ROOF
Thank you for visiting the Routemaster Owner and Operator's Forum (ROOF). Please feel free to use this forum for the mature discussion of any issues of interest and relevance to Routemaster owners. Please do not use this board to publicise your feelings about individuals, National or Local Government or TFL policy. Owners of other London bus types in service during the 1950s, 60s and 70s are also welcome to contribute to this forum.
Please note, the ROOF website no longer exists. The link from the Forum does not work anymore. Useful information and links from the website has been posted to the Forum.
Thirty years ago today, May 8th 1984, was RM 1563`s last day in passenger service.
This well known bus spent all of its working life at Mortlake (carrying four different bonnet numbers over the years) and on the closure of the garage the remaining eleven months in service were spent at Stamford Brook Garage which took Mortlake`s share of the 9 route.
I would be the first to admit that towards the end it didn`t exactly have the shine of a Showbus but it did look like a genuine everyday `in service` bus - which is exactly what it was - for unlike many garage `showbuses` that only went out in service if really needed, 1563 went out all day, every day so that it could be readily seen and photographed.
Here it is on the final day around 6pm about to depart from Mortlake Garage for the last time for a trip into town. With not much in the background to date it specifically as 1984 it could almost be from years earlier in that livery.
An hour later and we`re at Liverpool Street Station ready for the final run back to Mortlake. How that area has changed from the scene here which is actually Broad Street Station. If 1563 looks a bit tired, that`s nothing compared to how Broad Street Station was! Only used in the peak hours by that time, I don`t think I`ve ever known anywhere with so many rats as lived there - and right by the `lay-over` point around the corner from where this shot was taken! Just getting out of the cab to walk round to the back of the bus in the late evening there was quite an experience and certainly not great for anyone scared of rats!
How I wish I had a photo of myself and my conductress, Joan, (who was prominent in the 9 Road film) plus Neil Townsend and Paul Almeroth who were with us for the last trip. I can`t quite believe it was thirty years ago tonight.
Here`s something that Neil T kept as a momento. It`s the `Run Out Sheet` listing the allocation of vehicles for that day. This was common, in this form, to all garages though I could never understand why it wasn`t an A4 bit of paper as the bigger garages had so many buses that two or even three sheets would be needed to display the bus allocations in the `signing on` area so that crews knew which was their alloted bus to take out of the garage - or which bus they could expect to pick up on the road later.
The listings were in numerical `Running Number` order, not the order in which those Running Numbers left the garage. In my experience, the night staff who compiled these sheets never bothered to put anything in the `Time Due Out` column. The `Road Number` column was a bit of a mystery as, unlike train depots where each depot track (or road) had a number above it for locating a train, bus garages generally didn`t have this. So although Road Numbers appear on this sheet and may have meant something to the person who allocated the vehicles, with no such numbers in the garage it was just a case of wandering in to find your bus. W meant the bus was in the wash, F meant forecourt and what looks like a D is actually a poorly written P to mean the bus was on a pit - in which case a driver had to find one of the garage staff to get the bus off the pit.
From the sheet, nine of Mortlake`s Leylands are shown as allocated for service on May 8th 1984 including 1563 as V 154. Another one, 1654, made it into preservation as did 848 which was surprisingly allocated to Stamford Brook in January 1981 as the only Leyland among AEC`s. This had been the long term dead RM 931 - off the road from 1973 and cannibalized to a shell but rebuilt and overhauled to run again. All of the other RM`s listed had come to Stamford Brook direct from overhaul apart from two; 593 came from Clapton as a swap for our Showbus RM 855 when I no longer had time to keep it looking good and RM 133 came as a transfer in from Seven Kings. What a heap of crap that bus was! It was the scruffiest bus we had and it was horrible to drive!
Amazing what I remember from thirty years ago!
