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A while ago there was a
competition to find the best bus route in London,
as there are often other competitions between
drivers. That particular test was won by the 91,
but I have my own idea about what my favourite
route in London is. It's the W3, which entered
another period of stability last Saturday with
another contract for its incumbent operator,
Arriva London North at Wood Green garage. In fact
this route has had almost no changes made to it
whatsoever. Beginning under the number 233, it
was extended from Wood Green in 1949 to its
eastern terminus at Northumberland Park Station,
and its last change on 7th September 1968
renumbered it to W3 and reconstituted it as a
flat-fare service. At the same time an attempt to
make more use of the then-new Turnpike Lane bus
station on Saturdays was made by cutting the
route in half at Wood Green and extending the
severed sections down the High Road to Turnpike
Lane as routes W5 and W6. Anybody who's braved
the High Road on Saturdays knows how congested it
gets, and the W3's Saturday through service was
restored within six months.
The W3 is
immensely reliable and most useful, linking the
heavily populated but tubeless Crouch End and
Hornsey areas with the Victoria and Piccadilly
Lines at Finsbury Park. Buses simply load up to
bursting at Finsbury Park and then go, and are
usually empty again by Hornsey, after which the
W3 climbs up to Alexandra Palace where
spectacular views of London can be obtained. The
route's journey then takes it east through the
more utilitarian sectors of northern Tottenham
and finally to the sprawling council estate at
Northumberland Park.
Where vehicles
are concerned, the old 233 was a single-deck
province in quieter days, with Qs giving way to
RFs in 1953 before the route's transfer from West
Green garage to Wood Green and conversion to RTs.
Single-deck Merlins of MBS class replaced the RTs
upon the OPO conversion and renumbering to W3,
but in 1973 DMSs took over, restoring the upper
deck. Metrobuses appeared in 1981 (abandoning the
flat-fare system shortly after their
introduction) and stayed put for nineteen years,
by which time London Transport's bus operations
had withered away, giving way in this part of
town to Leaside Buses, who were later known as
Cowie Leaside and today by Arriva London North.
New DLAs of short wheelbase configuration took
over in the summer of 2000, but the original
batch was eventually rotated out and now the W3
is mostly VLW operated, though DLAs and DLPs
continue to figure.
On 2nd March
2002 Wood Green's VLW 1 (Y581 UGC) is seen at
Alexandra Palace Station.
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