6 The London Bus
T
he long awaited
arrival into service
of the first postwar
RT on 10^ May
1947 heralded
an extraordinary seven-and-a-
half year period, culminating
in November 1954, with the
replacement of virtually the
entire fleet of London Transport’s
prewar and wartime buses and
coaches and the remaining
prewar trams by 7,000 vehicles,
almost all of a virtually standard
design of double- and single-
deckers.
Nothing like it had ever
happened on such a scale in such
a relatively short period of time
before in London, nor probably
in any other great city, and
probably will never happen again
like it did 70 years ago.
As a result of the war, buseswhich had an intended lifespan
of 10 years had to soldier on, the
oldest having their lives almost
doubled, despite the fact that
during the war maintenance was
drastically reduced.
During the war, London was
allocated 556 double-deckers
built to wartime specifications.
Although in most cases the
chassis and engines were of a
reasonable standard, the basic
bodies used unseasoned wood
framing which deteriorated
rapidly so that London Transport
was as keen to remove these
from their fleet as it was the
worn out prewar vehicles.
Forty-three trolleybuses
destined for South Africa were
diverted to London during the
war and put to work in the Ilford
area. Trolleybuses — electric
vehicles drawing their powerfrom overhead wires the length
of their routes — had been
replacing trams in a planned
manner since 1935 and if the war
had not intervened the last tram
would have quit the streets of
London in 1943.
Although 77 new Q1-class
trolleybuses arrived in 1947
and 1950, it was announced in
November 1946 that diesel buses
would replace the remaining
trams and, eventually, the entire
trolleybus fleet, which at the time
was the largest in the world.Cutting edge?
Impressive as it was, by 1947 the
RT — a variant of AEC’s Regent
III — was hardly at the cutting
edge of the latest technology.
The chassis of RT1 had been
completed nine years earlier and
after trials with a body from a70 Years Ago
ABOVE: RTL
and an early
postwar RT at
Victoria Station.
This is how these
buses looked
when new, with
cream paintwork
around the top
deck windows and
with a reduced
destination display
to conserve stocks
of the material
used to produce
destination
blinds. One of
the Bristol Ks on
loan from Tilling
Group companies
is alongside.
MICHAEL H. C. BAKER
COLLECTION
The legend that was the RT
The RT family of nearly 7,000 double-deckers was the most
numerous London double-decker ever produced, most of them built
around 70 years ago, between 1947 and 1954, to replace a worn-
out fleet of older vehicles and to oust the last double-deck trams