London Buses Around Surrey

London Buses Around Surrey PDF

Author: Roy Hobbs

Publisher:

Published: 2004-07

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 9780711030015

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The historic county of Surrey, stretching from the Thames-side towns such as Richmond and Kingston westwards to Guildford and Godaiming and southwards to Dorking. Reigate and Redhill, is one of contrasis. To the north and east if forms a continuation, increasingly, of the greater London area but to the south and west it is much more rural, dotted with pretly vilages and historic towns. Despite its nature, however. London Transport, either through its red Central Area buses in places like Richmond and Kingston or green Country Area buses in places like Guildford and Reigate, provided the bulk of bus services in the county and in the area surrounding it. Much of this was historical, a reflection of the constituents of the London Passenger Transport Board when it was established in 1933, and undoubtedly as time wore on it become increasingly anachronistic. However, it was not until the creation of London Country in 1970 that the final spill came and even then the Central Area services continued to operate largely unchanged, although there were minor and subtle changes in individual route responsibilities.Albelt now living in Devon, Roy Hobbs is a notive of Surrey, growing up to the south of London, and during the 1950s and 1960s he exhaustively recorded the changing transport scene in the county. His railway photographs are well known through his own and other authors' books; his bus photographs, used to a limited extent in other authors' books, are less familiar. Drawing upon his own extensive collection and those of other noted bus photographers, he provides in London Buses Around Surrey a colourful portrait of the era when both Country and Central areas operated into and around Surrey. Incorporating some 85 Images, the book is a graphic reminder of the period when green Routemasters were an everyday sight, when red RTs still provided an essential part of the everyday scene and when the classic RF single-deckers were still relatively new. For all those interested in London Transport and for all who know Surrey in the period, this book is an exercise in pure nostalgla, taking the reader back more than three decades to on age when the car was less dominant and the bus represented an essential means of transport for countless thousands.

London Buses Around Kent

London Buses Around Kent PDF

Author: Roy Hobbs

Publisher:

Published: 2006-07-01

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 9780711031128

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In July 1933, the creation of the London Passenger Transport Board saw, for the first time, a unified provider of public transport for the Greater London area. This book looks at LPTB operations in the county of Kent.

London Buses

London Buses PDF

Author: Oliver Green

Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1445691043

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The red double-decker bus is part of London’s personality, and is famous all round the world as an icon of a great city. Tracing nearly 200 years of history this book places the classic Routemaster in its context.

Buses in the Border Towns of London Country 1969-2019 (South of the Thames)

Buses in the Border Towns of London Country 1969-2019 (South of the Thames) PDF

Author: Malcolm Batten

Publisher: Pen and Sword Transport

Published: 2024-03-30

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1399096249

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London Transport was created in 1933 with monopoly powers. Not only did it have exclusive rights to run bus (and tram and trolleybus) services in the Greater London area, it also ran services in a Country Area all around London. Green Line express services linked the country towns to London and in most cases across to other country towns the other side of the metropolis. This country area extended north as far as Hitchin, east to Brentwood, south to Crawley and west to Windsor. But what of the towns at the edge of the country area? Here the green London Transport buses would meet the bus companies whose operations extended across the rest of the counties of Berkshire, Surrey, Kent etc. In some cases the town was at a node where more than one company worked in. Elsewhere, such as at Guildford there were local independent operators who had a share in the town services. It would all change from 1970 when the London Transport Country Area was transferred to the National Bus Company to form a new company named London Country Bus Services. This would later be split into four separate companies. Deregulation in 1985 and privatisation in the 1990s led to further changes in the names and ownership of bus companies. Consolidation since then has seen the emergence of national bus groups – Stagecoach, First Group, Arriva and Go-Ahead replacing the old names and liveries. But retrenchment by these companies has given an opportunity for new independent companies to fill the gaps. This book takes the form of an anti-clockwise tour around the perimeter of the London Country area, south of the Thames featuring a number of key towns starting at Slough and Windsor and ending at Gravesend, illustrating some of the many changes to bus companies that have occurred.

The London Mini and Midi Bus Types

The London Mini and Midi Bus Types PDF

Author: David Beddall

Publisher: Pen and Sword Transport

Published: 2024-05-30

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1399095277

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London Passenger Transport Board inherited a number of small buses from various independent operators during the early 1930s, followed by the introduction of the Leyland Cub around the same period. The introduction of the big-bus policy saw many of the small buses withdrawn from service. The 1950s saw the introduction of the GS-class Guy Special for use on the lightly-trafficked country routes. More smaller buses entered the London Transport fleet in the form of the Ford Transit and Bristol LH / LHS saloons. The mid-1980s saw a resurgence in small-bus operation as a cost-cutting exercise. Many new types entered service with London Buses Limited and other independent operators. The introduction of these minibuses saw a number of new services introduced to serve previously unserved areas of London. However, the success of these small buses led to their replacement by the larger Dennis Dart midibus. while the introduction of varying lengths of Darts catered for many of London’s needs, other types of mini and midibuses were taken into stock by London based operators for fill in gaps. London’s Mini and midibuses takes a look at the various types of mini and midibuses that have operated on routes in the Greater London area.

The London DMS Bus

The London DMS Bus PDF

Author: Matthew (Matt) Wharmby

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2016-11-30

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1783831731

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Vilified as the great failure of all London Transport bus classes, the DMS family of Daimler Fleetline was more like an unlucky victim of straitened times. Desperate to match staff shortages with falling demand for its services during the late 1960s, London Transport was just one organization to see nationwide possibilities and savings in legislation that was about to permit double-deck one-man-operation and partially fund purpose-built vehicles. However, prohibited by circumstances from developing its own rear-engined Routemaster (FRM) concept, LT instituted comparative trials between contemporary Leyland Atlanteans and Daimler Fleetlines.The latter came out on top, and massive orders followed. The first DMSs entering service on 2 January 1971. In service, however, problems quickly manifested. Sophisticated safety features served only to burn out gearboxes and gulp fuel. The passengers, meanwhile, did not appreciate being funnelled through the DMS's recalcitrant automatic fare-collection machinery only to have to stand for lack of seating. Boarding speeds thus slowed to a crawl, to the extent that the savings made by laying off conductors had to be negated by adding more DMSs to converted routes! Second thoughts caused the ongoing order to be amended to include crew-operated Fleetlines (DMs), noise concerns prompted the development of the B20 ‘quiet bus’ variety, and brave attempts were made to fit the buses into the time-honored system of overhauling at Aldenham Works, but finally the problems proved too much. After enormous expenditure, the first DMSs began to be withdrawn before the final RTs came out of service, and between 1979 and 1983 all but the B20s were sold – as is widely known, the DMSs proved perfectly adequate with provincial operators once their London features had been removed. OPO was to become fashionable again in the 1980s as the politicians turned on London Transport itself, breaking it into pieces in order to sell it off. Not only did the B20 DMSs survive to something approaching a normal lifespan, but the new cheap operators awakening with the onset of tendering made use of the type to undercut LT, and it was not until 1993 that the last DMS operated.

London's Buses, 1979–1994

London's Buses, 1979–1994 PDF

Author: Andrew Bartlett

Publisher: Pen and Sword Transport

Published: 2022-03-10

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 1526755475

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In 1979, fresh from its general election victory, the Conservative government began formulating plans to deregulate bus services and privatise the companies operating them in England, Scotland and Wales. London was not to be excluded, so from the outset, London Buses was broken up into several areas and from 1985, a tendering system was introduced which permitted other operators to bid for the routes. Opposition from the Labour group at the Greater London Council had to be dealt with – eventually achieved by abolishing it in 1986. However, as each subsequent year passed, promises that deregulation was coming were not met. In late 1992, the privatisation timetable was set, and was ultimately completed at the end of 1994. The issue of deregulation never resurfaced. Copiously illustrated with over 270 photographs, virtually all of which are being published for the first time, this is the story of London Buses over those sixteen tumultuous years. To give greater context to the narrative, annual vehicle acquisition listings show how purchasing policy changed over the period; important route changes, tendering gains and losses and a fleet list for the entire period are also included.

Buses and Coaches in and around Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge, 1891–1986

Buses and Coaches in and around Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge, 1891–1986 PDF

Author: Laurie James

Publisher: Pen and Sword Transport

Published: 2021-07-30

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1526776065

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Although the Surrey towns of Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge were for many years served by the London bus network, there were also a number of small scale locally based operators running bus services, before selling out to London Transport in the 1930s. Such companies ran coaches for private hire, contracts and pleasure outings, commencing just after the First World War. This book seeks to newly record the history of these proprietors and put the activities of the London General Omnibus Company and later London Transport into local context. The story starts in the 1890s with horse drawn buses linking with the local railway stations and carries the reader through the dawn of the motor era, the rise of the charabanc, entrepreneurial opportunities in the 1920s and consolidation in the 1930s, World War Two and the gradual decline of bus services from the 1960s. It culminates in a return to a de-regulated operating environment in 1986. Capturing the story of Ben Stanley's Coaches (amongst other pioneers) by using primary source material , the book covers more than just routes and vehicles - it attempts to show how road passenger transport was influenced by local social historic and economic activity.

The South East from 1000 AD

The South East from 1000 AD PDF

Author: C. B. Phillips

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-22

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1317871707

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A volume dealing with the regional and local history of South East England, this covers the landcape and society of the modern counties of Surrey, Kent, East and West Sussex and Greater London, south of the Thames from late Anglo-Saxon times to the present. The authors have tried to show the diversity that can be found within the region as well as common characteristics which illustrate the local peculiarities of the area. The works in the series offer a synthesis of both historical and archaeological work in local areas. Each region is covered in two linked but independent volumes, the first covering the period up to AD 1000 and necessarily relying on archaeological data, and the second bringing the story up to modern times. It aims to portray life as it was experienced by the majority of people of South Britain or England as it was to become. The authors look at the major historical events which have an impact on the reagion - wars, plagues, technological changes and socio-cultural trends amongst them - but they also stress the underlying continuity of rural and urban life.