Developed by Alexander Dennis in 2005 as an all-encompassing replacement for the Dennis Trident and its two bodies, the Plaxton President and Alexander ALX400, the integral Enviro400, immediately sold in large numbers, not least to London operators, which in the next eight years bought over 1,500 of them. Late in the production run, the hybrid E40H was introduced and also made good headway in London, funded largely by environmental grants. Nearly 300 of these are in service in London.Valid to May 2015, this book finishes by introducing the MMC, the all-new development of the Enviro400 unveiled in 2014 and exemplified in London so far by two batches for Abellio and Metroline.
The last decade of Routemaster bus operation in London saw over seven hundred surviving RMs and RMLs divided between several new companies following the privatization of London Buses Ltd’s subsidiaries in 1994. Now operating their existing twenty routes under contract to LRT (renamed TfL in 2000), Centrewest, Metroline, MTL London Northern, Leaside Buses, Stagecoach East London, South London, London Central, London General and London United all adopted their own predominantly red liveries, but by the turn of the century these firms had clustered in pairs and generally sold out to the emerging big corporate groups. Two independents, BTS and Kentish Bus, had also won a Routemaster route each and were similarly brought under the control of larger parents. In this photographic archive, each company’s last Routemaster-operating decade is outlined in detail up to when each route was converted to OPO one by one between 29 August 2003 and 9 December 2005. The two heritage routes are then explored all the way up to their own end in 2019.
A comprehensive look at Volvo’s innovative, 21st century double-decker designs and how they transformed busing across London. Volvo’s successful B7TL low-floor double-decker bus enjoyed a successful six-year run until increasing noise problems in London curtailed demand. The company then developed a leaner and quieter update which it dubbed the B9TL, and orders resumed in strength. As diesel-engine buses gradually gave way to battery-hybrid technology in the late 2000s, Volvo unveiled the B5LH hybrid to immediate acclaim and even healthier London sales. Volvo’s B9TLs and B5LHs quickly became the standard double decker buses in operation across London. This book offers a comprehensive account of these important and innovative machines.
Vilified as the great failure of all London Transport bus classes, the DMS family of Daimler Fleetline was more like an unlucky victim of straitened times. Desperate to match staff shortages with falling demand for its services during the late 1960s, London Transport was just one organization to see nationwide possibilities and savings in legislation that was about to permit double-deck one-man-operation and partially fund purpose-built vehicles. However, prohibited by circumstances from developing its own rear-engined Routemaster (FRM) concept, LT instituted comparative trials between contemporary Leyland Atlanteans and Daimler Fleetlines.The latter came out on top, and massive orders followed. The first DMSs entering service on 2 January 1971. In service, however, problems quickly manifested. Sophisticated safety features served only to burn out gearboxes and gulp fuel. The passengers, meanwhile, did not appreciate being funnelled through the DMS's recalcitrant automatic fare-collection machinery only to have to stand for lack of seating. Boarding speeds thus slowed to a crawl, to the extent that the savings made by laying off conductors had to be negated by adding more DMSs to converted routes! Second thoughts caused the ongoing order to be amended to include crew-operated Fleetlines (DMs), noise concerns prompted the development of the B20 quiet bus variety, and brave attempts were made to fit the buses into the time-honored system of overhauling at Aldenham Works, but finally the problems proved too much. After enormous expenditure, the first DMSs began to be withdrawn before the final RTs came out of service, and between 1979 and 1983 all but the B20s were sold as is widely known, the DMSs proved perfectly adequate with provincial operators once their London features had been removed. OPO was to become fashionable again in the 1980s as the politicians turned on London Transport itself, breaking it into pieces in order to sell it off. Not only did the B20 DMSs survive to something approaching a normal lifespan, but the new cheap operators awakening with the onset of tendering made use of the type to undercut LT, and it was not until 1993 that the last DMS operated.
The Olympian was Leyland's answer to the competition that was threatening to take custom away from its second-generation OMO double-deck products. Simpler than the London Transportcentric Titan but, unlike that integral model, able to respond to the market by being offered as a chassis for bodying by the bodybuilder of the customer's choice, the Olympian was an immediate success and soon replaced both the Atlantean and Bristol VRT as the standard double-decker of the NBC. It wasn't until 1984 that London Transport itself dabbled with the model, taking three for evaluation alongside trios of contemporary double-deckers.The resulting L class spawned an order for 260 more in 1986, featuring accessibility advancements developed by LT in concert with the Ogle design consultancy, but the rapid changes engulfing the organisation meant that no more were ordered. During the 1990s company ownerships shifted repeatedly as the ethos of competition gave way to the cold reality of big business, an unstable situation which even saw London's bus operations broken up.The L class was split between three new companies, but the backlog of older vehicles to replace once corporate interests released funding ensured the buses up to a further decade in service. Finally, as low-floor buses swept into the capital at the turn of the century, Olympian operation at last declined, and the final examples operated early in 2006.This profusely illustrated book describes the diversity of liveries, ownerships and deployments that characterised the London Leyland Olympians' two decades of service.
At the turn of the century Volvo found itself in a three-way tussle with Dennis and DAF to design and produce Britain’s first low-floor double-deck buses. The resulting B7TL was later into service in London than its competitors, but quickly caught up to achieve parity with the Dennis Trident. Two lengths were available and three bodies, by Alexander, Plaxton and East Lancs. Between them, London’s TfL-contracted London bus operators took over two thousand Volvo B7TLs between 2000 and 2006, after which noise problems obliged Volvo to develop the B9TL and its later B5LH hybrid. The Volvo B7TLs saw sterling service in the capital for two decades, with the last leaving service in the first week of 2021.
Dissatisfied with the reliability of its AEC Merlin and Swift single-deck buses, London Transport in 1973 purchased six Leyland Nationals for evaluation. Liking what it saw of this ultimate standard product, where even the paint swatch was of Leylands choice, LT took up an option to buy fifty more from a canceled export order and then bought further batches of 110, 30 and 140 to bring the LS class to 437 members by the middle of 1980. A year later the last MBAs and SMSs were replaced on Red Arrow services by sixty-nine new Leyland National 2s.Straightforward but reliable, the LS satisfied London Transports single-deck needs for a decade and a half, often standing in for double-deckers when needed, and then going on to help hold the fort during the tough years of early tendering, during which some innovative LS operations introduced several new liveries and identities. The type served the ten years expected out of it with few worries, only starting to disappear when minibuses came on strength at the end of the 1980s. Although the LS was formally retired by 1992, refurbishment programs gave survivors an extended lease of life, bringing us the National Greenway, the ultimate development of the Leyland National. Most of the Red Arrow National 2s thus became GLSs, and lasted until 2002.Matthew Wharmby is an author, photographer and editor specializing in London bus history. His published books include London Transports Last Buses: Leyland Olympians L 1-263, Routemaster Requiem and Routemaster Retrospective (with Geoff Rixon), London Transport 1970-1984 (with R. C. Riley), The London Titan and The London Metrobus. He has also written many articles for Buses, Bus & Coach Preservation, Classic Bus and London Bus Magazine.
Between 2002 and 2006 six of Londons bus companies put into service 390 articulated bendy buses on twelve routes for transport in London.rnrnDuring what turned out to be a foreshortened nine years in service, the Mercedes-Benz Citaro G buses familiar on the continent and worldwide earned an unenviable reputation in London; according to who you read and who you believed, they caught fire at the drop of a hat, they maimed cyclists, they drained revenue from the system due to their susceptibility to fare evasion, they transported already long-suffering passengers in standing crush loads like cattle and they contributed to the extinction of the Routemaster from frontline service. In short, it was often referred to as the bus we hated.rnrnThis account is an attempt by a long-time detractor of the bendy buses to set the vehicles in their proper context not quite to rehabilitate them, but to be as fair as is possible towards a mode of transport which felt about as un-British as could be.
Propelled towards the end of the 1990s by accessibility imperative requiring low floor buses both in London and the rest of Britain, Dennis developed a tri axle Trident double decker for Hong Kong and then adapted the design as a two axle version for Britain. Orders came thick and fast between 1999, when the first Tridents for London entered service with Stagecoach and 2006, when the Enviro 400, a combination of its unified body builders, replaced it. In those years over two thousand of the type appeared in London, ordered by Stagecoach, First London, United, Metroline, Metrobus, London General, Blue Triangle, Connex, Armchair, and Hackney Community Transport. The body work was by Alexander ALX400, Plaxton, (Precedent) and East Lancs, to two available lengths, while badging itself progressed although Trans Bus, until this troubled organisation was suspended in 2004 by todays Alexander Dennis. Versatile and personable, the Trident in all its forms lasted two decades in London, the last examples being withdrawn from service in 2020.
The 1970s were among London Transports most troubled years. Prohibited from designing its own buses for the gruelling conditions of the capital, LT was compelled to embark upon mass orders for the broadly standard products of national manufacturers, which for one reason or another proved to be disastrous failures in the capital and were disposed of prematurely at a great loss. Despite a continuing spares shortage combined with industrial action, the old organisation kept going somehow, with the venerable RT and Routemaster families still at the forefront of operations.At the same time, the green buses of the Country Area were taken over by the National Bus Company as London Country Bus Services. Little by little, and not without problems of their own, the mostly elderly but standard inherited buses gave way to a variety of diverted orders, some successful others far from so, until by the end of the decade we could see a mostly NBC-standard fleet of one-man-operated buses in corporate leaf green.
Vilified as the great failure of all London Transport bus classes, the DMS family of Daimler Fleetline was more like an unlucky victim of straitened times. Desperate to match staff shortages with falling demand for its services during the late 1960s, London Transport was just one organization to see nationwide possibilities and savings in legislation that was about to permit double-deck one-man-operation and partially fund purpose-built vehicles. However, prohibited by circumstances from developing its own rear-engined Routemaster (FRM) concept, LT instituted comparative trials between contemporary Leyland Atlanteans and Daimler Fleetlines.The latter came out on top, and massive orders followed. The first DMSs entering service on 2 January 1971.In service, however, problems quickly manifested. Sophisticated safety features served only to burn out gearboxes and gulp fuel. The passengers, meanwhile, did not appreciate being funnelled through the DMS's recalcitrant automatic fare-collection machinery only to have to stand for lack of seating. Boarding speeds thus slowed to a crawl, to the extent that the savings made by laying off conductors had to be negated by adding more DMSs to converted routes!Second thoughts caused the ongoing order to be amended to include crew-operated Fleetlines (DMs), noise concerns prompted the development of the B20 quiet bus variety, and brave attempts were made to fit the buses into the time-honored system of overhauling at Aldenham Works, but finally the problems proved too much. After enormous expenditure, the first DMSs began to be withdrawn before the final RTs came out of service, and between 1979 and 1983 all but the B20s were sold as is widely known, the DMSs proved perfectly adequate with provincial operators once their London features had been removed.OPO was to become fashionable again in the 1980s as the politicians turned on London Transport itself, breaking it into pieces in order to sell it off. Not only did the B20 DMSs survive to something approaching a normal lifespan, but the new cheap operators awakening with the onset of tendering made use of the type to undercut LT, and it was not until 1993 that the last DMS operated.
Between 2002 and 2006 six of Londons bus companies put into service 390 articulated bendy buses on twelve routes for transport in London.rnrnDuring what turned out to be a foreshortened nine years in service, the Mercedes-Benz Citaro G buses familiar on the continent and worldwide earned an unenviable reputation in London; according to who you read and who you believed, they caught fire at the drop of a hat, they maimed cyclists, they drained revenue from the system due to their susceptibility to fare evasion, they transported already long-suffering passengers in standing crush loads like cattle and they contributed to the extinction of the Routemaster from frontline service. In short, it was often referred to as the bus we hated.rnrnThis account is an attempt by a long-time detractor of the bendy buses to set the vehicles in their proper context not quite to rehabilitate them, but to be as fair as is possible towards a mode of transport which felt about as un-British as could be.
Dissatisfied with the reliability of its AEC Merlin and Swift single-deck buses, London Transport in 1973 purchased six Leyland Nationals for evaluation. Liking what it saw of this ultimate standard product, where even the paint swatch was of Leylands choice, LT took up an option to buy fifty more from a canceled export order and then bought further batches of 110, 30 and 140 to bring the LS class to 437 members by the middle of 1980. A year later the last MBAs and SMSs were replaced on Red Arrow services by sixty-nine new Leyland National 2s.Straightforward but reliable, the LS satisfied London Transports single-deck needs for a decade and a half, often standing in for double-deckers when needed, and then going on to help hold the fort during the tough years of early tendering, during which some innovative LS operations introduced several new liveries and identities. The type served the ten years expected out of it with few worries, only starting to disappear when minibuses came on strength at the end of the 1980s. Although the LS was formally retired by 1992, refurbishment programs gave survivors an extended lease of life, bringing us the National Greenway, the ultimate development of the Leyland National. Most of the Red Arrow National 2s thus became GLSs, and lasted until 2002.Matthew Wharmby is an author, photographer and editor specializing in London bus history. His published books include London Transports Last Buses: Leyland Olympians L 1-263, Routemaster Requiem and Routemaster Retrospective (with Geoff Rixon), London Transport 1970-1984 (with R. C. Riley), The London Titan and The London Metrobus. He has also written many articles for Buses, Bus & Coach Preservation, Classic Bus and London Bus Magazine.
Propelled towards the end of the 1990s by accessibility imperative requiring low floor buses both in London and the rest of Britain, Dennis developed a tri axle Trident double decker for Hong Kong and then adapted the design as a two axle version for Britain. Orders came thick and fast between 1999, when the first Tridents for London entered service with Stagecoach and 2006, when the Enviro 400, a combination of its unified body builders, replaced it. In those years over two thousand of the type appeared in London, ordered by Stagecoach, First London, United, Metroline, Metrobus, London General, Blue Triangle, Connex, Armchair, and Hackney Community Transport. The body work was by Alexander ALX400, Plaxton, (Precedent) and East Lancs, to two available lengths, while badging itself progressed although Trans Bus, until this troubled organisation was suspended in 2004 by todays Alexander Dennis. Versatile and personable, the Trident in all its forms lasted two decades in London, the last examples being withdrawn from service in 2020.
Explore the tenderness and the tensions in the teachings of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew portrays Jesus and his message as full of tender compassion and urgent warning. This six-part exploration of an enigmatic Gospel takes readers into the themes, topics, and tensions at the heart of Matthew's story about the life and work of Jesus. Chapters focus on blessing and comfort, judgment and retribution, the meaning of discipleship, Jesus’ vision for the Church and world, conflicts and complaints, and how the Gospel of Matthew speaks to believers today. The book can be read alone or used by small groups anytime throughout the year. Components include video teaching sessions featuring Matthew Skinner and a comprehensive Leader Guide.
In 'Routemaster Requiem', Rixon & Wharmby provide a tribute to the last years of a much-loved bus. Each chronological section examines the build up to the conversion of each route & how the actual conversion was marked on the day. As such, the book is a unique record to the gradual elimination of the Routemaster from London.
The Routemaster was more than a bus, it was one of the great British design icons of the 20th Century and the last bus design created specifically for the capital and its longevity is a tribute to the soundness of that concept. This book traces the route by route elimination of the Routemaster fleet during the 1980s and into the 1990s.
Developed in the late 1970s as a a wholly-British competitor to British Leyland's Titan, the Metrobus immediately gained success, not only with London Transport but nationwide. This is a complete history of the operator.
Explore the tenderness and the tensions in the teachings of Jesus. The Leader Guide contains everything needed to guide a group through the six-week study, including session plans, activities, discussion questions, and multiple format options. Components include the book, Matthew: The Gospel of Promised Blessings, and video teaching sessions featuring Matthew Skinner. The Gospel of Matthew portrays Jesus and his message as full of tender compassion and urgent warning. This six-part exploration of an enigmatic Gospel takes readers into the themes, topics, and tensions at the heart of Matthew's story about the life and work of Jesus. Chapters focus on blessing and comfort, judgment and retribution, the meaning of discipleship, Jesus’ vision for the Church and world, conflicts and complaints, and how the Gospel of Matthew speaks to believers today.
Painstakingly researched, this illustrated reference captures the spirited imagination of Dame Agatha and the intriguing atmosphere of her tales. Includes a comprehensive Christie biography, cross-referenced with plot synopses and character listings. Photos throughout.
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