Friday 9th December 2005

London’s Routemaster buses, designed by London Transport, built by the Associated Equipment Company (AEC) and Park Royal Vehicles, in use since the 1950s, were withdrawn from regular service. It took nine years of development between 1947 and 1956 to perfect the 64-seater Routemaster bus. Arthur (‘Bill’) Durrant headed the Routemaster design team who set out to design a low maintenance bus with performance as good as a private car. Constructed from a lightweight aluminum alloy, following the successful use of the material for aircraft during the Second World War, the metal body frame and stressed skin eliminated the need for a conventional chassis. According to the Routemaster Association, of the 2,876 Routemasters built, there are 1,280 still in existence. Ten are running on route 15, while most of the others are in museums, collections and being used as tour or charter vehicles. A phantom Routemaster haunts the streets of Cambridge Green. The ghostly vehicle, a number 7, allegedly drives up the middle of the road at 1.15am, with no lights, and apparently nobody at the wheel. It was last spotted in 1990 near Ladbroke Grove tube station. Over it’s time in service, there were eight different types of the Routemaster. The original was the RM (Routemaster) and there were various specification changes to encompass RML (Routemaster Lengthened) to RMA (Routemaster Airways) and the prestigiously sounding SRM (Routemaster Silver). They’ve also been exported to foreign lands, including Australia, Canada, China, Columbia, Croatioa, the Falklands, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the US.