London Banter - View Single Post - Sad day for London and farewell to faithful friends

Colin Rosenstiel · September 7th 04, 11:29 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Mait001) wrote:

You missed route 13 from Golders Green to Aldwych which is rumoured to
be losing its recently modernised Routemasters very soon to former
route 9 RMLs. Note this is a rumour that has just emerged and it may
have no foundation at all.

Yes, I think I also missed the 38.

Farewell friendly Routemasters - may you ever reign supreme in our
affections.

Yep - I cannot imagine what the events will be like when the very last
one leaves service if the experience of the last days of route 8 and
now 9/73 and 390 are anything to go by.

I made a point of taking my younger (12 years old) daughter for a
Routemaster ride this summer before it was too late. Luckily this was last
week. We were twice able to benefit from the big RM benefit in my book,
getting on and off at traffic lights and not being restricted to stops.
This helped us get a 73 in Euston Road near King's Cross and a 14 at the
bottom of Putney Hill.

I found the seats comfortable (I'm 6' 2 1/2") and my daughter loves the
longitudinal seats downstairs. At her age I was frantically riding the
remaining London Trolleybuses and hopping along to Hammersmith Broadway
after school to see the remaining routes. At that time I didn't much like
RMs because they were replacing the much better trolleybuses.

But there seemed to be no information about the changes. The trolleybus
replacements were notified on buses and at stops.

It seemed very strange on Monday morning that there were no Routemasters
at King's Cross any more. The 9 seemed to be half non-RM last week and
neither the 12 nor 159 seem to be 100% RM any more.

Have they cut the 73 back to Tottenham Court Rd Station or was that a
short working I saw today? They were struggling with the turn into New
Oxford Street tonight.

--
Colin Rosenstiel