Latest Update:  4 April 2020

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.

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.   

The LOTS meeting on 27 April meeting is  CANCELLED. Conway Hall is closed. Further meetings are scheduled for 1 June, 29 June (AGM), 28 September, 19 October, 23 November and 21 December. No meetings in July or August but bus rides evening on 20 July.

The London Bus (TLB)

TLB 667 was 4 March was posted Tuesday 17th March. The closing date for reports for TLB 668 is 8 April. A further announcement will be posted here.

New and Recent LOTS publications:

We regret that as our volunteers cannot travel to LOTS Office to process orders, all Postal Sales are suspended until further notice. If you have sent an order since mid-March, it will be processed when Postal Sales resume.

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 LBM191 London Bus Magazine Spring 2020 DELAYED SEE NOTE ABOVE:

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 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).

LOTS Bus & Tram Fleetbook 2020 is delayed until late May.

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 

Saturday 4 April

1) Following the suspension of all National Express services (see 3 April news below) Victoria Coach Station is closed after midnight on 5 April.   Also suspended from 6 April is Green Line 702. 

2) As well as NatEx and the deferment of Arriva’s new route 720, Airport Bus Express has also suspended services to Stansted Airport.  The airport now has no regular coach services and in any case hardly any airline flights.  Several local bus services still run to the airport, albeit on much reduced frequencies. 

3) At Abellio the 25 Caetano e. City Gold electric buses (1500-24) for route C10 have been delivered but are still stored, awaiting completion of installation of the electric charging equipment.   

4) At Sevenoaks from Tuesday 14 April Go-Coach is to withdraw all of its  normal local bus services (1,2,3,4,5,6 and 8) and begin a Demand Responsive Transport service covering the whole operating area using four Optare Solos.

Friday 3 April

1) National Express, Stagecoach Megabus and Oxford Tube will be suspending ALL coach services after 23:59 on Sunday 5 April.  

2) There  is still a hold-up in commissioning new buses already delivered, these being Go-Ahead Ee (E400EVs) and SEe (E200EVs), Stagecoach E200EVs, Abellio Caetano electrics, not to mention the outstanding Optare MetroDecker EVs at Metroline.  There is still a pause on more deliveries as ADL has shut down.

Wednesday 1 April

1) The substantial reduction in passenger numbers due to the impact of “the virus” is having a devastating impact on smaller operators.   So far, two companies have ceased operations completely. Little Jim’s Buses (Berkhamsted) last ran its routes 502/532 (Northchurch to Hemel Hempstead)  on Saturday 21 March.  Swallow Coach Company in Essex ceased routes 13 (Epping & Waltham Cross) and 61 (Brentwood & Blackmore)  after operating on Tuesday 31 March.  

2) Otherwise in the country areas many services were reduced once again from Monday 30 March.  Typically x15/x20min services are x30,, and what were x30min services are now hourly.  As an example, Arriva’s town services at Harlow, Stevenage and Luton are mostly each running only hourly.  In London, HCT Group has suspended its route 812 in Islington after operating on Monday 30 March.

Friday 27 March

1) Three coach services are ceasing, two before they even started.  East Kent’s M2 (Canterbury & North Greenwich) is cut back to run Canterbury to  Chatham from 29^thMarch, with a full withdrawal from 17^th May.   The start of Oxford Bus Co X50 (High Wycombe & Heathrow) is deferred from 29^th March to at least 17^th May and the start of Arriva 720 (Liverpool Street & Stansted is deferred from 1^st April to a future date not yet verified.

2) As has become apparent, more and more operators outside London have now scaled down their operations.  Company websites have been full of new frequencies. There are large variations in detail but if I had to summarise in a few words, a x15/x20 M-F service goes to x30 , a x30min service to hourly.  After operators adopted emergency schedules from Monday 23^rd, some are likely to be modified once again by Monday 30^th. Traveline and printed publicity will have been superseded by company website info.

3) ‘The virus’ caused postponement of the start of the ‘Arriva Click’  DRT minibus operation in Watford, due from Monday 23rd March.  And then there is the closure on Friday 27^th March of the Go Sutton (Go-Ahead)  and  Slide Ealing (RATP) DRT minibus operations.

4) Delivery of new buses from Alexander Dennis is about to be suspended after the ADL factories were closed down due to ‘the virus’.  Initially this affects the outstanding BYD/ADL E400EVs (Ee class) and E200EVs (SEe class) for Go-Ahead and the E40D smart hybrids for Stagecoach.  Some of each are already ready for delivery but some will be held back at the factories.

Friday 20 March

Significant service reductions are planned in most County Council areas, from this weekend or Monday 23 March. In some cases they are phase 1 with a further phase the following week to allow schedule compilers more time to prepare timetables.

Thursday 19 March

1) London Buses are implementing an immediate thinning out of certain bus services.   From Monday 23 March a Saturday-type service will apply on Monday to Friday.   Just four exceptions:- on the 507/521 a  M-F (ish) service, the Tue & Fri 969 will run normally but the X68 will be withdrawn.     From Friday night 20 March all the weekend-only night bus services and the Night Tubes will not run.   All normal night bus services will run as Sunday Night/Monday morning schedules on all seven nights of the week.  

2) School services were intended to run as normal but the Prime Minister announced on the evening of 18 March  that all schools would be closed after Friday 20 March, thus most school-only services may not be needed.  From this weekend 40 underground stations will be closed to allow reduced staff numbers to be concentrated on busier stations.   Earlier this week sightseeing bus operations of The Original Tour, Big Bus and Golden Tours were suspended.  The Megasighteeing operation will cease after Saturday 21 March.   The Heritage 15 will not now commence on 28 March.

Tuesday 17 March

1) Effects of the Coronavirus crisis: The Original London Sightseeing Tour, Big Bus and Golden Tours have been cancelled until further notice. The London Transport Museum is closed until further notice. London Underground is reported to be moving to a Saturday schedule on Mondays to Fridays.

Saturday 14 March

1) Delivery has begun of the follow-on batch of Go-Ahead’s electric double-decks, this being the eight (E e 14-21) for route 357.  Next Saturday 21^stMarch is the date that Abellio takes over from Metroline route 482 and has the renewal of the contract for route C10.   E40D  smart hybrids 2013-21 and Caetano electrics 1500+ are commencing delivery.  Also starting to come are the E40D smart hybrids (batch 11341-375) for Stagecoach route 25 even though it is not due for take-over until 23 May.

2) There is still nothing positive about how the revised set-up will be with what we are now calling “Arriva’s Country Buses”.  At  present it seems that Southern Counties will cover Kent, Surrey and east Essex with a new Arriva company to combine the depots in Herts and west Essex (ex ASC) and depots in Beds and Bucks (ex the Shires).  The current ‘Shires Milton Keynes depot passes to Arriva Midlands control.