RELIANCE  OF  GONERBY

Operating local and country services in and around Grantham

 

The Reliance business was founded by the Simmons family when they bought their first bus in 1924 and the routes from Grantham north to Gonerby and west to Barrowby started at that time. But there were other operators on these routes such as Whipple and Girdlestone. Simmons acquired the Whipple business in 1930 bringing also the country routes to Ropsley and Corby and also gained Girdlestone's timings on the Gonerby and Barrowby routes. Lincolnshire Road Car were also present in Grantham and developed both town and country routes from their depot in Springfield Road, Grantham.

The timetable illustrated from this Lincolnshire operator is undated, but would come from before 1962 as the town service from Grantham to Earlesfield Estate started in that year is not included.    Some of the timetables shown below have a rather odd imbalance of timings, this is because of shared operations with the other operators (eg Road Car and the other operator then based in Gonerby, Pulfrey, who operated between Grantham and Newark via Gonerby).  The timetable cover has a hand written note that the Road Car route 19 has co-ordinated timings with Reliance on the Barrowby route. Much housing growth occured over the years in the Dysart Road area, which was traversed by this route.

Turning to the more recent story of the town services in and around Grantham, the Reliance business was acquired by Mass Transit of Sheffield in mid-2003. They opened a new depot in Tollemache Road in spring 2004 and extended from the original Reliance routes by taking over some of the Road Car services from 31 May. The Road Car depot in Grantham closed on 31st May following a dispute with staff over union recognition, although Road Car still worked routes into Grantham from their Lincoln and Newark depots. Operations by Mass proved to be unreliable and was the cause of much public complaint; they withdrew because of their deteriorating financial situation and with hindsight may well have over-reached themselves.

tickets

From 12th January 2005 the Grantham town services passed to CentreBus, an operator with other networks in Leciestershire, Hertfordshire and Derbyshireand St Albans. The Grantham services were rationalised to a core operation of viable services (some of the areas of the town do seem to  have been overprovided at times) and continue as such at the time of writing in January 2009.



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The story of Reliance appears in 'The Independent Bus' by Keith Turns, published by David & Charles in 1974

and this page incorporates additional information from articles and publications

found in the libraries of Lincolnshire

                                                                                      

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