by Matthew Wharmby   Index Page ~ Table of Contents ~ Links ~ Email

Ten Years of the London Bus Page
Monday 27th November 1995 - Sunday 27th November 2005

This time ten years ago a new medium called the Internet was appearing in earnest, and it changed the world for just about everybody. When I got the idea to do a page about London buses, the resulting London Bus Page ended up becoming the basis for what I'd always wanted to do but never quite found an outlet for, and which has since become my career.

It was a bit more simple back then, of course, so to commemorate ten years since the pages first started I've tried to recreate the way the pages first looked - yes, even with the impossible-to-read background wallpaper and badly-scanned, poor-quality photograph that's far too big and cost me the earth to get done because I didn't have a scanner, and the plain Times New Roman text that was all you could get back in 1995. I could try and add some of the Java applets, animated GIFs and Javascript things that I started making about two or three years in, but I've forgotten how to do them! The redesign of late 2002, which, accordingly, is pretty simple in its execution, has proved to be a keeper; not only did it retain the basic red 'livery' with a more easily visible white text box, but it's easy to update, something that has always been a problem due to the pressure of time, and more lately, due to my interest in the current London bus scene declining to the point at which I don't want to participate in it to anything like the extent I used to - so, it is with much sadness that I'm announcing the London Bus Page's retirement. After 9th December, the last day of the Routemaster in London, which represents not only the end of the London Transport legacy but the deterioration of travelling standards, safety and civic pride below the minimum point I consider acceptable for a public transport service, there will be no more updates, though the pages will remain up (and I may even adapt the old formats I still have lying around to the final layout). What I want to do by way of going forward is to expand heavily into books - as well as my regular 'Around and About' column in LOTS's quarterly London Bus Magazine, which has prompted four extensive vehicle-based articles (with several more in the process of writing), plus a third article I've done for Buses magazine (December 2005 issue), my major breakthrough has been my own book, in collaboration with Geoff Rixon, entitled 'Routemaster Requiem', and published by Ian Allan in April 2006. While more photographically-based than the detailed accounts I've been writing here, it's the break I always dreamed of, and which I hope will spawn as many more full-length bus books as I can write and that publishers will take on.

So I wanted to use this tenth birthday as the beginning of my chance to say goodbye and to thank everybody that's helped, suggested, sent pictures or written me email. Sorry I haven't been writing back - the sheer amount of it has just got the better of me, and I hope I've tried to cover people's points in the text of the various articles I've been posting since the Routemaster rundown began - a good nine out of ten of you agree with me, and of those that don't, still raise some important points that are worth discussing. But I feel increasingly uncomfortable that my reports of late have been predominantly negative; even though the workforce is trying as hard as they can amid impossible odds, the whole concept of the bus as a viable form of transport has been rendered redundant due to nothing more than oppressive and offensive politics. Until some of the terrible damage that has been wrought in the last thirty-five years is reversed, I don't want much more to do with buses other than as a detached enthusiast, and increasingly, as a historian. But as a passenger? After 9th December, never again.

Here's an example of the kind of stuff that was running around ten years ago. I didn't have the photographic equipment (or the knowledge of photography) back then to capture many really decent pictures, but under the right conditions, i.e. with the sun at my back, my little Kodak point-and-shoot of the time could actually come through. At Edmonton Green on 9th September 1995 is MCW Metrobus M 1249 (B249 WUL). The privatisation of the LBL subsidiaries a year previously had marooned this vehicle with Leaside Buses, whose new owner, the Cowie Group, was still developing a livery. The resulting Cowie Leaside identity lasted only eighteen months because the group changed its mind again, taking another year to rebrand itself to today's Arriva. The bus remained with Enfield until the 149 received DLAs in April 2001, passing to Wood Green for five more months before sale to PVS for breaking. The route is now the unlucky province of articulated buses, whose poor standards of comfort and security have put a lot of people like me right off bus travel. Edmonton Green itself, home of a very competent market, has been under redevelopment for the last two years, with the bus station to be relocated to the former car park to the north. It was one of the best places in London to photograph southbound buses if you were in the area during the mid-afternoon.

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