Latest Update:  23 February 2020

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 first 2020 meeting is on Monday 24 February. This is a slideshow from Alan Osborne on 'Islands'. Alan has travelled widely and tracked down buses on many islands from the Faroes to the Falklands and many more, left, right and centre!

Then on Mondays 23 March, 27 April, 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)

TLB665 was posted on Tuesday 21 January. The closing date for reports for TLB 666 was 5 February and it is due for posting on Tuesday 18 February. The closing date for reports for TLB 667 is 4 March.

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 LBM190 London Bus Magazine Winter 2019: (£5.00) **NEW** Main articles are "From River Deep to Mountain High" the story of London route 101 and others nearby, and 'Leyland National destination blinds'.

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 23 February

1) Lots of electric items now:  at RATP the entire class of 29 BCE-class electrics is now in service for route 94.   Delivery has commenced of Abellio’s Caetano e.City Gold electric single-deckers for routes C10 and P5.  Within the next two weeks Go-Ahead’s first BYD/ADL E400EVs for route 212 and more SEe buses for route 444  are due when the company takes over those routes from 7^th March.

2) Two classes are now in their last days, Metroline has just one Scania (SEL806) left in occasional use on route 297 while Tower Transit’s hydrogen fuel-cell buses on route 444 have an uncertain future after the loss of the route from 7^th March.

Saturday 15 February

1) In the past few days lots more London United BCEs have entered service, such that as at 15^th Feb  25 (of the batch of 29) are in use on route 94 providing the entire service.  Although the ADHs and VHs from the 94 will all be re-deployed soon elsewhere, for this weekend some of them are providing the extra buses on route 9 as part of the Piccadilly line replacement. 

20 Now that London United’s BYD -ADL E400EV-City electrics are all here,  interest transfers to Go-Ahead’s 49 of the breed.  Go-Ahead now has the demonstrator LF69UXJ for famliarisation training at NP Garage.    Some have emerged from ADL as the start of the  Ee class , the first 13 being due within the next 2 or 3 weeks, nominally for route 212 from 7^th March.  Thirteen BYD- E200EVs (SEe 110-122) are also due, for the takeover of route 444 from the same date.  That should mean the withdrawal of Tower Transit’s WSH and BH hydrogen fuel-cell buses.

3) The next ‘Demand Responsive’ experiment with Sprinter minibuses by Arriva in Watford (as Arriva-Click) is due to begin on 23^rd March.  Thus far, five Sprinters have transferred from Arriva in Liverpool and another five are due from other sources.