Thirty seven years ago today, July 20 1980 we took RM 1563 to one of our first rallies.

It was held in the aesthetically challenged setting of the old Somers Town goods yard between Euston and St.Pancras not long before the site was redeveloped to become The British Library.

In hindsight I suppose I should be grateful that a large enough site to hold a bus rally in central London was made available as it was actually for a time the London base of the British Coachways consortium established by a group of coach operators as a rival to National Express.

It was being at the Alton rally in the lovely setting of Anstey Park last Sunday that got me thinking of the least pleasant places I`ve ever known as a bus rally site. I`m afraid that Somers Town really had no competition though in 1980 when having a great time doing something I enjoyed in the company of others similarly minded it actually didn`t seem that bad!

With thanks to Paul A for uploading my picture as my usual means of so doing is no longer working....

Sort of RM related Neil, did Mortlake have a canteen? I was there for18 months on the Aldenham staff bus, but cannot recall any signage. If not where did crews get their meal reliefs?

My bus number (if any): RTL 960, RMC 1458, RM 1585 and several RTs

The London Bus Preservation Group held a bus rally at Somers Town in May 1972, following their successful rally at Stratford on Avon the previous year. I don't recall any RMs there as there were none preserved in those days. My BEA coach MLL721 attended, but star of the show was probably the 1926 Dennis D142 and possibly the Tilling ST.

It was rather a dusty site as it used to be a coal depot. Remembering that in 1968 a Harrier jump jet took off from there in the great trans-Atlantic race. It won.

My bus number (if any): RML2532

Yes Brian, there was a canteen at Mortlake and like the garage it was small. Very small! But it ran just like all of the other bus garage canteens with the usual range of `Griffin` products and was open during the usual timescale of each day enough to service the meal break needs of crews on the 9`s and those on the 33`s who walked to and from the changeover point at Queens Road on the Upper Richmond Road by using the railway footbridge.

It was perhaps more unusual than most in that it was separate from the engineering and operating departments within the garage by being in the `house` on the corner of Avondale Road and South Worple Way. At a quick glance it looked like a house but in reality it was `joined` to the garage (and boiler house) and had the canteen on the ground floor and the `games room` on the first floor. The snooker table was in a room not much bigger than a double bedroom and at a certain height on two of the walls the plaster was damaged or missing corresponding to the blunt end of a cue hitting it!

The only way in and out of the `house` for users was into the street. There was no physical connection affording undercover access into the garage which was annoying in heavy rain. The canteen staff had a kitchen door which opened into the `run - in` entrance but this also stopped short of the actual garage. The engineers Mess Room was close to this point and it was quite usual for the canteen staff to yell at them when food was ready and for a collection to be made at the kitchen door!

One of the canteen workers who managed to effortlessly combine the attributes of legend and dragon was horrified one Saturday when Neil T and I asked for twelve cans of Coca-Cola. We got such a lecture on how bad it was to drink that much of the stuff - but that was not our intention. A few minutes later we went to the kitchen door and made her watch as we poured the cola into an oil drip tray and then placed the chrome wheel trims from 1563 into it and said `well be back in a couple of hours`. When she saw how shiny these trims were later she gave every cola customer thereafter an upgraded lecture - "have you seen what that stuff does to metal?"

All Mortlake crews took their meal relief at Mortlake in the latter years but I`m sure I remember as a conductor that we had some Saturday duties on the 9`s that did Liverpool Street to Hammersmith during the day and took a break in Riverside Garage.

Run-In entrance and `house` as mentioned a couple of days before closure in June 1983. Some boarding up has already happened. Engineers Mess Room in foreground. Picture taken from the footbridge over the railway.

Thanks Neil much appreciated! We think only garages without a canteen then were Middle Row and Finchley which used the Bus stand facilities.

My bus number (if any): RTL 960, RMC 1458, RM 1585 and several RTs

Did the old Uxbridge Garage have a canteen? The routes operated were `remote` from the garage but had Uxbridge Station as a common point.

Good point Neil, it may not have done. This all arose from a Facebook page on London Bus garages
There was initially some confusion about what constituted a canteen as all garages had mess rooms for engineering staff.

My bus number (if any): RTL 960, RMC 1458, RM 1585 and several RTs

The old Edgware Garage did not have a canteen. Relief's were taken in the UndergrounD canteen contained within Edgware Station

My bus number (if any): RM 912

The old Edgware Garage barely had a garage!!!!
I don`t think there was another garage in the fleet that had such a high percentage of its allocation parked outside.

When we think back to how many garages could put an entire allocation of one hundred buses under a roof, what was normal then is very, very unusual now.

If I recall correctly, the rateable value of a site under cover was significantly higher than an open site which might explain why so many of the larger `provincial` companies embarked on a programme of urban area retrenchment to less urban open sites. And did this at a time when reliable `simple` bus types were being replaced by more complicated examples with all the cold morning `non start` challenges that came with being in the open.


The only garage I ever worked in that had a small amount of outside parking was Putney and that only involved about twelve buses being in an open area out the back of the main shed. I do recall one severely minus temperature morning when the RML`s out there were so frozen inside that they were unavailable for service first thing. A bonfire was made and lit in the centre of the open area top raise the temperature can you believe. Nobody had the intelligence to tip the seat squabs up so that after a few hours when the ice on the ceilings had melted, the seats were wet!

I think Riverside had all its allocation under cover. I don't remember any open yard there at all. Not only did it have a canteen, it also had the Albert Stanley Institute over the entrance!

My bus number (if any): RML2532

There were a lot of buses out in the open at EW and I well recall one snowy January day in 1970 going all the way to Borehamwood with what we thought was EW ?? on the 292's only to find upon arrival at Rossington Avenue that all the snow had fallen off the screens and we had a 114. All routes were numbered EW 1 upwards in those days: Wondered why we hadn't picked anyone up.

My bus number (if any): RM 912