On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 08:02:18 -0000, "Malcolm Knight"
wrote:


"Bill Hayles" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:57:32 -0000, "Malcolm Knight"
wrote:

"Bill Hayles" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 09:19:27 -0000, "Henry"

1 to 199 - London General Double Deck services in the Central
Area

How does this fit in with the 101 which I regularly rode in the
early
1950s and possibly the late 40s (memory beginning to fail me here)?
How does it not? The 101 was double deck.

Wanstead (Essex when the route was started) is the Central Area of
London. Really? You surprise me.

Ahh, I see the misunderstanding.
We are talking about London Transport's definition of "Central" and
"Country".


To repeat what I said a couple of days ago:


Pre-1970 "Central" was
anything covered by the red buses - roughly Greater London.
"Country" was the (doughnut shaped) area beyond this but still part
of the London Transport area - roughly, going clockwise from the
Thames, Gravesend, Hildenborough, Edenbridge, East Grinstead,
Crawley, Horsham. Guildford, Staines, Windsor, High Wycombe,
Aylesbury, Dunstable, Luton, Hitchin, Buntingford, Bishop's
Stortford, Harlow, Brentwood, Grays.


To add to that, Country Buses were painted green. Green Line
Coaches were also painted green, but had a subtly different livery
and ran limited stop services from one side of the area, through the
centre and (usually) out the other side. Green Line was always run
by Country Bus Services, but the majority of green bus services were
NOT "Green Line" - a common misunderstanding even forty years ago.

On 1st January, Country Bus Services and Green Line Coaches were
hived off to London Country Bus Services, a part of the National Bus
Company, and the London Transport Special Area abolished.

I worked for LCBS as a driver in the 1970s, when it still retained
much of its London Transport practices (to say nothing of vehicles,
both good and bad)

http://billnot.com/lcbs

for my reminiscences of that period.

So Wanstead was very much in the Central area of London Transport.

I had the good fortune to spend my childhood in Orpington, right on
the border and served by both Central and Country buses. so I could
buy a Red Rover and go riding round the Central area, or a Green
Rover and go riding round the country. I could also buy a Twin
Rover and go riding on both the Central Buses and the Underground.

So, to come back to your original query, the 101 was a perfectly
normal Central Bus Service, operated by the Central Road Services
division of London Transport.. Indeed, route 10 ran more or less to
the edge of the Central Area, to Abridge, route 84 went to St.
Albans and on Summer Sundays route 47 got as far as Knockholt Pound.
But they were still Central Buses. There was no geographic
distinction whatsoever within the Central area. Wanstead was no
less "Central" than Trafalgar Square.

I hope this clears things up.

--
Bill Hayles

http://billnot.com

"Paul Terry" wrote in message
...
In message , Malcolm
Knight writes

Wanstead (Essex when the route was started) is the Central Area of
London. Really? You surprise me.

It was well inside London Transport's central area which, as Bill
pointed out earlier, covered much of what was to become Greater
London.

I'm not by any means a transport enthusiast, just a humble user, so I
wouldn't know that bus operators classed Essex as central London. One
wonders where 'Outer' started. Even Leyton was Essex - my birth
certificate proves it. :-)

snip interesting stuff - thank you

There was often considerable intermingling of central ("red") and
country ("green") buses in the outer fringes. Where I grew up, in
Belvedere, we had a choice of red buses (Woolwich-Erith) and green
buses
(to Bexleyheath, Dartford and even Sevenoaks) passing the house.

As it happens I now live in Belvedere. There used to be direct buses
from the end of the road to Woolwich but now there are none, just
meandering single deckers. I can walk to Bexleyheath slightly quicker
than the bus does the journey.

We used to catch the 101 from North Woolwich when visiting relatives
in
Essex - I can also remember it being a real bone-shaking service,
although I wonder if some of that was the state of the roads through
the
docks in the 1950s.

It's the current ones that I called 'boneshakers'. I thought my teeth
might fall out.

I suppose like me you used to strain to look at the banana boats in
the docks from the top deck of a 101 to Woolwich pre-1950?
--
Malcolm

"Bill Hayles" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 08:02:18 -0000, "Malcolm Knight"
wrote:


"Bill Hayles" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:57:32 -0000, "Malcolm Knight"
wrote:

"Bill Hayles" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 09:19:27 -0000, "Henry"


1 to 199 - London General Double Deck services in the Central
Area

How does this fit in with the 101 which I regularly rode in the
early
1950s and possibly the late 40s (memory beginning to fail me
here)?
How does it not? The 101 was double deck.

Wanstead (Essex when the route was started) is the Central Area of
London. Really? You surprise me.

Ahh, I see the misunderstanding.
We are talking about London Transport's definition of "Central" and
"Country

That's it, thanks. We are not all transport enthusiasts here, some
just (mainly) lurk to read nostaligic snippets from the past - and
wonder how it is that if this new fangled Oyster system is so damned
clever, why warnings on how to avoid tripping it up have to be
tannoyed around the underground every two minutes. ;-)
--
Malcolm

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 11:16:20 -0000, "Malcolm Knight"
wrote:



That's it, thanks. We are not all transport enthusiasts here, some
just (mainly) lurk to read nostaligic snippets from the past - and
wonder how it is that if this new fangled Oyster system is so damned
clever, why warnings on how to avoid tripping it up have to be
tannoyed around the underground every two minutes. ;-)

Since I'm retired and living in Spain, I'm enjoying all these tales
about Oyster cards with a considerable amount of schadenfruede.

I wouldn't want Kat's job for all the tea in Tescos.

--
Bill Hayles

http://billnot.com

Malcolm Knight wrote:

There was often considerable intermingling of central ("red") and
country ("green") buses in the outer fringes. Where I grew up, in
Belvedere, we had a choice of red buses (Woolwich-Erith) and green
buses (to Bexleyheath, Dartford and even Sevenoaks) passing the house.

As it happens I now live in Belvedere. There used to be direct buses
from the end of the road to Woolwich but now there are none, just
meandering single deckers.

Could this have something to do with the fact that the service is
parallelled by a railway, and the train to Woolwich is much faster?

I can walk to Bexleyheath slightly quicker
than the bus does the journey.

As there are more direct double deckers to Bexleyheath, that shouldn't
be a problem.

We used to catch the 101 from North Woolwich when visiting relatives
in Essex - I can also remember it being a real bone-shaking service,
although I wonder if some of that was the state of the roads through
the docks in the 1950s.

Could the tyres be to blame? My grandmother told me the buses used to
have solid rubber tyres, but I don't know how long that was the case.

It's the current ones that I called 'boneshakers'. I thought my teeth
might fall out.

IIRC the main cause of the shaking on those buses is the engine when
idling - a problem that's relatively easy to fix!