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You can search for information by place name, postcode, service number or operator. 
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IMPORTANT POINTS.
This site shows information taken from various public sources at various times in the past. As such the information on the site is likely to have changed since it was sourced. It is collected together for enthusiast interest only and is not intended to be used to plan actual journeys. It is not intended as a source of accurate, up to date information and should not be relied on.
No responsibility can be taken for any use made of any of the information presented by this site which may have been subsequently updated, may have been incorrect at source, or may have been inaccurately transcribed.
Any information taken from this site should be checked by using the suggested on line timetables, telephoning National Traveline on 0870 6082608 or contacting the operator. (Please remember that the operator stated on the site may not now be the operator of the service.)
PURPOSE.
This site allows you to search for bus/coach service information across most of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of ireland. Most cities, towns and villages on routes can be searched for and operator details can be found, or routes can be listed by operator. Welsh spellings of places are recorded and can be searched for as well as the english ones.
The sites original aim was to provide a database of where the more interesting operators run, and how to get at the relevant information.
None of the information is officially sourced and the site is not connected in any way with any of the operators or organisations shown.
For more detailed help click here.
If you can provide any updates or correct any of the errors on the site please get in touch.
CONTENT/ACCURACY.
The transport services covered are bus, express coach and train services that operate regularly, either all year round or for most of the summer. Notable exclusions are day excursions, services that only operate if they are pre-booked and services that only operate during the run-up to Christmas. The site does not contain specific timetable information, only general frequencies and contact points for more information, or web based timetables.
Information about the counties covered, and general update information, can be found by clicking here.
The information for the site route listings usually comes from county councils or Internet sites, however any misspellings are likely to be mine.
None of the information is official and was only correct on the dates shown. Where more than a year has passed then major changes may have taken place. No guarantee can be offered for any of the information which should always be checked with the relevant county council, operator or National Traveline on 0845 6082608.
IMAGES.
All images on the site are copyright and are intended for enthusiast interest only. The inclusion of an image on the website is not intended to give the impression that the vehicle concerned is used in service by the operator now, or at any time in the past, on any of the bus services mentioned. The liveries shown on vehicles are also not intended to illustrate a livery that is in use at present, or at any time in the past.
All telephone numbers given are from public sources and these may now be out of date, or not used for bus enquiries. The best telephone number to use is always National Traveline on 0870 6082608.
GOOGLE EARTH KML FILES.
The site has various files for Google Earth available. However the sites host has not caught up with Google Earth yet so I cannot serve KML files. To overcome this all files are stored as XML files. This makes it slightly more complex to use the files, details below:
1. Click on the file to open it, or right click and select 'Save Target As'.
2. If you've opened ths file select 'File' from the top menu then 'Save As'.
3. Select somewhere to save the file on your computer.
4. Change the 'Save As Type' from XML to 'All files'.
5. Add .KML after the filename.
6. Save the file.
7. Start your Google Earth program. (downloadable for free here)
8. Select File, then open.
9. Select the file that you saved in step 6.
Hopefully sometime soon the hosting company will move with the times and support KML files properly!
The data used to produce the file is very inaccurate, partly because of the difficult of obtaining accurate co-ordinate information in the UK and partly because of a lack of information about routes followed. This is especially true for the rail services which are rarely shown as following the actual railway!
LINKS.
The inclusion of any links on this site is not a recommendation (especially not in the case of the Traveline websites!) and the web site that is linked to may not be any more up to date than this one. Where bus services are shown as having an online timetable available the link will always go to the home page of the site in question. As a lot of external sites take great pleasure in reorganizing themselves every few months it is not possible to link to the timetables any more directly. Where the site is a company site the timetables section should be easy to find, where the site is a local authority one the timetables can be hidden under a variety of sources. Try Transport, Environment, Getting Around, Local Information, Advice for Visitors and if all these fail try looking in the A-Z section under Public Transport or buses. The interfaces of the sites linked to are all different and some of them are not, in any way, user friendly. The Traveline ones are particularly horrible and inconsistant so good luck if that's all that's available. The only guarantee is that, at some point in the past, I managed to find the timetables!
WEBSITE LINK POLICY.
Website links are included for all councils, some operators and some bus/coach services.
An operators web site is only included if it includes details of its bus/coach services.
No sites are included if the user is required to log into the site to get details.
Some of the links are to sites run by other organisations, or private individuals. This happens if no official information source can be found.
Sites are only included if it is possible to get a list of all timetables on the sites. For this reason several of the regional Traveline sites are not included as this is not easily possible.
Where multiple copies of a bus timetable are available on the Internet the link is to the 'best' one at the time.
The definition of 'best' is based on the following ideals:
The timetable should be easy to find, this can get difficult on council sites as no two councils will agree where bus services details should be.
The site should be updated regularly and should show its update details.
The timetable should be easily readable and printable.
The timetable should be in the 24 hour clock.
The timetable should be available in text format.
If they are properly updated, an operators site is prefered over a council site and a council site is prefered over any other organisations. Even if a site fails all of the above (The Traveline sites come close!) a link will still be included if no other site shows that timetable.
The links will usually be to the home page of the site. Sometimes the link will take you to a specific area on the site that covers buses. This is less usual now because of the tendancy for people to redesign their sites with no thought as to how the information might have been used. The link will never take you to the specific timetable required. This is partly because of the redesign issue above, but also because some sites (again Traveline is particularly bad at this!) will not let you link to specific timetables.
INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET.
(My personal viewpoint) Timetable information on the Internet was improving, however the final arrival of the Traveline/Transport Direct web sites has been a backward step. Several councils who have had good sites have now removed the information, to be replaced with Traveline/Transport Direct that is slow, difficult to use and requires the user to learn several different ways of working depending on where in the country they are. Couple this with the fact the information is often out of date, very wrong, and the user can only see the information in one, very restrictive, way and we have a perfect example of how not to provide information over the Internet!
Several county councils have complete timetable information available (Cambridgeshire, Carmarthanshire, Dorset, Essex, Morayshire and Rutland are examples that all show this is possible). However too many still have little or nothing available, even for those services that are provided with the County Councils money.
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This page was last changed 10 Dec 2007, the main database was updated on 16 May 2008 |
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