This page gives up-to-date major news items to
supplement our monthly newsletter, •The London Bus•
(TLB). Items noted here will be incorporated in the
next issue of TLB in greater detail. Reports more than
a month old and already reported in TLB are deleted.
Each issue of TLB is typically 40 pages containing
references to around 300 routes and 1000 vehicles,
together with the business and political news, the
publicity output of the companies, forthcoming
exhibitions and rallies, and much more. To get the
full picture, why not join now? Go to the Membership Page
for details.
If you need to contact us with anything to do with
membership, subscriptions to TLB or LBM and queries
over postal sales, email lotsmemsec@gmail.com
and it will be passed to the correct person. Reports
for TLB/LBM or queries to other society officers can
go via the TLB Editor davestewart297@gmail.com
and it will be passed to the correct person.
For queries about Postal Sales, please email lotspostalsales@gmail.com.
This E mail address may also be used for ordering from
Postal Sales if wishing to pay by direct debit bank
transfer - for details see Page 1 of the Sales
Bulletin.
LOTS Meetings and Events
We now meet at The Gallery at
Alan Baxter, 77 Cowcross Street, Farringdon. It
is already used by several other societies (including
TLURS) so may be familiar to some of you. It is three
minutes walk from Farringdon Station
(Met/Circle/H&C lines, Elizabeth line and
Thameslink).
We shall start and end earlier than at Conway Hall
as the venue is locked by 9pm. Therefore doors will
open at 6pm, meetings start at 6.30pm and finish at
8pm, then Q&As and sales stand but all out by 9pm.
Booked dates in 2024 are 19 February, 13 May, 24 June
(AGM), 30 September and 18 November.
Exit from Farringdon station (Met side), turn east
and go up Cowcross Street until you reach the Leon
restaurant. Opposite there is a passageway, cross the
cobbled courtyard to the far right corner and go down
the stairs to the basement meeting room known as 'The
Gallery'. We would advise that you do not drive to the
venue, parking space is rare and charges apply for 24
hours. There are several coffee shops and a
Wetherspoons on Farringdon Road.
The London Bus (TLB)
TLB 712 was posted Tuesday 14th November. The
closing date for reports for TLB 712 is 29 November
and is due for posting on Tuesday 12 December.
New and recent LOTS
publications:
For queries about Postal Sales, please email lotspostalsales@gmail.com.
This email address may also be used for ordering from
Postal Sales if wishing to pay by direct debit bank
transfer - for details see Page 1 of the Sales list.
Please address your orders to LOTS Postal Sales,
Lombard Business Park, 8 Lombard Road, Wimbledon,
London SW19 3TZ. Orders are processed weekly. Make
sure that the 'Postal Sales' name is included
prominently, so we can give the order the best
attention. An updated Sales List was included with May
2023 TLB705. You can use this list to order, or a
letter is perfectly acceptable, and so is the Sales
List printed off from our website. In each case,
please don’t staple cheques to the form – they
really won’t get lost by us but might be when the
banks try to process them electronically!
LOTS' latest
publications available now:
Sales list – A new edition was attached with
TLB705 and will be found on the sales page of this
website.
NEWLondon Bus Review 2022
Greater London and Beyond(£17.00).A4
glossy, 80 pages, 135 colour photographs with
extensive captions. This is the ORIGINAL annual
Review made with about 50 years’ experience.
**It will
be available for the first time from the LOTS Stand
at the Aldenham Transport Spectacular at Allum Manor
& Hall, Borehamwood on Saturday 4 November, 10am
to 4pm**
LOTS London Bus & Tram Fleetbook 2023
(£8.00).
SUP 45A London Bus Garages,
allocations and routes - September 2023. £5.50
This is a new SUP from LOTS
listing all garages operating TfL routes from A
to X. Each has a based fleetlist and
a list of routes, types allocated and basic M-F
PVR figures.
SUP24J
Service Vehicles current fleet April
2023 £5.00.
NEW London Bus
Magazine No. 205, Autumn 2023. Main
articles are Thamesmead Half a Century On, Part 2 by
Malc McDonald and Sunday services, a review of Sunday
only route variations by Watton. (£6)
London Bus Magazine No 204, Summer 2023. Main
articles are: Thamesmead half a century on Part 1 by
Malc McDonald and Roving around the airfields by
Graham Burnell. (£6)
London Bus Magazine No 203, Spring 2023. Principle
articles are: LT Service vehicles in the 21st Century
(Tom Young); Fifty Years of LBM, a personal
perspective (Tony Wilson); Modern destination blinds
(Bob Williamson). (£6)
From Mike Harris, the latest Greater London
bus maps:
New editions
of the Greater London
Bus Mapdated 29 April
2023 are now available for (£2) and a Night Bus Map
for 29 April 2023 (£4) From each edition of the series
an amount of the price is donated to a charity. In
this case it is to the Architectural Heritage Fund.
Copies are available from www.shop.busmap.co.uk
and from the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden.
See the Publications
page for details of LOTS publications or the
Sales Bulletin on the Sales page for our
current stocklist.
Note that on the Membership
Page of this website is a new membership form.
When you are due for renewal you should receive one of
these, or you can print the one on the website. Note
that at the bottom of the form that there is a new way
of renewing. It can be paid directly to our bank
account and then you must send the MemSec an email to
let him know you have done it.
LOTS Info Service:
Andrew Robertson, Curry Farm, Halstead Lane,
Knockholt, Sevenoaks,TN14 7EP.
Or e-mail lots.info@btinternet.com.
Vacancies:
None
Non-members may wish to look at a sample issue of TLB.
Hopefully this will whet your appetite for joining
LOTS!
Latest news
Thursday 23 November
The new
SL1 (North Finchley & Walthamstow Central) is
now due to start on Sat09Dec, in tandem with
frequency reductions on the 34. Both are from AD
Garage. The 329 moves from AD to WN.
Tuesday 7 November
LBSL intends to enter into new
contracts for the following routes with the
operators listed below:
* Fleet PVR:
23rd bus crosslinked from route 689 in PM peak.
New electric
vehicles may enter service after the contract start
date, dependent on infrastructure and/ or vehicle
delivery timescales.
The diesel and
hybrid vehicles detailed above will meet Euro VI
emissions standards.
The start and end dates for the
above contracts are detailed in the following
table:
Route
Contract Start Date
Contract End Date
50
24th August 2024
22nd August 2031
194
24th August 2024
22nd August 2031
250/N250
24th August 2024
22nd August 2031
255
24th August 2024
22nd August 2031
289
31st August 2024
29th August 2031
410
24th August 2024
23rd August 2030
663
31st August 2024
22nd August 2031
689
13th April 2024
22nd August 2031
SL2
to be confirmed
27th February 2026
SL3
to be confirmed
17th January 2025
For earlier
news read LOTS TLB
Coming Events
(LSS) = LOTS Sales Stand booked to attend
These are publicised as a service to the readership; LOTS
has neither any involvement nor responsibility for any
event noted. Many events have admission fees, I have
included them where they have advised, you should check
with organisers or websites before attending if costs
worry you. We usually confine this listing to events with
an expected London bus interest or within easy reach of
London. Full national event lists can be found in the
April issue each year of ‘Buses’ magazine and at
All events are subject to any Covid-19 restrictions at the
time. Events that seem likely to go ahead are below,
although you should check before travelling. LSS= LOTS
Sales Stand should attend).
Saturday 2
December
Ensignbus
running day
You must check on the event websites or on
the full national event list at