:
http://west-midlands-buses.fpic.co.uk/
Most of the smaller companies look exactly like what you’ve described, though Thandi are by far the largest.
Thandi sound interesting! I did a google and the top place goes to http://www.thandicoachesuk.com but when you click the link “This Account Has Been Suspended
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.” appears :-(
Fourth company – probably Thandi Group or one (if not more) of the smaller dodgy companies like that.
There’s Central Connect – who have just bought Diamond Bus. They’ve bought some other scruffy operators recently too – they could well the the forth company!!
In the evening rush hour the whole of the Moor Street area can be jammed solid with buses, easily taking half hour to get through!