Trifter

How it all began in London. The very first prototype Routemaster, RM1 is now preserved as part of London Transport Museum’s collection and is an operational vehicle stored at the Museum’s Acton Depot, where it is seen at an open day in June 2001. (photo – author)

I can’t remember the first time I actually saw a Routemaster. I wish I could. I know I should, but I can’t. Perhaps it proves that, as in later times, the type never really made that much of an impression on me or, that I just wasn’t particularly observant as a child. I can vividly recall the occasion – the day when I must have seen Routemasters by the dozen, RTs as well no doubt, but I don’t recall any of the buses seen on my first ever visit to London. I was eleven years old.

  It was the summer term of 1967 and time for the annual school trip. For members of the ‘fourth’ year classes (Year 6 in modern educational parlance) in the National School, the tradition was a day spent in London.

  I recall parts of the journey, from Derbyshire to London St. Pancras, diesel hauled by then of course and the excitement at catching our first glimpse of the new GPO Tower, rising out of the haze above the Capital’s skyline as we headed on through the outer suburbs.

  I remember waiting in eager anticipation for our first encounter with an Underground train, and its raucous arrival at the platform – dark red as most of them were in those days, our teachers frantically urging us all on board to ensure no-one was left behind. I also vividly recall our group jostling at the railings by the Tower to grab an eagerly awaited first sight of the famous bridge, familiar only on tin plate tea trays and jigsaw puzzle boxes. With my chunky plastic 120 size camera I photographed a large cargo vessel, Baltic Sun, berthed nearby in the Pool of London, still a bustling, workaday waterway. The blurred photos have long since gone but the ship’s name remains entrenched in my subconscious, it being the subject of relatively major news headlines some time afterwards due to serious fraud offences by its master – or was it spying, or smuggling? The memory on that one isn’t quite as efficient.

  I recall the private hire coach collecting our party near to the Houses of Parliament and whisking us down to Greenwich to see Cutty Sark before, weary and subdued, we were taken back to St. Pancras. All those events and the sights of London are clear in my memory. But not the buses. Nothing is recalled of the famous red double deckers, the Routemasters, RTs and frustratingly, even the RLs and RLWs (both – for the uninitiated – Leylands of course, the Lancashire built equivalent to London’s omnipresent RT).

  We must have seen them, heard them, smelled them even. Being in Central London for a few hours, they couldn’t have escaped our notice and, becoming ever more fascinated in the bus activities I encountered everywhere I was taken, I must have demonstrated more than a passing interest. Why there are no memories at all of the buses seen that day I don’t know. I often wish there were, if only to serve to satisfy some account of why London’s buses were never viewed with over-affection.

Classic bus comparisons. The Routemaster’s front snub  does give it a rather downcast appearance when compared to the upright exposed radiators of traditional classic buses, as ably demonstrated by an ex-London Transport RT and a former Thames Valley Bristol K at the Cobham Bus Musuem’s spring rally at Brooklands in 2003. (photo – author)

It was some years later, the early seventies in fact, that further encounters with London Transport were made, courtesy of visits to a cousin who had moved from Derbyshire to Rayners Lane – as typical of Piccadilly and Metropolitan Line suburbia as one can get. Family visits took advantage of the proximity of over ground Underground lines to travel to Central London and other interesting places. Again, red buses proliferated but are only vaguely recalled. On one occasion, in 1971 or so, my father, always possessing of a penchant for aviation matters, suggested a visit to not that far away Heathrow. It was an interesting few hours for one not accustomed to such a spectacle, the day spent watching the array of passenger jets constantly arriving and departing.

Without the completion of the forthcoming Piccadilly Line extension at the time, Heathrow was, even then, a major transport interchange, relying to a large extent on bus services for local passengers and airport workers. Buses, red hued and otherwise, were in abundant numbers. Again, there must have been Routemasters and there were definitely RTs, lingering on into retirement on some of the last routes to use the type away from the centre of the Capital. The journey back to Rayners Lane that afternoon was taken on one such bus – a memorable experience, on a crowded upper deck surrounded by workers relaxing with a smoke on the return homeward trip, likely after the day’s labours in the bowels of the airport.

Bus photography was admittedly, limited on that occasion. However, I did take my first ever Routemaster photo that day – and it wasn’t of a red, or green one either! Apart from operating noisy Tridents, BAC 111s and Vickers Viscounts (remember those?) back in the early 1970s, what was then British European Airways were one of only two customers outside the LT organisation to buy Routemasters from new. A fleet of 65 front entrance Routemasters were operated on the company’s link services from Cromwell Road’s West London Air Terminal to Heathrow. Such buses did actually make interesting vehicles, appearing in BEA’s blue and white branding and, almost uniquely, having the accompaniment of a trailer for the stowage of passengers’ luggage. I had read about these particular Routemasters at some time and was able to capture one on film as it emerged from the tunnel on its approach to the airport complex, spotting it from our vantage point on the roof of the Queen’s Building in Terminal 1.

The resulting image wasn’t the best example of bus photography but it serves to remind of those pleasant times we often spent visiting that part of London, and of that day at Heathrow.

It would be no more than a couple of years later that I was able to actually travel on one of those very same airport link Routemasters, by that time re-branded as a sign of things to come for the newly formed British Airways.

A return flight from Berlin to Heathrow for army leave in 1973 resulted in a transfer on board one of the Routemasters to Victoria Coach Station, the West London Air Terminal having by then closed. It was an interesting experience, though the memory vaguely recalls it being a somewhat chaotic and disorganised affair, our departure from Heathrow being delayed by the conductor ensuring all the luggage was stowed correctly and him fighting a losing battle with passengers to keep an orderly arrangement when loading the trailer. His efforts were obviously in vain as there were still problems for some travellers in locating their correct baggage on arrival at Victoria, resulting in a ‘colourful’ choice of words from said conductor when attempting to restore order to the melee. Nothing changes it seems!

It was to be another two years before Routemasters were again encountered, as a year living in Twickenham, while based at the Kneller Hall resulted in countless meetings with the type at a time when it was at the height of its service life.

Again, memories disappoint somewhat but this is probably indicative of the contempt in which I held the Routemaster. The RT, ever diminishing in numbers, entertained much more for journeys around Richmond and beyond, and such buses are fondly recalled.  It also happened that they were among the last of the type to work in regular LT service.                                                          

As an aside, it was during that year at Kneller Hall that each week I would drive past the AEC Southall works in Windmill Lane, birthplace of all AEC commercial vehicles in Britain, on my homeward journey for weekend leave. The factory was, even then, a shadow of its former self as it battled impending closure while British Leyland sought to reorganise itself out of more potential financial crises. (Leyland had bought AEC out in 1962. The doors at Southall did finally close in 1979.)

  The large blue AEC triangle on the factory wall would almost be a beacon of reassurance on those Friday afternoon drives, with the famous slogan along the Iron Bridge carrying the railway over the Uxbridge Road junction leaving the traveller in no doubt that the nearby factory was responsible for being the ‘builder of London’s buses!’ – not entirely true when considering the chassis/body aspect of the equation but the sentiment was there if nothing else.

The nearest Routemaster operated service to my home in Kent was the 36 from Lewisham to Paddington, which converted to the awful bendi-buses in 2004. I once made the whole journey on a 36 Routemaster which went via Peckham, Camberwell, Victoria and the West End and took an hour and a half to complete! Here London Central’s RM1058 i seen departing Lewisham Clock Tower bound for Victoria in 2001. The blue and yellow Metrobus fleet brought welcome and colourful changes to our local bus scene and was one of the few modern fleets I was happy to photograph -  that is until Ken Livingstone’s edict on red buses only operating on TfL licensed routes started to kick in. (photo – author)

Another route 36 shot show’s London Central’s RM478 also at Lewisham and demontrates the condition some un-refurbished Routemasters were allowed to deteriorate into prior to their withdrawal. (photo – author)

Perhaps, as they say, familiarity really does breed contempt and it might be so, that as I lived and worked among the countless red Routemasters during 1976 I became immune to their habits and activities, such that an ignorance and perhaps even, contempt of their finer points was developed. An active appreciation, if not a particular liking, of their attributes took so long to affirm itself that it was almost too late and only then was it due to the exposure the type was receiving in recent years.

Are there regrets? Undoubtedly. However, even in the last few years of their service, when it was taken for granted that the Routemasters’ appearance on London’s streets would soon be a thing of the past the urgency to experience them ‘just one last time’ or to photograph them at favoured locations still wasn’t felt. Seeing row upon row of modern day route branded Routemasters in Central London during my daily commute failed to stir the emotions to any greater extent than in previous years. Of course, I joined in the debate, the petitions, the half hearted protestations but maybe I accepted their demise and just let Mayor Livingstone and his TfL puppets do their worst. Was I really that bothered? As an enthusiast of older buses, yes. As a daily London commuter, not really. I hardly ever had to use them in my working routine anyway and, if it has to be in the name of progress, so be it. It serves us all right for signing up with Europe anyway. Blame the Common Market, the Human Rights Act, Global Warming or whatever  – everybody else does. Just let them get on with it. They won’t listen to the opinions  of a sensible, silent majority. They never do.

If those Routemasters and their eventual fate in London were therefore dismissed there were others elsewhere which, had I met them in my youth, might have stirred the emotions more and helped to redress the balance somewhat. Sadly, I never travelled on them in service but there have recently been opportunities to become more familiar with the type in preservation and if ever a Routemaster were to take on a much more appealing persona, then this is the variant which might just have saved the day!

The 19 was a long lived north-south route which went from Islington to Battersea. Here a southbound Routemaster arrives to pick up at Angel Station in 2002. (photo  – author)