4 The London Bus
The London bus scene
A
long with red
telephone boxes
and pillar boxes,
black taxis, Big
Ben and police
officers in helmets, the red
London double-decker remains
one of the most instantly
recognisable images of Britain
today, identifiable internationally
and often used to emphasise the
Britishness of exports.
In this publication, we salute
the 9,500 buses — nearly three
quarters of them are double-
deckers — in service across
London today, a fleet that has
grown in 50 years from around
6,000 to meet the complex
travel needs of a population that
continues to grow. This is one
of the most intensive public bus
services in any city in the world.
We also salute the London
buses of past decades, the tens
of thousands of them that have
served Londoners and those
visiting London since before
London Transport — forerunner
of today’s Transport for London
— was created in 1933.
We tell their story partly
through significant anniversaries
reached in 2018. Seventy yearsago, in 1948, London Transport
had just been taken into state
ownership and was already
embarking on the most intensive
investment in new buses seen
anywhere in Britain, as around
7,000 new vehicles poured into
its fleet over a period of just
seven years.
Not just any buses, but vehicles
built to London Transport’s
own exacting standards. These
were standards of mechanical
refinement based on its own
operational experience, and of
aesthetic and practical design
inspired by the organisation’s
prewar determination that its
vehicles and buildings should
be visually appealing as well as
being fit for the job they were
expected to do.The RT family
By far the most numerous of
these new buses were the AEC
Regents and Leyland Titans
that formed the RT family of
double-deckers. A standard
design that could be operated
almost anywhere in London and
overhauled on a production line
basis at the large engineering
works that London Transportbuilt to support its fleet.
These buses were needed in
order to replace old vehicles kept
running longer than intended
after war broke out. They were
needed to complete a programme
begun in 1935 to replace
London’s trams with buses. And
they were needed to replace the
utilitarian buses — non-standard
vehicles — that had come during
and immediately after the war.
Many of these older vehicles
were fit only for scrap, but
London Transport did find new
homes for its wartime utility
buses, nearly 200 of them with
prominent operators in Scotland
who recognised their potential
and transformed many of them
into what most passengers could
assume were new vehicles.
Ten years on, in 1958,
things were looking a lot less
promising. London’s population
was falling and with it the
number of people riding on
its bus services. Not just non-
standard wartime buses were
being sold out of service, but the
last of the new RTs spent years in
storage before going into service,
while some of the earlier ones
were disposed of as surplus to itsSaluting a big red friend
As recognisable abroad as Big Ben or pillar boxes, the red London
double-decker remains a great British icon. One that has evolved
through years of triumph and adversityRIGHT: Classic
London Transport
double-deckers
posed at the
Ensignbus
premises in Essex
for a photoshoot
staged by
Timeline Events,
which used mood
lighting, period
dress and dry
ice to create the
desired effect for
the assembled
photographers.
RTL453 on the
left is a Leyland
Titan PD2 7RT
new in 1949,
parked ahead
of Routemaster
RML2734 from
1967 and Cravens-
bodied RT1431,
an only partially
standard type
new in 1949.
KEITH McGILLIVRAY