I couldn`t understand why I was initially unable to recognise just where on the 9 route this shot was taken. Knowing the route so well, I had to look in my index of slides to discover that RM 1737 was actually off route and on diversion ( I don`t recall why) when I took this picture on Nov 29 1981.



It`s in Grosvenor Place heading down to Victoria. Just beyond the immediate background (on the opposite side of the road), numbers 10 & 11 Grosvenor Place were once the home of the LT Schedules Department - among others.


I worked there briefly in the Summer of 1973 in a third floor office that looked across Grosvenor Place and into the back garden of Buckingham Palace - the perimeter of which takes up all of the eastern side of the road hence all the properties being consecutively numbered on the other side. The Schedules Office also looked out over Hyde Park Corner and thus afforded a great view of many bus routes on which nothing out of the ordinary ever escaped the attention of the many `bus spotters` that worked in Schedules.

I well recall the near frenzy that occurred when an RT from Dalston Garage was spotted on the 9`s - the first such known instance in a couple of years. An unusual substitution given that the 9`s at that time was a BESI controlled route ( an early form of vehicle tracking device) and only RM`s were so fitted. Although running numbers couldn`t be read from the office, within minutes the schedules had been trawled through to identify the likely duty that the RT was on so that some early lunch breaks were taken in order for several staff to get to Hyde Park Corner with their cameras to await its return!

Hi Neil,

Another great photo, very evocative of the times. You certainly appear to have gotten around an awful lot, you wouldn't have been a BTE by chance?

Regards,

Danny.

A what?

Hi Neil,

I’m guessing not! BTE was a Bus Operating Trainee, an apprentice scheme introduced in 1973. I was one and went here, there and everywhere. Various garages, Aldenham, Baker Street and, in the summer of 73, the scheduling office in Grosvenor Place. So looking at the things you contribute I thought maybe you were doing the same. Grosvenor Place also housed, at least, the Claims & Insurance Manager and the Public Relations Dept, both places I did stints in.

At West Ham Garage a DMI, (Brian Baker), taught me to drive a Routemaster (RM169). Round and round the garage we went and I was hooked. Heady stuff when you’re 16! Wish I too had taken a camera everywhere but photography was expensive in those days plus what does a 16 year old know. Also I wished I’d pinched a lot more! Old destination blinds thrown everywhere, sacks of handed in PSV badges. At Upton Park a couple of boxes of antique LT Bell Punches. What was I thinking? I could have been the king of Ebay and writing this from my yacht in the Bahamas! Blast!

Do keep the photos coming. They take me straight back to simpler times, at least for myself and I consider myself lucky to have been part of LT before the wheels came off. All the best.

Regards,

Danny Robins.

Bus Operating Trainee = BOT

it works right to the top and the abbreviations become cruder with seniority!

You'll have to work out where this is going yourselves!!

At least that was the running joke at HL many moons ago.!

Ah, now we`re getting somewhere..........

Yes, I was a Bus Operating Trainee of the very first batch in 1973. And, if I recall correctly, there were eight of us. Does this mean our paths didn`t just cross they ran, at times, together? Amazing coincidence if we`ve discovered this through the forum. Names of others at this time that I remember are Phil, Bob and Alan - all of whom were attached to south east London garages. We rarely all came together at once in order not to swamp any given department but one rare example was at Chiswick Training School. Were you there, Danny, when we actually got to drive RT 4640 on the Skid Pan?
At seventeen this was, for me, way beyond being let loose in a sweet shop.
And it`s stuck with me all these years on..........

The common theme that runs through this forum is an appreciation of, and enjoyment from, Routemasters. Many present owners of them who are also contributors to this forum never worked for LT or for any other bus company - and probably had no desire to. And then there`s a few of us who look back on the LT that once was (until it `broke` in 1986) with a great deal of affection that we can`t quite shake off because it was such a fantastic experience. I know I`m not the only one who had a great time combining a job and a hobby - and was getting paid for having a lot of fun at work.

I`ve probably said this before on here but the whole ethos of LT in 1973 was something to lament the loss of in later years. Apprenticeships that lead to a job for life and an employment culture that made staff want to stay - and even made it disadvantageous to leave. In the Bus Operating department only the lowest grades were accessible to walk off the street into. Everything else was a promotion from within. It generally followed that those highest up the ladder had the most experience and had done many (or all) of the jobs below them.

And that`s what the Bus Operating Trainee scheme sought to further by taking school leavers through every department that had a bearing on Bus Operating (even the Lost Property Department) to acquaint youngsters with a comprehensive knowledge to accelerate a career path. This would begin at eighteen as a conductor, then a driver at twenty one (hopefully) and an Inspector thereafter until a management grade was almost a certainty. I`ve often wondered if I was the youngest ever conductor on LT. My eighteenth birthday fell on a Monday which was intake day at the Training School. Whereas most applicants could only apply on reaching eighteen, I was already `in the system` and processed in advance. I don`t think anyone else could have done this - other than another (subsequent) Bus Operating Trainee but I don`t think the scheme lasted more than a couple of years.

But back to the Routemaster relevance, the higher standards applied by experienced staff from management downwards both in the Engineering and Operating departments ran through the best of the Routemaster years and gave us something to remember the type favourably by. The extensive design research and extensive testing of prototypes wasn`t done by people using the job as a stepping stone to something better as happens too often now. Career busman ceased to be a cherished asset around the time of the first mass RM withdrawals and by the early 1990`s travelling on a Routemaster was as alien for the `refurbished` interiors as it was for the lack of friendly, diligent, properly uniformed staff. I doubt there will ever be a fraction of the affection shown to Routemasters applied to buses of the post 1990`s and I don`t suppose I`m the only one who cringes on seeing a brand new bus being driven badly by some git in a baseball cap, jeans and trainers.

So, from a BOT in 1973 to a dinosaur in 2014. There`s a few of you that visit here and can probably see where I`m coming from!

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the response, very succinctly put! I’m glad my 6th sense and suspicious nature have not failed me!

I was a BTE in the first batch, I think they only did another year or so. After the interview at Grosvenor Place and medical at the centre in Edgware Road I was ‘engaged’, as it was quaintly put, on the 7th May 1973. (Grade; BTE, first week’s wages, less money held in Lieu: 15 pounds). I was from east London so was allocated to the Eastern Division HQ at Manor House. As a result I worked in a lot of the East End garages; Clapton, Leyton, West Ham, Poplar, Barking, Seven Kings and, of course, a couple of attachments to my local one: Upton Park. As you say, we were rotated to keep out of each other’s hair but I do remember we all used to meet up and have outings every now and then. It’s incredible to think we were interacting all those years ago. I do remember Bob & Alan from South East London but the rest is a bit hazy.

I particularly remember the day trips to Chiswick and Aldenham. En route to Aldenham I recall popping into Edgware Garage. Wow, what a shock to an East End boy! A tiny little garage, a few dusty RF’s and what looked like a lean to as a workshop. To me LT was all about buses thumping up & down the East India Dock Road or fighting it out around Hyde Park Corner so to be wandering through the daisies, in the sun, at a garage in the ‘country’, listening to bees humming and birds chirping was totally surreal. It was just amazing to think that this was still LT ‘territory’.

At 18 it was time to start working for a living so I went through Chiswick and came out conductor N124067 at U. On my 21st birthday I applied for driving, waited a year for the call to Chiswick, (things were starting to unravel workwise in the Seventies and suddenly LT was ‘full up’), came out as driver N103243, (thank you PCO for a dead man’s badge!) and promptly jumped 30 places on the driver seniority board as your seniority was based on the date of your application! Haha, suckers! (On LT a lot of things were based on seniority; chances of promotion, changing to one-man-operation, picking a particular route rota and so on).

Oops, better finish before this turns into ‘All our Yesterdays’. Sorry if this is of limited interest to non LT people and is a bit removed from Routemasters. I’ll end by getting back on track and saying despite being the same type there was an amazing difference between individual buses. Some were snappy, tight & eager, some were slow, wobbly and lethargic. You got to know the bonnet numbers after a while and would grin or grimace depending on what you saw you were in for. Every now & then a gleaming ‘new’ one would turn up from overhaul looking a million dollars. The Aldenham guys did a fantastic job and you’d cruise through London feeling like King of the Road. It might seem odd to some that drivers used to care but as a job you’d generally be stuck in that seat for a good few hours on a shift and a good stead could make a huge contribution to making that time go better. All the best to all.

Regards,

Danny