The Bus Route To Mr Churchill's? - Walking the 246
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- Опубліковано 5 січ 2024
- I'm sure plenty of you know who Mr Churchill is and are aware of his country house situated in Kent. However, how many of you know the bus service that feeds passengers into Chartwell during the Summer on Sundays? Well, in this video I'll be explaining the history of the 246, the areas in which it passes through and generally things that I like about the route (a lot). If you like this kind of content, please like, subscribe and share this video as it massively helps me out when you do!
Note - Some photos used in this aren't my own and so copyrignt goes to their respective owners.
Copyright SomeNorthLondoner 2023
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Great informative video on the history. Being someone that has no knowledge of the Chartwell area and Winston's house, I now know quite a bit thanks to you. Also the aforementioned 410 is partially still around today operated by Metrobus between Redhill and East Grinstead if you didnt know
No Metrobus 410 goes Redhill - Oxted- Hurst Green not to East Grinstead.
Also the are 3 buses that operate Oxted-Westerham all metrobus including 236: Oxted-Westerham-Edenbridge- East Grinstead.
@@DanBen07 ah thanks for the correction
the thing about chartwell is that it isn't a village or a hamlet, it's just the mansion so it doesn't make sense for there to be a regular service. also while i agree that improving bus services around westerham, oxted and the nearby towns is valid, it's far outside the scope of TfL and should be organised by kent county council
The argument I posed was that access to and from Chartwell outside the summer months isn’t brilliant and that a bus service year round would be better. Yes Oxted is outside the scope of TFL, i wonder whether Red Ken ever looked at the 246 going to Oxted given he introduced the 347 and 375
So many memories this clip brings back - walked all over the area since the days of the London Country 410 and the Green Line 705 - for a long time after the Green Line era, there was the hourly 402 from Bromley North via Knockholt Pound to Tunbridge Wells.
Main issue with any route like 246 that goes 'beyond the fringe' is one of revenue, or rather, which county council's footing the bill. Would be an interesting clip if you were inclined to roam towards Dorking, Redhill, Slough, Watford, Potters Bar/St Albans, Debden, Lakeside, Bluewater or Swanley.
Then again, 464 New Addington to Tatsfield is possibly the most alpine London bus route ever.
There be gold in them thar hills.
Every clip of yours has been worth the time - looking forward to seeing what you do next - thanks again \m/
I have never been on this bus route before but I know of the route as having Kent County bus maps produced by the council. I was outside East Grinstead railway station one time and saw the bus with the destination Bromley on the front. I remember advertising & leaflets giving out for that extension.
Interesting!
Interesting that Westerham Heights is the highest point in Greater London , I would have thought that would have been a point in the North London hills rather than the North Downs.
Quite a few of the highest points in London are in North London although South London takes the crown with the top 2!
4:45 - the bus pictured still exists and can sometimes be seen on the preservation circuits
In fact, she spent some time up here in Yorkshire where I had the chance to ride her several times
Edit: Now I admit that I am not the best in the world at maths, but I spy five buses listed at 6:28
Was more referring to the peak vehicle requirement re the E200s but yes 5 did appear
Many thanks for this very enjoyable and informative video. I grew up in Sevenoaks, and was familiar with Westerham and its bus routes as they dwindled following the London Transport green bus era. In fact there was in the 1960s a kind of 'A25 bus route' from Sevenoaks to Redhill, as LT's 403 (Tonbridge-Croydon) connected hourly, and reasonably reliably, with the 410 you mention. But I've always felt that an express service, just calling at main stops, should be commercially viable, but - even in the first flush of Thatcher's bus privatisation - no company has seemed to want to risk trying it out, though Westerham and Oxted are common vists for Sevenoaks car-drivers.
I agree that a year-round 246 extension to Chartwell would be good. I don't know if publicity leaflets are any part of TfL's armoury for bus routes, but your video shows what a variety of attractions the 246 offers! As you point out, its timing is quite good - at 40 minutes, it's only 10 minutes slower than the average car time suggested by Google Maps - which interestingly also uses a route via Hayes (though not past the railway station). Is the 246 much delayed by stopping on the section between Hayes and Bromley South? - if there is, it might be worth an express version (in addition to the 246), or just increasing it to 4 per hour. Parking in Westerham is difficult, and more frequent buses might attract local passengers.
Looking forward to your next video
they have cut the routes from hayes back a bit, really they should have been increase in hours and frequency , with better publicity
Yeah the Sevenoaks to Westerham bus these days is really Limited. Regular services to Oxted including a 236 limited service to Edenbridge, East Grinstead.
@@DanBen07 a note in a local paper about the publishing of Buses Annual 76 (so late 1975) covered the feature on Westerham as a changing point for LCBS services , which sort of started my interest in Bus literature , and traveling for the sake of finding interesting bus places outside of urban london - that I later found a very long distant family connection to Woolf of Quebec became an added bonus. These days I dont have time to get out beyond the M25 by bus or car despite having family just off the tramlink network,
@@highpath4776 I got my first bus timetable when I was 6 in a hospital waiting room it was on the table at the end of my appointment they said I could take it home & keep it. After that I started to travel on buses and trains to get more timetables and maps. I haven't done that so much in years because a lot of things online & I live in an area that doesn't have a lot of timetables and changes. To far to travel to somewhere with an abundance of them. still collect if I can find any.
Yeah I like some issues of bus magazine they don't always have a lot of pictures of my favourite type of buses.
Nice one. Check the 465 Kingston -Dorking route too.
Might do, who knows 😄
This was an amazing video on the bus route, I've ridden it quite a few times in the summer and just for joy rides, as for how it could be improved, i'd say the best way would be something like the 166, every hour one goes down to Chartwell (or Oxted) meanwhile the others keep their original terminal at Westerham, this may mean that the PVR has to be raised though.
Thank you so much! Yeah the 246 with an Oxted extension would gain a bus on the PVR - which would obviously increase costs of operating the route particularly on an extension out of London. I wouldn’t be against it although it’s not TfLs remit!
@@somenorthlondoner Considering the fact that the 246 sometimes runs E400 MMCs, I wouldn't say that a PVR increase isn't completely invalid, maybe give it to one of the runs to Westerham and keep the E200s for all the other trips, I'm not sure if the roads to Oxted or Chartwell could take the E400 MMC though, if they could I would say that they could put that on the route due to it being longer therefore giving it a chance to have more passengers.
@@BluePuffyy Not sure if Chartwell can take E400 MMCs, think there’s low trees but feel free to correct me as I’m not 100% sure on that!
@@somenorthlondoner To Chartwell the buses would probably just be longer versions of the E200 (Or E200 MMCs, not sure if they run on the route though) all things considered, they should have enough room.
Per Google maps, Westerham Green to Chartwell is 2 miles, to Oxted is 4 miles; in the regular timetable (not extended to Chartwell) the bus is allowed 20 minutes to turn round in Westerham. If there are no delays, a trip out to Chartwell and back should be manageable but, though a car - and maybe an express bus - can do Westerham to Oxted in 10 minutes, it would be a very tight, and so should have another bus in the cycle - which wuould hang about at Oxted for half an hour. Another point is that the stop at which regulars know to catch the 246 to Bromley is opposite Westerham Green, a bus coming back from Oxted on the A25 could not serve that. To solve both these problems, extend the bus to Oxted via Hosey Common, Crockham Hill and Limspfield Chart. In fact there used to be (in LT green bus days) a regular service which did that, I think hourly or at least 2-hourly.
Did you say there's a bus from South Bromley to Welwyn GC? My gawd that must be painful to ride. Mind you, at least London has decent bus services, I live 12 miles from WGC and I can't get a direct bus to Welwyn, and I don't live in the countryside I live in a cluster of towns with zero gap between mine and one and 1/2 a mile between another and mine and surrounded by other towns and villages. Bus services round me have been stripped away over the last decade, services cut, removed and frequencies of what's left halved. I used to drive down to Redhill, Dorking then through Surry into Berkshire 20 years ago, it's quite a nice part of the World overall and the west flow on the M25 makes it surprisingly accessible even in the busy morning period, or at least it did back then.
Did I say there was a bus from WGC to Bromley? I don’t think I did, but all the areas are awesome yeah!
@@somenorthlondoner
I may have misheard, it happens. Yeah, there's a lot of nice areas on the London orbit, but there's also Stevenage.
The services from Bromley South are Thameslink trains, they head from Sevenoaks up to Welwyn GC in peak times. I think its about a 2 hour journey, so quite a useful connection through central London I guess.
@@UKTransport232 Cheers for that, reminded me of where it was in the vid!
@@UKTransport232
Ah OK, that is a useful connection, I didn't know I can hop down to WGC and transfer into Kent from there. Seems more convenient than going into KC. Thanks.