Bus Shite

[martc]

5 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

They were the first company to put the Ikarus bodied DAF SB220 on the road though, way way back.

Heroes.

[martc]

Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong, 1963. We have a Thames Trader, a Vauxhall Wyvern in the background (I think). But what are the coaches? I think I've seen something similar in the UK carrying AEC badges on the front, but who did the bodywork?

[martc]

'RM-type bus interior, 1976', those look suspiciously like railway tickets, are they asking for a discount?

[LightBulbFun]

4 minutes ago, martc said:

'RM-type bus interior, 1976', those look suspiciously like railway tickets, are they asking for a discount?

I wonder if those are travel cards of some kind? you can just make out what looks to be a London Transport roundel  

 

[EyesWeldedShut]

51 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

I wonder if those are travel cards of some kind? you can just make out what looks to be a London Transport roundel  

TfL museum says the tickets are 

51 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

I wonder if those are travel cards of some kind? you can just make out what looks to be a London Transport roundel  

 

 

[EyesWeldedShut]

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/photographs/item/2001-5627
 

Sorry trying to do this on one of those smart telephone thingies

[Yoss]

2 hours ago, martc said:

'RM-type bus interior, 1976', those look suspiciously like railway tickets, are they asking for a discount?

The question has already been answered but just to add railway tickets didn't look like that in 1976 anyway. Most of them were stout thick card affairs like this. About 1" by 2". 

They always seemed to be the pink ones in Southampton. I've no idea what an all line railrover looked like at the time. 

[LightBulbFun]

my mum had happened to purchased a single day travel card on the day I was born, and she had the foresight to keep it locked away somewhere safe and then handed to me a few years ago when she was sorting through some archived materials, which as  which as a London Transport fan I was quite chuffed to get given, I mean I had no idea until that point my mum had such a relevant to me bit of ephemera from the day I was born so that was quite the pleasant surprise  

[Yoss]

10 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

my mum had happened to purchased a single day travel card on the day I was born, and she had the foresight to keep it locked away somewhere safe and then handed to me a few years ago when she was sorting through some archived materials, which as  which as a London Transport fan I was quite chuffed to get given, I mean I had no idea until that point my mum had such a relevant to me bit of ephemera from the day I was born so that was quite the pleasant surprise  

It's almost as if she knew. She could could only have topped that off by pinching a light bulb out of an RM on the way to the hospital! 

[busmansholiday]

5 hours ago, martc said:

Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong, 1963. We have a Thames Trader, a Vauxhall Wyvern in the background (I think). But what are the coaches? I think I've seen something similar in the UK carrying AEC badges on the front, but who did the bodywork?

They are not AECs, they are Guy Arab UFs with (Duple) Metal Sections bodies (ie CKD), apparently known as 'big chickens".

 

[martc]

14 hours ago, Yoss said:

The question has already been answered but just to add railway tickets didn't look like that in 1976 anyway. Most of them were stout thick card affairs like this. About 1" by 2". 

They always seemed to be the pink ones in Southampton. I've no idea what an all line railrover looked like at the time. 

 

16 hours ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

TfL museum says the tickets are 

 

Thanks everyone for answering my questions

You know after I posted my question I did think that the 'modern' railway tickets we use now-a-days were a bit advanced for the mid '70's - what with being issued by a computer and having a readable magnetic strip. I can remember the old card tickets and the introduction of the new style, but quite when was the problem...

Perhaps the design of the railway ticket was inspired by these bus tickets

[martc]

Percy St, NuT. Looks like Thatcher is avoiding the bus, true to her word.

[martc]

Three Ikarus 260s and a LiAZ-677 imposter. Karl Marx Avenue, Kuibyshev, 1981.

[quicksilver]

A surprise spot today that will please @Yoss and @LightBulbFun. It's none other than Lord Barrington's RM2097 in its delightfully scruffy Do Not Paint condition.

[Yoss]

33 minutes ago, quicksilver said:

A surprise spot today that will please @Yoss and @LightBulbFun. It's none other than Lord Barrington's RM2097 in its delightfully scruffy Do Not Paint condition.

I think he fully intends to paint it one day, he just has to fix every other Routemaster first. He has been known to work on RT/RFs too. 

[Dyslexic Viking]

I didn't know that anyone was stupid enough to make a bus with a rotary/wankel engine. Also contains several eastern block buses.

 

[N19]

London bus routes are, theoretically, much more stable than the deregulated mess outwith the city. Whilst private firms are used to run all the routes, they do so to a specified contract where TfL set out all the frequencies, service standards etc, and all the fares are dealt with by TfL. The private firms simply provide a bus with a driver when TfL tells them to.

A local firm Sullivans, much smaller than most of the large firms who do this work for TfL, have had a number of contracts for several years for services around the Barnet/Enfield area, in addition to commercial stage carriage services in Hertfordshire. Yesterday they announced that their operations would cease at the end of the day. (They say because TfL haven't paid them enough; TfL seem to have withheld various sums because of chronic unreliability and failure to meet standards). Some semblance of a service was cobbled together to operate today with presumably permanent replacements in hand.

[doug]

Hope this link works.

 

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/LxSYKLKmtj1asC7p/

 

[martc]

The very first FIAT 421 double decker built by Breda Pistoiesi. 

[martc]

I think there's a FIAT coach chassis underneath this mobile bar. Hic!

[martc]

The Strand on a sunny July day, 1937. The woman is hailing an STL-type.

[martc]

Ikaruses incoming....

Hotel 'Berkut' in the Zakarpattia region, Ukrainian SSR, 1980. Intourist ran a fleet of Ikaruses (Ikarusii?) to ferry western tourists around. I wonder if that was because they were the most western (ie comfortable, reliable, modern) of the Bloc's coaches? Compare and contrast with the blue and white USSR built PAZ 672, which were made from 1958 to 1989!

[martc]

One or two ZIL 158 coaches on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment, Moscow, 1965.

[FakeConcern]

Spotted outside a cafe on the Isle of Sheppey

I was hoping I could sit in it to eat my bacon bap, but it wasn't open

I'm sure someone will be able to tell me what kind of bus it is

[Yoss]

RTL 554

Aylesbury Station. 

 

Chinnor Station. 

 

And almost back to Aylesbury. 

 

The trip was a memorial run for a friend who passed away last year. A trip was also had on the Chinnor and Princes Risborough railway for which pictures will appear on the relevant thread. 

[LightBulbFun]

Snap been on that one! on the very few times I have been able to catch a running day, this was September last year  

it was a bit surreal waiting at the bus stop and just casually having an RTL pull up to pick you and everyone else up, even more so when an 1930's STL  casually goes the other way!

sorry to hear about the passing of your friend! its a great way to remember him by!  

[Yoss]

2 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

 

sorry to hear about the passing of your friend! its a great way to remember him by!  

Colin Taffell. Quite a well known figure in Routemaster circles. He died last year aged 70, which used to sound old but now I've just passed 56 it really doesn't. 

In the 1990s he had his own small Routemaster hire business and he would do anything, the usual weddings and trips to the seaside but also school buses, proms and rail replacement work and anything anybody might want one for. At one point he had three buses, RM 1571, 1959 and RMA 10 but it was hard work and eventually he decided it was easier to just drive for other people and I can't say I blame him. The maintenance and red tape did look like a nightmare. 

At the height I was doing a couple of jobs a week conducting for him, happily driving from Southampton to Watford to do so and spending more in petrol (usually in a Wolseley 18/85S auto) than the job paid but that wasn't the point. Most of my best Routemaster moments and all of the most ridiculous ones involved Colin.

I'll find some photos at some point. 

 

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, Yoss said:

I'll find some photos at some point. 

Hope you can, sounds like you had a great time

[Yoss]

On 11/08/2024 at 23:10, High Jetter said:

Hope you can, sounds like you had a great time

I've started going through some stuff. Unfortunately my photo cataloging system looks like this. 

I have four boxes of these and the only way I can tell roughly when anything is from is by the different types of envelopes they come in so it can be quite time consuming. I've been through one of the four boxes so far. 

So let's start here. Colin spent many years with London Transport in scheduling before he left to start his own mini bus company so he knew pretty well how the system worked. Now we all know that London is not deregulated and you can't just run any old route you want to like you can anywhere else. But what most people don't realise is that you can run a route that starts outside London into London. And that you can then run short journeys anywhere along that route even if that section is wholly within London. I am surprised that nobody else has ever picked up on this. 

And also from his days in scheduling he knew the N29 was chronically under bussed. Running from the West End through Camden with all the night life they possessed up through Harringay and Wood Green every bus was full and standing. So Colin registered a route from Harlow, for no other reason than it was near where he kept his buses, to Trafalgar Square on Friday and Saturday nights only, with Thursday night being added later on. Numbered the H29 partly because it came from Harlow but mostly because the H looked a bit like an N in the dark! 

I went along as a passenger the first night but soon offered to conduct (I mean you did get paid but that really wasn't the point).

I think these pictures I've found are from the first night it went up from a one bus to a two bus operation. The two buses ran together on the inward journey from Harlow to London in the evening arriving at Trafalgar Square about 9pm. This was really just a run to get them in to place so it didn't matter that they ran together. 

Harlow. 

One bus taken from the platform of the other bus which is why it is piss poor quality. These are not digital photos remember. 

 

Arrival at Trafalgar Square North Side. 

And a bus stand somewhere near Pimlico.

After arrival in London we had about a three hour break before the first northbound bus. This was done so the crews could go off and have a proper meal together, either a curry or a pizza or whatever but usually somewhere different every night. This night was a curry somewhere around Victoria. We then did two short runs to Wood Green or Tottenham  and back before the final run to Harlow left Trafalgar Square about 03.30. I have very few pictures of this as it was mentally busy even at 3am but here is a shot at either Hoddesdon or Broxbourne (my memory fails me now, it was 1992).

This one was taken by resting my tripod gently on the Ford Capri you can see in the bottom corner. Again, proper film and time exposure needed to get decent night shots. 

 

Soon after this the place that Colin kept the buses in White Roding objected to him coming and going at all hours despite him having asked them if it was alright beforehand and he had to find a new base. This was Mullaneys Coaches yard in Cardiff Road, Watford and so the outer end of the route was moved from Harlow to Hertford because it still began with H. Also at the same time he registered the garage run from Watford to Hertford as the 624. We got the occasional passenger on the evening run but I don't remember ever having a passenger from Hertford to Watford at 04.30 on a Sunday morning! But we had to drive the route anyway so we might as well do it in service. 

This all turned out to be a blessing in disguise as not only was Watford much nearer his house near Pinner it opened far more opportunities in the long run. 

The service lasted over a year but then suddenly his partner in the business, who was very much a sleeping partner disappeared with a large amount of the money and crucially his operators licence. For a few weeks Colin decided to run it as a free service whilst he very hastily applied for his own licence on the basis that he didn't want to lose his customer base.

But the service never really recovered. Again though this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as he now had his own licence and plenty of other work was to be had in the Watford area. 

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, Yoss said:

I've started going through some stuff. Unfortunately my photo cataloging system looks like this. 

Great, there must be a book in this