Tristán White wrote:

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?

Depends which war you mean, young man. Certainly not pre world war 2 if
this former resident is to be believed, talking about trolleybuses -
among the first routes given to Routemasters were trolleybus
replacements... THis would have been around 1960.

"They ran from either West Ham [WH] or Poplar [PR] depots, both now
demolished and housing estates built on the sites, although the West
Ham Depot site is remembered as one of the street names there is named
Routemaster Close."

wrote:

"They ran from either West Ham [WH] or Poplar [PR] depots, both now
demolished and housing estates built on the sites, although the West
Ham Depot site is remembered as one of the street names there is named
Routemaster Close."

Could it be a renamed street rather than a 1960s build? There can't be
two Routemaster Closes in that area, surely? I daresay to the untrained
eye a 1960s housing estate might look 'pre-war'? I'm not an architect
myself, and my dad's bungalow in Coulsdon looks pre-war to me, but it
was actually built in 1959.

Is it the one off the south west side of Greengate Street, between Gad
Close and Barbers Alley?

I've looked it up on Windows Live Search - if you can copy this whole
link without line wrapping you can see the little estate which includes
Routemaster Close. It looks later than pre-war to me - the roofs look
quite recent, and prewar estates didn't have so much car parking, did
they?

The estate is the group of buildings immediately behind the sports
pitch with the red fence. This view is looking east. There is a yellow
van parked on the RH side of Routemaster Close.

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v...&scene=4267951

wrote in
ps.com:

Is it the one off the south west side of Greengate Street, between Gad
Close and Barbers Alley?

I've looked it up on Windows Live Search - if you can copy this whole
link without line wrapping you can see the little estate which
includes Routemaster Close. It looks later than pre-war to me - the
roofs look quite recent, and prewar estates didn't have so much car
parking, did they?

The estate is the group of buildings immediately behind the sports
pitch with the red fence. This view is looking east. There is a yellow
van parked on the RH side of Routemaster Close.

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v...302&style=o&lv
l=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=4267951





Yep that's the street. Wow, that's better than Google Earth!

Tristán White wrote:

Yep that's the street. Wow, that's better than Google Earth!

Windows Live Local shows the Shortlands Box which doesn't yet appear on
Google Earth. It must be 2 or 3 years old now.

In message om,
writes
Is it the one off the south west side of Greengate Street, between Gad
Close and Barbers Alley?

I've looked it up on Windows Live Search - if you can copy this whole
link without line wrapping you can see the little estate which includes
Routemaster Close. It looks later than pre-war to me - the roofs look
quite recent, and prewar estates didn't have so much car parking, did
they?

The estate is the group of buildings immediately behind the sports
pitch with the red fence. This view is looking east. There is a yellow
van parked on the RH side of Routemaster Close.

It's got to be about 1980s as I remember visiting WH garage some years
ago. They had just taken delivery of the S class Scanias. All the
houses in Routemaster Close and Gad Close are built on the site of the
old garage.

Just checked, it still had an allocation of 113 in 1987.
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)

In article . com, () wrote:

Depends which war you mean, young man. Certainly not pre world war
2 if this former resident is to be believed, talking about
trolleybuses - among the first routes given to Routemasters were
trolleybus replacements... THis would have been around 1960.

"They ran from either West Ham [WH] or Poplar [PR] depots, both now
demolished and housing estates built on the sites, although the West
Ham Depot site is remembered as one of the street names there is
named Routemaster Close."

Routemasters entered mainstream service on 11th November 1959 when 74 vehicles were allocated to Poplar and West Ham garages to replace trolleybuses under stage IV of the London Trolleybus Conversion scheme. Once that conversion was completed in 1962 later deliveries of RMs replaced RT type vehicles.

--
Colin Rosenstiel