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Another
one-off Routemaster that I'd not yet seen is RMF 1254 (254 CLT), the unique
front-entrance bus built to thirty-foot length.
It was sent on a promotional tour of provincial
operators after it was built but ironically, it
never turned a wheel for London Transport other
than a spell on the BEA service. Northern
General, however, liked the design so much that
they bought fifty new and later purchased RMF
1254 to make it 51. The Tyneside-based firm's
conversions to OPO were complete by the early
1980s and with it went all their 'RMFs'. Twelve
were acquired by London Transport in 1980 for
possible use, but a change of mind saw them all
scrapped. Only a handful of the production batch
survive, plus of course RMF 1254, now restored to
its former glory. |
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The grand
parade of the first ten Routemasters
(unfortunately, minus RM 2) took place at 2 pm,
with the buses making a slow anticlockwise
circuit of Finsbury Park's roadway. The fourth
and last of the evaluatory prototypes was RMC 4 (SLT 59), initially
known as CRL 4. It was the only Routemaster to be
bodied by Eastern Coach Works, and represented
the highest standards of comfort that Green Line
coaches were to achieve. Unlike the other three
prototypes, RMC 4 had a long service career,
first as a Green Line coach and then as a
standard bus when London Country was formed from
the Country Area. It spawned sixty-eight further
RMCs and forty-three thirty-foot RCLs for Green
Line. The bus was finally withdrawn in 1979 and
restored to original condition. |
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Only one other
non-LT operator than Northern General bought
Routemasters, and that was British European
Airways, forerunner to today's BA. In those days
BEA passengers could check into their flights as
they boarded their buses in central London, with
each bus being linked to a specific flight and
taking them to the plane. The sixty-five
front-entrance Routemasters (plus trailers)
operated for nearly a decade, gaining two new
liveries as British Airways established its
modern identity, and were then sold in batches to
London Transport. The operation of thirteen of
the RMAs, as they were classified upon
acquisition by LT, on the 175 proved
unsatisfactory and they were redeployed as
trainers and staff buses. After that role too had
come to an end, survivors popped up with various
companies, and here is where we see perhaps the
weirdest of the Routemaster family, RME 1 (KGJ 603D). Its owner
simply split RMA 29 in half, adding a bay in the
middle from an RM to produce a 32-foot vehicle,
and linked the result's decks with the
centrally-mounted staircase assembly from a Volvo
Ailsa! |
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The mass cull
of the RM type by London Transport was set in
train in 1982, but when deregulation wrought its
damage upon the bus industry starting in 1986, a
surprising twist to the Routemaster story
developed. With newly independent companies
desperate to attract passengers by whatever turn,
a good number of them gambled on traditional
conductor operation with this most traditional of
bus designs, and as a short-term hook it was
dynamite. By the early 1990s most of this type of
renewed RM operation had come to an end, but when
Reading Mainline commenced in 1994 on the same
basis it would become one of the most loved of
all post-London Transport Routemaster operations.
The outstanding livery and proper blind displays
helped greatly, and the network lasted six years.
RM 1859 (859 DYE) was Reading
Mainline's no. 17, and is seen at the western end
of Finsbury Park after having come off today's
incarnation of the X50, which ran with different
Routemasters than yesterday. |
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At the same
time as RMF 1254 was on its UK tour trying to
drum up business, RM 1414 (414 CLT) was doing the
same. Perhaps the only disadvantage of the
Routemaster was its sophisticated mechanical
specification, a curse common to all London
Transport-designed buses that frightened off
economy-minded municipal companies, and no orders
ensued. Still, the Routemaster's contemporaries
have been gone for over twenty years... One
company to test RM 1414 was Manchester
Corporation, and this was remembered when the bus
was withdrawn at an early stage due to its
Leyland engine. It was donated to the Manchester
Museum of Transport and is sometimes seen out and
about in that city on heritage tours. |
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I did manage
to get the second bus commemorating the 175th
anniversary of London buses in general when it
showed up at Finsbury Park on its normal route 19
schedule under the stewardship of Arriva London
South's Battersea (BA) garage. RML 2524 (JJD 524D) is a bit
basic for a Shillibeer, the original examples of
1979 being far more ornate. There is no news as
yet regarding the fate of the 19, which is the
latest Routemaster route to be undergoing the
process of tendering. Could the 19 be the
long-promised 'heritage route', if there is
really to be one? |
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