London's icon
Buses planned for
operation: RM938, RM1033, RM1397, RMC1469
RM1661 on a garage journey
of the
93 from Sutton Garage to Putney
via North Cheam on 13 Jul 80. By this time, garage workings
were run in service. The High Street is largely
pedestrianised but the top section is still in use by buses.
No longer.
It is hard to say anything about the Routemaster that has not
been said many times before. The next evolutionary step from
the
RT, the RM became the last in the
line of London Transport's buses, designed and built in London
especially for London. First operated in service
on 8 February 1956, the Routemaster design has now achieved over 50
years' service to London, a truly staggering achievement.
Far ahead of its time and inspired by aircraft production
techniques, the aluminium-bodied Routemaster was revolutionary in
many ways, including its chassisless construction, automatic
transmission and independent suspension, yet was considered by some
to be already obsolete when introduced due to its open platform,
front-engined design. Oh well, we can't all be right all the
time, or we'd all be Prime Minister.
Limited numbers of country buses and Green Line coaches were
built, but the Routemaster was quintessentially a red bus, moving
the masses day in, day out. Seating 64, or 72 in the later
RML class, Routemasters started life replacing trolleybuses, moved
on to replacing RTs, then in some cases replacing buses that were
supposed to replace them. But
the economics of providing services to a reducing number of
passengers eventually led to Routemaster operation being
concentrated on busy central London routes.
Many were re-engined with modern low-emission engines
and refurbished internally to extend their lives. Once
ubiquitous in London, the last ten now in service on two central
London heritage routes are testament to British engineering.
Had London continued to control its destiny, the rear-engined
FRM would have taken over. But it
was not to be, and the rest is history.
In our area, the Routemaster was a relatively late-comer,
with most routes continuing to operate RTs into the
1970s. Of the routes featured, the first RMs were operated by
Putney on the 93 from 1964, but the main allocation was only
converted from RT in 1976. The 118 and 164 were also
converted in the mid-70s, but several routes went direct from RT to
one-man operation.
