Latest Update:  1 December 2019

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.

Note that the TLB Editor has a new address: davestewart297@gmail.com.  

Forthcoming Conway Hall meetings

Doors  open  from 6pm. sales stand from 6.30pm, event begins at 7.30 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. Meetings are held monthly (except January, July & August) 

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.

LOTS Meetings and Events

Society Meetings:   At Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn, London WC1.   Doors open from 6pm. sales stand from 6.30pm, event begins at 7.30 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.   

Monday 16 December: - Roger French OBE (ex Brighton & Hove Buses) will present 'Extreme Bus Journeys' based on his recent travels around the UK. Roger is a very entertaining speaker and so is the subject, with slides of all sorts of journeys around the UK including some in London.

There is no meeting in January so the first 2020 meeting is on Monday 24 February. 

The London Bus (TLB)

TLB663 was posted on Tuesday 19 November. The closing date for TLB 664 is Wednesday 4 December and it is due for posting on Tuesday 17 December.

New and Recent LOTS publications:

Also 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.

Please address your orders to LOTS Postal Sales, Unit G16 Lombard Business Park. 8 Lombard Road, Wimbledon, London SW19 3TZ. 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 TLB636. 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:

LOTS LBM189 London Bus Magazine Autumn 2019: (£5.00) **NEW** Main articles are “Over the Bridges” by Barry Turner, “Country routes 350/350A” by Richard Moseling and “All change in central London” (a photographic snapshot of the 15th June change).

LOTS SUP-39A: (£4.50)  **NEW**  This 56-page booklet encompasses the TfL operators’ fleet and garage allocations from SUP36 and a simplified PVR table from SUP37.  Some features are dropped from 36 (eg. Fleets of non-TfL operators – see Fleetbook and occasional features in TLB) while items like LSP operations from 37 are dropped. The PVR tables are now in route order. It also removes much of the duplication of vehicle type codes, garage codes, and which bit of each group runs what. 

LOTS SUP-24I: (£4.50)  **NEW**  The latest LT Service Vehicles Current fleet.

LOTS TLB Extra – Vehicle news of 1954:  (£7.00)  (64-pages illustrated).  

LOTS Bus & Tram Fleetbook 2019 (£7.00): Now enhanced with summaries of more operators that cannot fit in the main text and a return of London Dial-a-Ride but still pocket-sized A6.  It includes no fewer than 12,418 vehicles and is now available on sales stand and from Postal Sales.

LOTS Review 2018 (£12.00), the definitive account of last year, vehicles, routes and the politics of London and also record of changes in the country areas of the Home Counties.

TLB Extra – Vehicle news of 1953:  (£7.00) (80-pages illustrated).

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

TLB Extra – Vehicle news of 1948 to the 1980s:  (£6.50/£7 each year) (80-pages illustrated)
 
See the Publications Page for details of LOTS publications or the Sales Bulletin for our current stocklist.

Vacancy

None

Latest news 

Sunday 1 December

1) Delivery to Metroline of the BYD/ADL E400EVs for route 43 is now complete, BDE 2613 being the last to arrive in the past week. Just two (2613 and 2640) remain to enter actual service.  Conversely the Optare MetroDecker EVs are very slow coming with OME 2650-65 is service and fifteen outstanding.  At Go-Ahead and now that the artics are back in use, the two E20Ds  (SE306/7) that were at Luton Airport are now with the rest of the batch on route 364 in east London.  

2) The Aylesbury independents continue to provide much interest.  At Red Rose two E20Ds now have white fronts for routes 50/55 to Wendover/ Halton and Amersham/ Chesham, plus two E20Ds with gold fronts for route 100 to Milton Keynes.    Abellio London’s E200s 8507-15 all went off lease recently and all have been snapped up at Aylesbury with Red Eagle taking three and Z&S six. 

Tuesday 26 November

1) Planned, deferred but then reinstated from 30th November is the switch of Liverpool Street terminals of routes 11/N11 and 344.  The 11/N11, after just seven weeks in the re-opened Bus Station, is rerouted to the Bishopsgate side at Worship Street.  The 344 switches from Worship Street to join the 133 in the Bus Station.  The intention to move the 153 and 214 from Moorgate to the Bus Station will have to wait a few months due to issues with the infrastructure. 

2) Very few new buses are coming to London at present, the SEes for route 100 still a month or two away.  However, all but the two new SEs still at Luton are now at work on route 364.  Abellio begins new route 278 on 7th December and the seven new E400 ‘smart hybrids’ (2006-12) are starting to be delivered; they will be joined by four refurbished E400Hs to make up the 11 needed for the route.  Second hand ex-Metroline E200s are on the way to Tower Transit for part of new route 218 and to HCT for an increased pvr on routes W11 and W19.

Sunday 24 November

Thank to all the owners and operators who contributed to the 15-vehicle (8xRT, 4xRM, 1xRCL, 2xM) ‘heritage bus’ operation over route 140 today (23 Nov).  It was well supported by enthusiasts and very many normal members of the public.  Dull miserable weather with rain most of the day, a lot of congestion, bus lanes blocked and a long diversion in Hayes all contributed to many journeys to be a good x30mins late. 

Thursday 14 November

LBSL intends to enter into new contracts for the following routes with the operators listed below:

* 24 hour route (319 weekends only).

** Night only routes using buses sourced from day routes.

All diesel & hybrid vehicles will meet Euro VI emissions standards.

The above contracts will commence on the following dates:

25th July 2020: Routes 23, 326, N5 & N20.

29th August 2020: Route 139, 405 & 466.

12th September 2020: Route 319.

19th September 2020: Route 202.

3rd October 2020: Route C3,

24th October 2020: Route 324.

Electric vehicles may enter service later than these dates owing to infrastructure delivery timescales.

Wednesday 13 November

1) Wrightbus is back In business  under its new Bamford Bus Company owner, as it has just begun to deliver the 55-vehicle StreetDeck order to First in Leeds.  These were ‘in build’ when the company had gone into administration in September. 

2) Reading Transport began a new service (459) on  4^th November between Heathrow T5 and Iver using a green electric Optare Solo on Mon-Fri until 20^th December. Initially it is running free of charge. 

3) The demand responsive trial, named ‘Slide’ began in Ealing on Wednesday 13th using ten MAN TGE minibuses.

4) Although it was a slow start, 22 of the 32 ex-Stagecoach HVs are now service at Arriva Palmers Green on routes 34 and 102.

Sunday 10 November

1) The five operator changes this week went ahead as planned  with the 24, 27 and 267 passing to Abellio with the same LTs, the 34 to Arriva using HVs, some of them former Stagecoach examples and the 192 with new Arriva E20Ds replacing Go-Ahead Streetlites.  Go-Ahead’s new E20Ds (SE 304-319) are still not in use on the 364, although two are helping out at present at Luton Airport on the service from the Station

For earlier news read LOTS TLB