please empty your brain below
Back to my old stomping ground. Many moons ago the 248 ran from Hall Lane River Drive past Upminster Station and went down St Mary's Lane now covered by the 346 as far as Cranham before it became a major route from Cranham to Romford via Avon Road.

Dave B | 07.01.19 - 3:13 p.m. | #

There are three vehicles on the 346. The London bus routes website reports a PVR of 3, and indeed it is easy to see from the timetable that three buses are required to operate the service between 1530 and 1830 on weekday afternoons.

Wolf | 07.01.19 - 6:05 p.m. | #

I don't know whether the choice of 347 for the route which keeps the 346 company for much of its length is a coincidence, but what is now the 346 has at various times been known as the 246, 246A, and 446, whilst the route serving the other side of the estate is the 248.

Are you by any chance revisiting Bus Stop MM tomorrow?

dg writes: No.

timbo | 07.01.19 - 6:20 p.m. | #

The school was never actually in Mile End (as I understand it's boundaries in as much as they have any definition...), but was formed by the merger of a girls' school in Bow (where a street, or rather a square, is named after its founder) with a boy's school latterly in Stepney.

(Yes, I may have travelled on this route, and it's predecessors - the mysterious 226 and 403 among them, and the only slightly less mysterious 246A) as part of my journey to school)

Dominic H | 07.01.19 - 7:07 p.m. | #

The 446 wasn't a predecessor of the 346 was they were both introduced in September 1988.

https://www.londonbuses.co.uk/_routes/withdrawn/446.html

Although he has got the map wrong - highlighting the 346 instead of the 446, as for the 347, it does cover a very small section of the original 247 which linked Romford and Brentford, this was replaced from 25th July 1981 by a short lived 347 which left Romford via Main Road, then Balgores Lane, Gidea Park then the former 247 to Brentwood, the 347 was a joint operation with Eastern National, London Transport ceased involvement with the 347 in September 1982.

Still Anon | 07.01.19 - 7:13 p.m. | #

The Coopers' Company's School was at Tredegar Square Bow E3 from 1909 to 1973 ( Previously in Ratcliffe Stepney ) In 1973 it combined with the Coborn School for Girls in Bow Road and relocated to St Marys Lane Upminster as the Coopers Company and Coborn School. Both of the original school buildings remain standing in Bow and the former boys school is now, inevitably, upmarket flats.

Daniel Rust | 08.01.19 - 6:02 a.m. | #

At the official Upminster Christmas tree we turn left past a further parade of small shops and a mighty Waitrose. These make way for a run of sturdy semis, a few infill cottages and a secondary school which once escaped from Tredegar Square in Mile End, or Bow (depending on where you take the border to be and which particular single-sex evolution of the school you mean), notwithstanding the original Stepney location which was in Ratcliff. Nobody's taken down the poppy decorations at the Royal British Legion, perhaps they never do. The other bus route which plies this road is the 347, London's least frequent service, whose consecutive numbering can't be a coincidence, and should not be confused with the short-lived 347 which left Romford via Main Road, then Balgores Lane, Gidea Park then the former 247 to Brentwood, and which was a joint operation with Eastern National, London Transport involvement having ceased in September 1982. It ploughs ahead for North Ockendon after the railway bridge, whereas we turn left again past Cranham's millennial village sign.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 08.01.19 - 9:36 a.m. | #

post script: the Waitrose used to be a Somerfield, before that a Gateway, and before that, an International. Thus the process of gentrification of the place at the end of the district line is evidenced

Dominic H | 08.01.19 - 2:05 p.m. | #

And originally the Gaumont Upminster!

Dave B | 08.01.19 - 10:07 p.m. | #











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