London Banter - View Single Post

Tristán White · December 18th 06, 11:05 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote in news:1166435712.383334.170240
@t46g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Ken Wheatley wrote:

There can't have been too many Routemasters in 1958, only the
prototypes existed.

Ken, this is a painful subject for me! As a schoolboy, I spent several
Saturdays 'bashing' RTWs. Unfortunately the iPod generation think that
***all*** red London doubledeckers with rear platforms from RT1 onwards
were called "Routemasters". The Wikipedia entry on RMs ruefully notes
this fact. They are aided and abetted in this by the media. I once saw
a photo in the Guardian of a wartime RT with the caption "a blacked out
early routemaster" (lower case 'r').

You can accept it and grow old gracefully, or you can fight it tooth
and nail like I do...

I'm curious now. There's a street up the road from me in Plaisow called
"Routemaster Close".

It looks quite an old road and the houses are certainly prewar by the looks
of things... so it is a name-change then?