"Paul Terry" wrote in message
...
In message , Malcolm
Knight writes

Wanstead (Essex when the route was started) is the Central Area of
London. Really? You surprise me.

It was well inside London Transport's central area which, as Bill
pointed out earlier, covered much of what was to become Greater
London.

I'm not by any means a transport enthusiast, just a humble user, so I
wouldn't know that bus operators classed Essex as central London. One
wonders where 'Outer' started. Even Leyton was Essex - my birth
certificate proves it. :-)

snip interesting stuff - thank you

There was often considerable intermingling of central ("red") and
country ("green") buses in the outer fringes. Where I grew up, in
Belvedere, we had a choice of red buses (Woolwich-Erith) and green
buses
(to Bexleyheath, Dartford and even Sevenoaks) passing the house.

As it happens I now live in Belvedere. There used to be direct buses
from the end of the road to Woolwich but now there are none, just
meandering single deckers. I can walk to Bexleyheath slightly quicker
than the bus does the journey.

We used to catch the 101 from North Woolwich when visiting relatives
in
Essex - I can also remember it being a real bone-shaking service,
although I wonder if some of that was the state of the roads through
the
docks in the 1950s.

It's the current ones that I called 'boneshakers'. I thought my teeth
might fall out.

I suppose like me you used to strain to look at the banana boats in
the docks from the top deck of a 101 to Woolwich pre-1950?
--
Malcolm