Sheffield Omnibus Enthusiasts Society (SOES)
31st March 2025 - Fleet Lists Updated
A number of our fleet lists on our website have been brought up to date - see the Fleet Lists page for further details. Following the closure of Hulleys of Baslow (see below) and most of their contracted work being picked up by Andrews of Tideswell, we have published a new fleet list on the site for Andrews.
24th March 2025 - Hulley's of Baslow to cease trading
In an announcement to staff today (Monday 24th March) the owner of Hulley's of Baslow confirmed that the company would cease operations after Wednesday 26th March 2025, citing financial pressures caused by insurance costs increasing, not fully recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and being stripped of some tendered services by Derbyshire County Council as the reasons for this.
Tracing its roots back over 100 years. Hulleys operate a mixture of tendered and commercial services throughout the Peak District and extending in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire from their base at Baslow, employing around 40 staff and with a fleet of around 20 vehicles. Due to poor performance in recently months Derbyshire County Council (DCC) had already announced it was revoking Hulley's contracts to operate services 63 (Chesterfield - Matlock), 110 & 111 (Matlock - Ashbourne), 172 (Matlock - Bakewell) and 173 & 178 (Bakewell - Castleton) from early April. With today's announcement new operators will take over those services from Thursday 27th March with DCC working with operators to fill in gaps in Hulley's commercial network. Further details will be published in the forthcoming editions of M&T News. We wish all of Hulley's staff the best for the future at this unsettling time.
19th July 2024 - Watersons cease trading
The long-established R&S Watersons of Badsworth business ceased trading suddenly on Friday 19th July. Founded by Ron and Sheila Waterson the business stayed in the Waterson family until March 2023 when, upon the retirement of the 2nd generation of the Waterson family, it was sold to Scott Wooley, who also owns Barnsley-based Globe Holidays.
From Saturday 20th July Waterson's service 249 (South Elmsall - Pontefract) is replaced in full by Globe Holidays, and Waterson's service 36 (South Elmsall - Barnsley) is replaced by a revision of existing Globe Holidays service 39 (Barnsley - South Elmsall - Pontefract)
4th December 2023 - Hulley's of Kent!?!
In perhaps a late entry for the "never saw that coming" moment of the year, Hulleys of Baslow have purchased the business of Go Coach Hire of Swanley, Kent. Whilst it is clear the two companies have built somewhat of a working relationship over the past few years, with Go Coach vehicles regularly being on hire to Hulleys to cover shortages, the news of the takeover seems to have come as a surprise to most commentators. Notably it is quoted that vehicles from Hulleys will now travel to Swanley - a mere 374 mile round trip - for MOT and servicing work!
Update December 2024 - local correspondents inform us the ownership situation of Go-Coach has reverted to the pre-December 2023 position
10th November 2022 - Stagecoach announce "UK's largest bus order during 2022"
Stagecoach have announced an order for 200 Alexander Dennis E400MMCs to join their regional bus operations from March 2023. We understand a large proportion of this order will join the East Midlands fleet at Mansfield and Hull depot, and the Yorkshire fleet at Holbrook depot.
Further details are available on the Stagecoach website
3rd August 2022 - Powells and CT Plus (Yorkshire) to cease
News broke late on the afternoon of Wednesday 3rd August that the Powells (Hellaby) and CT Plus (Yorkshire) operations - both owned by the HCT Group - were to close down. In a note to staff the company advised that they had "significant difficulties in our Yorkshire operation for some time" and that they were "talking with our commissioners across Yorkshire, seeing if we can transfer as many services as possible over to new operators... we expect this process to take up to a week".
On Thursday 4th August, Travel South Yorkshire advised passengers that all Powells services would cease to operate after Sunday 7th August 2022.
Further details at https://www.route-one.net/news/hct-group-seeks-to-terminate-operations-in-yorkshire
8th July 2022 - Fleet Lists Updated
A number of our fleet lists on our website have been brought up to date - see the Fleet Lists page for further details.
We've also made some changes to the fleet lists we update and publish:
- Following a restructure of Operating Divisions within First, the former seperate West Yorkshire and York fleet lists have been merged together to form a new First West & North Yorkshire fleet list
- To better reflect operating practices where vehicles move regularly between the fleets we've merged the former seperate CT Plus and Powells fleet lists in to a new CT Plus Yorkshire fleet list
- As the company no longer operates public services and we understand is in the process of winding down we will no longer be updating the Isle Coaches fleet list
- Due to time constraints, the lack of regular updates and the fact these operators no longer run in to the main SOES area of South Yorkshire, we won't be updating the fleet lists for High Peak or Trent Barton going forwards. We will continue to regularly update the fleet list for TM Travel (part of the same group as Trent Barton) and those wanting an up to date fleet list for those 2 operators will find them on either the Derby Bus Depot or ukBuses websites - see our links page.
Unless there are any significant developments, the next planned publication of updated fleet lists will in September 2022 owing to summer holidays.
9th March 2022 - Stagecoach/National Express merger OFF!
The proposed merger between Stagecoach Group and National Express announced in December 2021 has been called off. The board of Stagecoach Group are no longer recommending acceptance of the deal to their shareholders, and instead are recommending acceptance of an alternative deal which will see the Group sold to an investment company called DWS Infrastructure. Further details can be found here. It is expected the new bid will not see any significant changes to either the Stagecoach Head Office function in Perth or to local operating companies.
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SOES Latest News
A round-up of some of the latest news from the Sheffield Omnibus Enthusiasts Society (SOES). For full details, see the next edition of M&T News. If you've any news to contribute to this website or M&T News please contact our webmaster.