Acrosticus wrote:

Finally, a couple of interesting asides. I remember pretty clearly the demise
of the RT (because I'm an old fart), but I don't remember that being as much of
a cause celebre as the death throes of the RM seem to have become today.

Well, to the general public an RT looks not very different from an RM,
and I guess in 1979 it didn't look as out-of-date as an RM looks in 2004
anyway. So it was probably seen as the demise of just another batch of
old buses by most people, even those interested in buses.

The coming demise of the RM, however, means the demise of an entire class
of buses - rear entry, conductor-operated double deckers - which has dis-
appeared about two decades ago from most other places and survived almost
only in London. (For example, the last Berlin D2U was taken out of service
in 1978.)

Also, the demise of trolleybuses, which
the RM was originally designed to replace, is just within the span of my memory
(because in fact I'm a very old fart!) and my dim recollections of that are
that they were here today and gone tomorrow without any farewell parties or
other razamatazz.

Again, to the general public a trolleybus is just another sort of bus.
I've heard, however, that the demise of the trams did cause some farewell
parties.

.... Martin, who rode an RT in regular service this spring ...