At the end of another busy week for the Abingdon Town Bus with 72 trips through South Abingdon, 48 trips to Abingdon Community Hospital, and 24 to the Peachcroft shops in North Abingdon, the town bus conked out and had to be towed away – just before the final part of the last circuit.

Round the corner there was already a replacement in position, run by Heyfordian – a Scottish sounding bus company.

Both these buses are the X2 service connecting Oxford and Didcot via Abingdon, but the company and livery have changed in the last two weeks.

The X2 used to be run by the Red Oxford Bus Company based in Oxford, but is now run by the Blue Thames Travel based in Wallingford.

Thames Travel were bought by the Go Ahead Group in May 2011, which brought it under the management of the Oxford Bus Company which the Go Ahead Group bought in 1994.

It means that both the X2 and the 32 Oxford-Abingdon-Didcot services are run by Thames Travel. The main difference between these services, if any visitor asks, is that the X2 stops in South Abingdon and goes that way round, and the 32 stops on Bridge Street and goes that way round.

There is an X32 but it goes direct from Oxford to Didcot missing Abingdon. Do not make that mistake!

The bus stop beside the Newbury Building Society at the top of West St Helen Street is used by people from South Abingdon getting off in town.

The getting on point is 40 yards round the corner by the Foyer.

It looks like it has been knocked into a direction sign.

There was a Nostalgia Bus outside St Helens Church yesterday afternoon – hired for a wedding. It was build in 1966.

In 1968, production of this particular Leyland Titan PD3 model ceased in Britain, but was restarted and adapted by Ashok Leyland in India, and carried on for many years. Ashok Leyland continue to make buses from Chennai which took as their engineering start point the Leyland Titan PD3, but have gone some way beyond. I see on wikipedia that they are now developing the iBus.