122 The London Bus
I
n three of the four
previous volumes of The
London Bus we have
brought you articles on
a total of 17 key London
bus routes – services that have
a high profile or use especially
interesting vehicles.
Each article has provided a
snapshot of the route’s history, a
quick run-down of the bus type
or types currently in use on it,
our impressions of riding the
route and an idea of some of the
landmarks you will encounter
along the way. You will find five
more routes covered in this
volume.
However, in the bus world
change can come quickly. More
than half the routes we have
looked at over the past six years
have seen alterations of some
kind since we prepared ouroriginal articles about them. We
thought it would be instructive
this time to take a look back over
what has been happening.
Remarkably, given that
Transport for London re-tenders
its bus routes every five to seven
years, more or less all the routes
we have covered have stayed
with their original operators
so far. You could argue that the
25 is an exception, but it has
not changed hands in the usual
sense. FirstGroup operated
it when we wrote about it in
Volume 1, but the company was
already in the throes of selling its
London operations to Australian-
owned Tower Transit. That
change went ahead as expected.
The most visible changes have
come on routes that have gained
new buses. As I write this article
in spring of 2018, six of ourroutes now feature wholly or
mainly different buses.New Routemasters
Perhaps the most striking
change has come on routes that
have gained New Routemasters.
Chronologically, the first on our
list to feature these buses was
the high intensity 38 (Volume
1 ) between Victoria station and
Clapton in north-east London.
At the time of our article in
2013, Arriva had already put
eight early New Routemasters
on trial on the route, but the
majority of buses were Wright
Gemini 2DL integral double-
deckers with VDL DB300
running units. Since then, the
whole service has been converted
to New Routemasters.
The first route that started to
receive New Routemasters afterABOVE: LT2 —
battling heavy
traffic around
the Wellington
Monument —
was one of the
prototype New
Routemasters
on the 38 when
we featured it in
Volume 1, and
indeed it was the
first of the type to
enter public service
in February 2012.
It is now disguised
as a green Country
Area London
Transport bus — a
legacy of being
demonstrated in
West Yorkshire
— and like all
other 999 of this
type has gained
sliding windows
to improve
ventilation.
London by Bus
Nothing stands still
Some of the routes we have followed and featured in previous
volumes have seen changes of vehicle types, places served and
frequency of operation