please empty your brain below
I kept clear of those 3 awful new buses. I enjoyed the tfl choir singing at the side of a trolleybus. I loved riding in the trolleybuses when they were in service. I liked the electric bus, which had been on test runs in Hounslow a few months ago.
I thought the tfl canteen was rather expensive. I bet their drivers got there meals cheaper.
Leaving the event I got a bus 38 from Piccadilly, painted black, it was a "Boris bus", which rather spoilt the day for me.
so much effort must have gone in to making yesterday work, even if you dont really like buses (as i don't), it was a great day out.
Not impressed!!
The top deck felt airless and claustrophobic, the hand rails near the back stairs were in the wrong places for safely grabbing on a lurching bus, and I kept banging my hand on the jutty-out bell buttons when getting out of the seats! Plus the high backed upright seats downstairs were horribly uncomfortable!
Glad I hadn't paid to go on one as I'd been planning to do up to this point!
I had a nice wander later in the afternoon - I've got a bunch of photos here, if anybody's interested.
Which is possibly why some people don't fold their buggies before getting on a bus. I always did but there were difficulties related to where you put stuff and how you got your toddler to stay put while you folded. Not to mention how you amused a freed toddler while waiting for the bus to actually arrive.
And what an incredibly beautiful location too.
LT did run quite a large fleet of Nationals, but they tended to be seen in small numbers in the suburbs rather than an overwhelming presence in the central area.
LT was a relatively late adopter of the National (originally developed as a collaboration between the National Bus (operating) Company and British Leyland's bus-building division.
It did however take six early examples for evaluation (on DG's local route S2) in 1973, but with a very new fleet of 800 AEC Swifts, most less than two years old, and most of the slightly older Merlins still in service, it wasn't really in the market for single deckers. (These Swifts included 138 delivered for London Country). Indeed, with one-person operation recently authorised for double deckers, it was poised to buy 2,650 new Fleetline double deckers over the next six years and now appeared to have rather a glut of single-deckers.
However, by 1976 the Swifts were recognised to be just as much of a basket case as the Merlins, their slightly older (and bigger) brothers, and over 500 Nationals were bought to replace them on routes where single deckers still had to be used. This was about 7% of the total production of 7000, of which about 10% were exported. London Country, by now part of the National Bus company, took a similar number.
Most of LT's examples moved away from London after the bus fleet was broken up on deregulation in 1986, most living on with their new owners elsewhere in the country, whilst newer buses were favoured in London and increases in ridership led to several routes needing conversion to double deck. However, the last 70 or so, which worked the "Red Arrow" services, were extensively updated and remained in service until replaced by bendybuses in 2002, by which time they were twenty years old.
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