On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:13:00 GMT, Helen Deborah Vecht
wrote:



I *think* it has something to do with where these buses run.
U* buses mostly run around the Uxbridge area
H* buses mostly cover Harrow (except H1, H2 & H3, which go round
Hampstead Garden Suburb)
E* buses have an Ealing connection
PR* run around Park Royal

I don't know if Wood Green or Walthamstow gave their W to the W* buses though.

Yes, they were about the first in the '60s. The W1 - w6 were in the
Wood Green area, the W21 in Walthamstow. At about the same time E1/2/3
were introduced in Ealing.

They were flat-fare routes with very few seats, based on the 500 Red
Arrow model.

I think posters here are right in that initially the letter prefix
routes were the flat-fare routes, but later ones were either new
routes fitting in with an existing scheme (W7, W8); routes that were a
little different for the time (H1, C11, W9 for instance, with
hail-and-ride on parts of the route.) or sometimes just to identify
routes introduced as part of a new, but traditional, scheme, such as
the U routes.