Till I did my scan I was wondering how I could have taken a classic LT view of Whitehall without a Routemaster in sight but of course there is one coming along. More interesting is with another MCW Metrolpolitan tucked in behind the DMS I wonder if that too was on the 53. What amazes me about London was there seemed to be diligent looking bus inspectors with pens and notepads at many a timing point studying a pocket watch yet buses on one route still managed to run in convoys of three like this with the most work-shy crew tucked in at the back not picking any people. That doesn't happen so much today as each bus in satellite tracked from a control room.
It is very likely that the other Metropolitan in shot was also on the 53. The 53 was the only route serving Whitehall which was scheduled for Metropolitans. It is possible that the other Metropolitan was one of Peckham's allocation wandering onto route 12 - it generally happened on Sundays, but only happened rarely (possibly never) during the week. The bus in the foreground, MD132, had a short life, entered service in January 1977, withdrawn from service in September 1982 and scrapped the following year.
ReplyDeleteNo it wasn't a Sunday so it was even more unusal. In the Sixties I used to be at Art College in Maidstone and I used catch the 53 at about 10.pm towards Lewisham and thumb it back from there. One could do things like that in those days and feel quite safe in South London and today of course no one would pick you up not even trade plate guys. I usually had a sweet sounding untampered RM 400 or 500 series top deck all to myself, I think NX got them from HL when they got RML's for the 207.
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