Wales holds a National Eisteddfod each year and the location rotates between North and South Wales. The festival lasts a week and is always in August. This year the Eisteddfod is based on the City of Wrexham.
Arriva Cymru have been given the prestige work of operating a shuttle service from Wrexham to the Eisteddfod. The field of the Eisteddfod is actually in Isycoed at the side of the Wrexham Industrial Estate some 5 miles east of the City Centre.
The buses run from the Wrexham General Railway Station - to the Bus Station (Stand 5) and then onwards to "Y Maes" (the field). A journey time of 25 minutes.
The buses leave on a 20 minute frequency. The service starts at 0740 and runs until the last bus from Y Maes at midnight. It takes a PVR of 5 but six extra buses have been borrowed from Arriva Merseyside.
The buses, all E400s, on loan have included 4649, 4680, 4682, 4685, 4686 and 4687. There have been some issues with reliability and 4682 was sent back to Speke and has been replaced by 4570.
However the loan vehicles have not been put on the Eisteddfod duties . Some of the home depots E400 Citys have been used with the replacement buses used on the 1 Chester and the 5 Llangollen services.
To accommodate the service running from the Wrexham General Railway Station a number of changes have been made - essentially closing the main car park and also utilising some waste ground for a lay over area. The area around the Station has got many barriers stopping unauthorised vehicles entering the area and a large number of security personnel have been utilised to manage the arrangements.
In addition to the Arriva shuttle service the T3 service has been extended to operate from King Street to the Eisteddfod field. To facilitate this an extra driver is employed to actually work the shuttle from Wrexham to enable the regular T3 drivers to have their statutory break at King Street. Due to a shortage of available drivers an employee of Lakeside has been utilised and he parks his Solo at the Station lay over..
