All night buses in London

A few pictures from a recent photo charter with a Routemaster and RTL from the Ensign fleet. midnight to
4 am, worth missing a night's sleep for. Locations are - Farringdon St, Ludgate Hill, Tower Bridge, Waterloo Place and Piccadilly Circus.

 

These are great, and emphasise amongst other things the impossibility of taking a photo in London without a Pret in the shot…

I do really miss travelling around town on a Routemaster in my travelcard days, when hopping on and off buses was part of everyday life. For any number of reasons I'm far less likely to take the bus in London when I could walk, cycle or not travel at all these days.

Simon

 

I agree about open platform buses. My father was a driver at Catford so RTs and RTLs for me, he preferred the AEC version. I’ve done these before and I’m still amazed at how busy Piccadilly Circus is at 3 o’clock in the morning.

 

Before my retirement, I spent many years travelling around central London, Very rapidly I realised that the quickest, safest, most comfortable and convenient way to travel was by using a traditional London black taxi. On one occasion I did travel by night bus from Victoria south towards the border with Surrey. That single journey turned out to be my first and last journey on a night-bus, as the bus was loaded with a number of smoking, drunken and foul mouthed imbeciles. Never again!

 

The best of times!

 

The AEC was (in my opinion) superior to the Leyland, I've driven an ex LT AEC RT (just once) round Rufforth airfield, a great bit of kit with the Wilson pre select box. Finished up with a black thumb, trapped it in the gearchange gate.

 

My father used to say the Leyland engine wasn’t as smooth with a lot more vibration. His regular route, the long no 47 (Farnborough to Shoreditch) was shared between three garages, Catford, where he was based, Dalston and Bromley. Bromley only had AECs the other two had both. Catford was the crew change point, Dalston men normally didn’t work south of there and Bromley men not working north. Catford crews went both ways described as either up to the smoke or out in the sticks. The only injury I remember my dad getting was one summers day when he went to lean on the sliding cab door which wasn’t there and he fell out breaking his arm, he’d forgotten he’d slid it open to get some air in the cab!