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Colin Rosenstiel · February 1st 06, 08:30 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Ken) wrote:

On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 02:51 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(John Rowland) wrote:

I saw a bus today with the registration "VLT 47". Its fleet number
(or whatever they call them) was "VLW 47". I wonder why they were
able to get a reg so close to the fleet number, but not the same?
Or, for that matter, why they tried?

It's a re-used Routemaster plate, originally applied to RM47 in 1959
or thereabouts.

There are quite a lot about, helping to conceal the age of vehicles.

But in the case of many of the LT ones (VLT, WLT, CLT) they predated
year letter suffixes of prefixes. I think that these plates were a
sort of vanity plate, indicating ownership. This was in the days when
you couldn't normally buy personalised number plates, but LT got all
sorts of dispensations in this as in various other matters.

The LT series was allocated to the LCC. Of LT buses, only the RMs used
them in any quantity though and only for the first 1600 RMs (apart from
RM1000).

--
Colin Rosenstiel