The 112 may be traffic-plagued on its way through some of London's dullest inner-city suburbs via the North Circular Road, but occasionally when the motorway clears it's a swift and useful dash. Indeed the route used to be twice as long, going all the way to Palmers Green in north London, but its eastern end is now run under the number 232 (and that route is just the second incarnation of the split of the route, following on from a 212 route serving much the same turf in the 1970s). On summer Sundays in the past the 112 could even cross the river and make it to Hampton Court. But those days are long gone - as a matter of fact the 112 was so unremunerative by the start of route tendering that London Buses couldn't wait to get rid of it. Although it was retained the first time around, it was then won by Pan Atlas for six years, upon which Leyland Lynx single-deckers replaced the Cricklewood Metrobuses. R&I Coaches won the next contract, using Dennis Darts, and in 1995 MTL took over R&I. After Metroline in turn took over MTL, the ex-R&I MANs from North Acton were eventually replaced by a return of Cricklewood buses to the route using Darts. By the time Metroline's tenure ended it had been transferred to Perivale.

Just six buses are needed for the 112 this time, and they are the familiar Caetano Nimbus-bodied 10m Dennis Dart SLFs that TGM has been taking for a while. A further alteration to the company's livery has deleted the extra yellow bands linking what used to be white-painted sections and turned the whole roof panel white to try and address the problem of heat suffered by all London buses in the summer.

Brand new 451 (HX04 HTT) is seen at Brent Cross, or at least when the large quantity of other buses serving the shopping centre on a Saturday cleared for a couple of seconds so I could get this shot!

It turns out that the 112's buses were numbered incorrectly, and that this bus has since been altered to its correct number of 458.