London Banter - View Single Post - Why Green Line routes numbers start with 700

[email protected] · January 28th 16, 01:07 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Guy Gorton) wrote:

On Tue, 26 Jan 2016 16:18:15 -0600,
wrote:

In article , ine
(Bryan Morris) wrote:

On numbering BTW , with trams the notation was even-numbered
services south of the Thames and odd-numbered ones north of the River.
When trolley buses replaced trams the numbers were preceded by 5 or 6

Up to a point Lord Copper! Those route numbering rules were for the LCC
network. And South London had a few odd-numbered routes which traversed
the Kingsway Tram Tunnel linking the two sides of the system. There were
some even-numbered routes which crossed Putney Bridge to the north side
of the Thames. An odd-numbered route 89 that was jointly operated with
LUT also crossed Putney Bridge.

The combine (LUT, MET & SMET) and other municipal operator routes didn't
follow those numbering rules and after the establishment of the LPTB in
1933 there was quite a bit of duplication. The Uxbridge Road LUT route 7
had three duplicates in East London only reduced to two after limited
renumbering. That was one reason why trolleybuses had routes in the 5xx
and 6xx series. The 655 trolleybus which crossed Putney Bridge was based
on an LUT route 55 tram extended to replace the 89. The 555 was in East
London replacing a 55 tram route run jointly by the LCC and Leyton UDC.
In general 6xx routes were in West London and 5xx routes in the east. The
main exception were some route pairs going opposite ways round
terminating loops north of central London (where no tram or trolleybuses
ever penetrated). An example was the 521 & 621 pair from North Finchley
to the Holborn loop via Farringdon Road and Gray's Inn Road. There was
several other such pairs using the Holborn loop. This was because a
tramway could come to an end as a terminus with trams using a crossover
to reverse on the same route while trolleybuses had to run round loops so
the ends of tram routes were connected up with new wiring to form loops
in the conversion programme.

655 trolleybus route - I seem to remember using that occasionally
running south from Hanwell - or was it Southall?

Hanwell all the time but only beyond Hammersmith in the peaks IIRC.

--
Colin Rosenstiel