Latest Update:  10 May 2021

Society news

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. News updates will usually be weekly, by Sunday evening, but if major stories arise we will attempt to announce them sooner. 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 to 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 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

Conway Hall meetings

Due to the continuing pandemic all LOTS meetings are CANCELLED until further notice

Conway Hall is located at Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Nearest Underground station: Holborn (Central and Piccadilly Lines) Buses: 1, 8, 19, 38, 55, 59, 68, 91, 168, 188, 243 & 521 stop nearby. Doors  open from 6pm. Sales stand from 6.30pm, event begins at 7.30pm and is finished by 10pm. There is no charge. Visitors are welcome, especially from other societies or if you buy something or join as a new member. In normal times, meetings are held monthly (except January, July & August).

The London Bus (TLB)

TLB 670 was posted on Tuesday 20 April. The closing date for reports for TLB 671 was Wednesday 5 May and it is due for posting on Tuesday 18 May. The closing date for reports for TLB 672 is 9 June.

New and Recent LOTS publications:

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.

Please address your orders to LOTS Postal Sales, Unit G16 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 TLB670. 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:

NEW LOTS SUP-39B TfL Bus Operators Fleet Allocations and PVRs (£4.50) 

NEW LBM 195 Spring 2021 London Bus Magazine (£5). The main features are another 'travelogue' by Bob Saxby featuring TDs and trolleys at Edgware and "Origins of Peckham route 381" by Malc McDonald.

LOTS LBM194 Winter 2020/21 London Bus Magazine (£5) The main article is 'A return to Hammersmith please - a history of London bus routes 110 & 111 by Colin Stannard and Peter Bradley. Also, 'A modern London enthusiast' by Matthew Wharmby, mainly a photographic item covering the years 1983-1989 but including some photos of 1991. Plus 'Rail Air Links to Feltham Station' by Philip Wallis.

LOTS LBM193 London Bus Magazine Autumn 2020: (£5.00)  Main articles are 'In Memory of via points' by Colin Fradd with 57 pictures; reminiscences of bus, tram and trolleybus routes serving Clerkenwell in the early 1950s by Nigel Davis, plus 'All change at the London Bus Museum'.

LOTS London Bus & Tram Fleetbook 2020. The 32nd edition of our 128-page pocket size Fleetbook,  updated to June 2020. Orders can be taken by Postal Sales ( £7.00 post free to members, add +15% for postage to UK non-members  or +30% for all overseas orders.   

TLB EXTRA 1955 is now available, same prices as Fleetbook.  An updated full sales list can be printed out by going to the ‘Sales’ tab on this website. Extra 1954 and Extra 1953  (£7.00 each) also recent issues.

LOTS Review 2019 (£13.00) As ever, this is the original and definitive story of buses in London and the country areas during the last year, fully illustrated with informative captions.

LOTS SUP-24I: (£4.50)   The latest LT Service Vehicles Current fleet. Current at September 2019

TLB Extra – Vehicle news of 1948 to the 1980s:  (£6.50/£7 each year) (80-pages illustrated)

Sales List in TLB670:  Please note on page 2 that Capital Transport books attributed to Mick Webber are incorrect.  ‘London’s 70s Buses’ is by Matt Wharmby and ‘London’s Country Buses’ is by Kevin McCormack.

From the Sales List, the following are now out of print:

LOTS  TLB Extra 1973.

Grey-Green and Contemporaries (1961 to Arriva years)

(SEC, John Allpress’s) The three Routes Handbooks for 2019 -  Brighton & Hove Buses; First Hampshire & Dorset and Stagecoach South

Recent items from other publishers: 

Young Routemasters (James Whiting) £16.95. A photograph and caption book covering each route conversion to Routemasters 1956 to 1965

London's Disused Railway Stations - Inner South East London (CT) £22

Wires above South East London (Robert Harley) £25

A London trolleybus reborn Q1 1812 (Dave Chick) £25

Vehicle History File - London DMS (Wooleybus) £22.50

Valliant Years (coaches in W & NW London) (£50)

London Country Vehicle Memories by Julian Bowden & Michael Dryhurst  £16.00 Bowden Publishing  (A4 format)

The London Feltham Tram The Evolution of a Classic Tramcar Design by Peter Waller £25.00 Pen & Sword Books

Croydon Tramlink A Definitive History by Gareth David £30.00 Pen & Sword Books

SEC’s 2020 Update to its 2019 Fleet List and Sussex Independents books, 32pp (£2.50).

Trolleybuses in East Central London. Published by Adam Gordon £30.00. 184 pages –details on ahgbooks.com website.

Wires above South East London.  (Robert Harley) £25.00 Heathfield Publishing (part of Capital Transport – more details on C/Ts website)

Regional Tramways: London Transport  (Waller) £25.00 Pen & Sword   (includes history, DLR and Croydon Tramlink)

From Mike Harris, the latest London bus maps:

Greater London Bus Map for 15 June 2019 (2) and a Night Bus Map for 15th June 2019 (£4)
From each edition of the series an amount of the price is donated to a charity.  In this case it is to the Firefighters Association.

Also, in the Historical series -
The 1976 Greater London Bus Map, 10th April 1976 - £4.00
The 1952 Greater London Bus Map, 6th July 1952 (Second Edition) - £4.00

 
See the Publications Page for details of LOTS publications or the Sales Bulletin 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.

Latest news 

Monday 10 May

1) LBSL intends to enter into a new contract for the following route with the operator listed below:

The above contract will commence on the 5th March 2022.

 
2) London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been relected for a further four years. There are no significant bus news items, see below, item 3 of 1 May for changes that took place on Saturday 8 May.

Saturday 1 May

1) Saturday 1^st May saw the changes detailed last week with route 28/N28 moving to RATP with VH45101-123 from Wandsworth  (JE)  Garage and route 69/N69 going to Go-Ahead with new BYD/ADL E400EVs (Ee 50-69) from the new Henley Road (DS) Garage at North Woolwich.  Route 328 went to Metroline, initially using VH38117-136 on loan from Tower Transit, pending availability of their own VWHs;  these have to remain on routes 7/N7 for now, until the hydrogen fuel cell installation at Perivale (PV) Garage can be put into commission. It looks like being several months yet. One other small change was route 315 that transferred from GoAhead to Abellio with 8.9m E20Ds.

2) Go-Ahead’s first two (Me 1,2)  Optare MetroDecker EVs were delivered to Merton on 28^th April; seventeen of these are due to take over on route 200 in due course. 

3) Next weekend 8^th May  route 463 goes from RATP to Go-Ahead and its 8.8m StreetLites go with it.  Route 481 goes from Abellio to RATP and converts to double-decks (VHs). Route 698 switches within RATP to use VHRs (off the 183), nominally from Harrow Garage.  Also at RATP, three WNs and two more DNs will come in on loan from Tower Transit, plus five E200s on loan from Abellio.  All ten are to boost school-bus journeys variously from HH/FW/TV Garages.

Saturday 24 April

1) Next Saturday 1st May sees two ‘new garages’ into commission in London and three main routes of Tower Transit changing hands.  The 28 goes to RATP who will work it from Wandsworth using VHs that have been stockpiled at Stamford Brook.   The 69 goes to Go-Ahead with new BYD/ E400EVs from the new Henley Road Garage at North Woolwich although it is touch-and-go for the place to be ready.  The 328 passes to Metroline from Cricklewood but to begin with will be run by the same VHs on hire from Tower Transit.  This is because it should be the VWHs off route 7 although they cannot yet be replaced  at Perivale until the installation and testing of the hydrogen fuel-cells can be achieved.        

Saturday 10 April

1) This weekend  marks  the point whereby over the past few weeks more operators in the Country  Areas have reverted to normal services  (e.g. Southdown, Compass, Go Coach, Courtney(TVB) and Central  Connect) or near normal (Metrobus, White Bus, Carousel, the ‘Aylesbury Reds’ and  Arriva in Essex, Herts, Beds and Bucks ). 

2) On 5th April Courtney Coaches was re-named formally to Thames Valley Buses.  The use of the latter fleetname had been extending gradually of late. Parent operator Reading Transport cited the fact that there is no longer any member of the Courtney family involved.     

3) Following a Freedom of Information request concerning Heritage Routemaster route 15(H) it has been admitted by TfL that it will not run again. In any case in 2019 it had been reduced to summer weekend and bank holiday operation while in 2020 and 2021 it was never reintroduced during the Covi-19 virus crisis. The existing route contract has expired and a new tender offer was never renewed. 

4) A reminder  that several routes in north and mid Hertfordshire change hands from Monday 12^th (see March TLB).