Old Kent Road garage reunion

Garage visits

RF486 loiters inside New Cross garage.

Photo © Peter Osborn

Thanks to the kindness of the London Central management team at New Cross, the former P and NX staff had a guided tour of the modern garage - relatively little changed except in equipment - and a chance to savour lunch in the canteen. The team clearly continues to take pride in serving the public in today's changed world, and was genuinely pleased to be reminded of the past.

The garage now houses bendy-buses (whose maintenance is sufficiently specialised to be contracted out) as well as the usual modern double-deckers. A few Routemasters hide in the back, but not including RM2 these days (or RM3, come to that. Photos Chris Stanley and Peter Osborn respectively, both 1968).

At Old Kent Road, a Halfords store occupies much of the old garage site. See the foot of the page for more.

RF486 beside two of the bendy-buses that inhabit route 436. Despite being twice the length of the RF, they have only 10 more seats (even if they can carry 100 standing in a cattle-crush) and are significantly less comfortable. Oddly enough, the are not popular in London. I wonder who christened them 'MAL'?

Photo © Peter Osborn

RF486 revisits its old home. The Ops Manager pointed out that these days NX1 works on the 36 and I was late!

Photo © Peter Larkham

Not much remains to be seen at P, other than (probably) the old boundary wall and a borrowed original P plate.

The Canal Bridge in Old Kent Road crossed the Surrey Canal, closed in the 1970 - seen here just after closing. The bridge itself was demolished in the 1990s.

To the east, the old bridge at Evelyn Street is see in the background of this shot, taken a week before the reunion with RT1702 and RTW75 working the 1.