It would have happened sometime but the extreme service cuts of September 4 1982 removed over two hundred RM's from the schedules and effectively started the withdrawal of the type.

Having languished at Aldenham for some months, a batch of almost one hundred was started on by an outside contractor in late 1982 / early 1983. Certain parts were reclaimed to be put back into "the system" and the unwanted bits (which was actually most of the bus) was cut up into manageable chunks to be taken away as witnessed here on Feb 7 1983.

Really sad to see a photo of one of these great icons unnecessarily reduced to it's constituent parts Neil due to bad decision-making by the London Transport management of the time who obviously didn't do their sums as to how economic a fuel-efficient Routemaster was to operate compared to the fuel-thirsty OPO DMSs, Leyland Titans and Metrobuses that displaced them, not to mention the extra maintenance these buses required that would see them off the road for up to three days if an engine change was required compared to a Routemaster where this was accomplished in a day.

My bus number (if any): RMs737, 875 and 1353 (Driver)

I wonder if we will ever know the true costs.

When one person operation was heralded in the late 1960`s as the way forward to combat the ever present staff shortage, the end of crew operation was expected to be fairly rapid in the suburbs and by the early 1980`s in the central area in line with the anticipated life span of the newest Routemasters.

The reality was that the Routemaster class was still totally intact (except for a few `casualties`) after the Merlins and Swifts departed, was just about totally intact by the time the last non B20 DMS`s left, and totally intact during the first three years of the Metrobus and Titan classes. Just what would the capital outlay have been on so many `not up to it` vehicles or, in the case of the Merlins, the infrastructure alterations at garages to accommodate them. Some garages had the entire dock area rebuilt with longer pits.

With the fuel consumption of the `newer` buses being half that of Routemasters and more of the `newer` buses being needed to run the same frequency service due to longer dwell time at stops, the argument that paying two crew members on an RM is a cost burden too far doesn`t impress.

Worth remembering also that all the way through the MB, SM, DM, M and T years fares paid in cash were still in the majority. Oyster cards were still a long way off. One person operation could never compete with an RM for speed of loading and also came with a higher risk of people over-riding their paid for destination. And, in central London especially, slower one person operated buses had the ability to delay faster crew buses - if these were Routemaster operated.

At Stamford Brook it was proved beyond any reasonable doubt that a crew operated Metrobus could not maintain the same running time as an RM just because of the door opening and closing at each stop. In a schedule change that took many 27`s out of HT on Sundays and gave V more duties on the 27`s than it had RM`s for, several crew M`s had to be used. Those few running lines lost more mileage than the RM lines by far - and yet these were not `pay as you board` Metrobuses!

But it`s a perfectly reasonable argument that RM`s couldn`t go on forever as even in the 1980`s some parts were obsolete. Maybe with hindsight a more pro-active parts reclaim from RM`s withdrawn from `less demanding` routes or as accident / wear and tear victims would have been sensible but when politics interferes a large amount of stock sitting in stores is questionable.