72 The London Bus
London Bus Garages
area whose buses have been
given some route branding as
part of a drive by Transport for
London to increase bus use. Five
buses on the 607 have also been
treated similarly.Minibus revolution
In the late 1980s, CentreWest
was at the forefront of the
minibus revolution in London
and on 27 May services in the
Uxbridge area were revised with
a new network of routes branded
as the U Line with U-prefixed
route numbers and a fleet of
Alexander-bodied Mercedes Benz
minibuses.
Although some of these
services have since passed to
other operators on retendering,
four still run from Uxbridge
garage together with one other
U-prefixed route introduced later.
Route U1 initially replaced
the northern section of the 223
between Ruislip and Uxbridge,
but was extended to Harefield
Hospital and then Chorleywood.
The northern section was
replaced by a combination of
Hertfordshire County Council
tendered services and new route
U10 (Uxbridge-Heathfield Rise)
in 1994. It took on its current
form in 2008. The U2 provided a
circuitous link between Uxbridge
and Hillingdon Hospital with an
extension to Brunel Universityintroduced in 2009.
The U3 initially linked Uxbridge
with West Drayton and was
extended to Heathrow Airport
in 1993, replacing route 223.
Retendering in May 1998
saw operation pass to Capital
Logistics, but it reverted to
CentreWest three years later.
The U Line identity ended in
May 1998 when a new contract
replaced the minibuses with
larger vehicles. The services
remain operated primarily by
single-deckers, some of which
are branded for one specific
route, but one double-decker
is allocated to the U3 on
weekdays.
Linking Uxbridge and Hayes,
the U4 replaced the withdrawnsection of route 204 between
Hillingdon Hospital and Hayes.
It was converted to double-deck
operation in 2004 and extended
to the Prologis Business Park in- Operation was transferred
to Hayes garage between August
2016 and February 2017.
The opening of the Elizabeth
Line from late 2018 will
have a significant impact on
services currently operated
from Uxbridge garage. Three
stations on the new line are on
its bus routes and there is a
large amount of new housing
being built in the area. A new
route, 278, is proposed to link
Ruislip and Hillingdon with
the Elizabeth Line at Hayes &
Harlington. ● ML
RIGHT: Route
U1 in the period
of FirstGroup
ownership,
with Marshall
Capital-bodied
Dennis Dart
SLF DML41408
on Hillingdon
Hill, Uxbridge.
The registration
809 DYE was
originally on
Routemaster
RM1809.
BELOW: Branding
for route U4
applied to
Alexander Dennis
Enviro400 TE1573
photographed in
Hayes.