My Bank Holiday
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 August 2008 23:43:53
Today was a holiday, and as mentioned in my previous entry, I went to the London Bus Preservation Society at Cobham Bus Museum. It was great! I spent the day being a big kid, riding around on buses, while Tina followed on very patiently. (She's said that next time we go out for the day, it'll have to be to a stately home or a garden. Well, I did drag her aound the old buses, so that's fair enough. Almost. I think.)
Anyway, we drove to Weybridge Station knowing that car parking is limited at the museum itself, and that they run a shuttle service between the station and the museum. This was my first bus ride of the day:
As you can see, this is a Routemaster. Now, the more observant of you (well, OK, the sad anoraks like me among you) will have noticed that it looks slightly different from the standard RM - it has more of a "stub nose" and a slightly different radiator grille. This is one of the very early RMs - a prototype if you will, and I had a ride in it.
The museum itself isn't that big, but has quite an array of old London buses dating right back to horse drawn buses:
and some other pretty old stuff too.
They aren't just for display though. Many of them have been restored and are in good working order and today they were giving free rides.
First off, we got on another Routemaster
This one originally ran on a Green Line route.
Next, we went on one of my favourite old buses, an RF
Considering this bus is well over 50 years old, it ran incredibly smoothly - it simply purred along!
These usually ran on the outskirts of London, so I don't really remember the red ones too much from my youth, but the Green Line used them too and they used to run through my home town. They were like this one, but green.
Next up was a ride on an RT
Many people think that the Routemaster is the utlimate "classic" London bus, but I tend to disagree. The real classic in my mind is the RT. They had their own distinctive sound and smell.
The one pictured abouve is actually an RTL, which was the Leyland version of the RT. (As I'm sure you know already, RTs were usually AEC)
Anyway, here's another RT
We didn't actually ride on this one, but as the RT is such a brilliant bus, I've included the photo anyway.
Oh well, that's enough anorak stuff for one day. If you're really interested, I took loads more photos which can be found here