National Express West Midlands
National
Express West Midlands is the new trading name for
Travel West Midlands which has been the the trading name
of West Midlands Travel Ltd who has never had a very big
involvement in the provision of bus services in Redditch
and the surrounding County. West Midlands Travel Ltd
came into being on the 26th October 1986 when the bus
operations of the West Midlands Passenger Transport
Executive were transferred into a separate private
sector company in line with the requirements of bus
de-regulation, which started on 26th October 1986. The
shares in this new company were owned by the on going
West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority until the
sale to the Management of the Bus Company in 1992. By
April 1986 all bus operators had to decide what services
they were going to retain on a commercial basis
(services without subsidy) after 26th October 1986.
Amongst the services Midland Red West decided not to
retain were the X92 Birmingham to Hereford on Sundays,
318 Redditch to Stourbridge in the evenings and Sundays
and the Bromsgrove to Halesowen section of the then
service 302 (now 202). Ahead of full de-regulation
Hereford and Worcester County Council used its powers to
procure socially necessary services and invited tenders
for the above services. West Midland Travel was
successful in winning all of the tenders and started
running the services from Sunday 31st August 1986. Of
the routes the only one that ran to Redditch was the
service 318 which they ran from their now closed
Hartshill Garage using a mixture of Leyland Nationals
and some of the prototype six Leyland Lynx vehicles
(C61-66HOM). Reliability of the service was not that
good because the operation was so far from the Garage
and within 18 months the whole of service 318 was back
with Midland Red West. West Midlands Travel took the
service 145, which runs from Bromsgrove to Birmingham,
from Stevenson's on 29th December 1991 and operated
until Saturday 28th June 2003. The Company also briefly
operated the service 146 between Redditch and Birmingham
on a Sunday between 19th July 1992 and 4th April 1993.
In the early 1990's as part of the electrification of
the Cross City rail line between Redditch and Birmingham
Centro procured bus replacement services that ran during
the evenings and Sundays to allow necessary engineering
works on the rail line. The contract was let in two
halves with a service between Redditch railway station
and Birmingham New Street Station and a service from
Birmingham New Street to Lichfield City rail station.
The two services were referred to as XCS and XCN
respectively as these letters could easily be displayed
on the front of bus using normal number blinds. West
Midlands Travel ran the southern service from Redditch
to Birmingham. West Midland Travel's (now trading as
Travel West Midlands) most recent involvement in bus
services in Redditch came to an end on 28th June 2003
when they withdrew their services 175 and 179. Travel
West Midlands had taken the service 175 Wythall to
Solihull service over from Harding's Coaches on 20th
February 2000 when Worcestershire County Council
re-tendered the service. For operational reason as their
base is in Redditch Harding's had extended the first and
last journeys to/from Redditch and these were retain
when the contract was renewed as they had generated some
regular usage. This brought Travel West Midlands back
into Redditch. On Monday 22nd February 1999 following
the withdrawal by First Midland Red Travel West Midland
was also able to take over the first 179 journey at 0630
from Kings Heath to Redditch (FMR had started the
journey in the City Centre) as they were able to use the
same vehicle that operated the early morning 175 journey
from Redditch to Solihull. Subsidy for this 179 journey
was in the form of a joint Worcestershire/Centro
contract. Due to staff shortages Travel West Midlands
decided to withdraw all of their 145, 175 and 179
journeys after operation on Saturday 28th June 2003.