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UK BUSES MAINLY ABOUT LONDON BUSES ... John Pimlott Story of the RT PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcDsG31MdFI
Story of the RT John Pimlott Nov 12, 2021 1.33K subscribers ... 164,696 views ... 1.8K likes Excellent documentary about London's RT class of bus. John Pimlott's documentary explores the iconic RT-type London bus, detailing its design and engineering from 1939. The film traces the bus's evolution, highlighting its adaptation to London's unique traffic demands. Archival footage and expert interviews showcase the RT's impact and legacy. Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess Transcript 0:21 [Music] of all the many types of london bus of the 20th century one stands out as a design classic between 1939 and 1954 almost 7 000 rt type buses were built for service in london and the surrounding countryside there were more rts built than any other london bus before or since 1:04 a design ahead of its time when it first appeared the rt has now become part of london's history [Music] london as you know is quite a special case for buses there's an awful lot of urban driving in high density traffic and that puts quite a strain on any public service vehicle even today it's quite unlike a lot of other cities where you've got short stretches of urban driving and then quite a lot perhaps in suburban or out even into the country where a bus can just cruise along happily in top gear it's not like that in london it's all stop start lots of braking lots of accelerating so this all started out with a b type in 1910 when the lgoc had just beaten off a lot of competition from rivals and they inherited a very mixed bag of vehicles from all sorts of small companies 2:00 and they had quite a nightmare on their hands keeping all these vehicles maintained and on the road and their 2:05 engineer frank sell came up with this notion of developing their own vehicle which would 2:11 not only be standardized but specifically designed to cope with london's particular problems 2:17 cell's solution was to build the b-type which was a great success and it drew on 2:23 a lot of contemporary practice and the london general omnibus company from that day forward 2:30 adhered more and more closely to this notion of a purpose-built bus for london and a standardized fleet 2:36 the whole thing took a step forward again in the 20s when they transferred the maintenance 2:42 operation from individual garages to the centralized overhaul works at chizik 2:47 they realized that they could save quite a lot of time operating time by 2:53 dispatching a bus on a routine basis to chiswick where it would be completely stripped inspected 2:59 all its parts overhauled and then the vehicle reassembled and put back on the road virtually as a brand new vehicle 3:04 and that was quite an important step and also favored the idea of standardized vehicles of course because then they 3:11 could do everything on a flow line principle bring the buses in take them to bits refurb put them back together 3:16 again so that was really the guiding philosophy for a very long time on the bus side 3:23 when london transport was formed in 1933 it inherited a mixed fleet of buses from 3:28 the london general omnibus company and the various independent operators even though the general buses were more 3:35 or less standardized the intention now was to work towards a standard bus which could be built in 3:42 thousands and eventually take over all london services 3:48 in 1929 the associated equipment company which was 3:53 the chassis manufacturing concern owned by the underground group and actually therefore directly related to 4:00 the lgoc brought out a new range of models not originally in response to a london 4:06 general request but they were proved to be outstandingly successful 4:12 and in the in the early 30s the lglc standardized on these there was the 4:18 t-type single decker and then the st double-decker t was the basic type st stood for short 4:24 tea basically but they were a common design they remained petrol engined through their 4:30 lives in london these these particular types very basically conventional but with a 4:36 much more lively six cylinder petrol engine which gave a much better performance than earlier types of london 4:41 bus and they also proved to be very reliable and well thought of by passengers [Music] 4:49 from this standardized range of the t and st which incidentally aac 4:54 called the regal which was the single decker and the region which was the double decker evolved a whole family of 5:00 types and the sdl type bus which came a little later was slightly longer but still basically the regent 5:07 one of the features which london found was very desirable was an easier kind of gear change these earlier types of us 5:13 have the old conventional crash gearbox and the poor driver had a very hard time 5:18 changing gear continuously and operating the clutch and it was found that the daimler pre-selector gearbox 5:24 and the fluid flywheel was a much better combination and the stl type was standardized on this and that was 5:31 another basis for future development but life for a london bus driver in the 5:37 1930s had its problems [Music] 5:47 we are not striking for more money but for something of more value to 5:52 ourselves and families our health gastritis is the busman's enemy an 5:59 illness for which arid and irregular mills are responsible that's right i've just had 16 weeks off 6:05 for an operation [Music] aec and london transport worked closely 6:12 together the associated equipment company was now an independent commercial vehicle 6:17 builder but an agreement had been made for them to supply the majority of buses for london transport primarily chassis 6:25 with bodies built at chiswick the chief bus of the 1930s was the stl 6:31 the culmination of the design philosophy of the london general omnibus company 6:37 built in large numbers it incorporated a wholesale change from petrol to diesel-engined buses bringing 6:44 substantial savings on fuel costs when lptp was formed there was a policy 6:51 of standardization or working towards it and the stl 6:56 class of vehicle over the years underwent not heavy modification or changes but 7:01 gradually it changed and then in 1938 it was decided that they'd gone as far as they could with 7:08 the stl and it was decided then to start another breed if you like which became 7:15 known as the 2rt one prototype was built at the aec 7:22 and a body was built in the experimental shop at chizik and the two were put together though for a time the chassis 7:30 ran with a like a dummy body from an old vehicle so that people didn't really know what 7:35 was going on and after the prototype did its trials 7:40 it was then decided to build 150 of them with chiswick bodies and aec produced 7:46 chassis the rt chassis was required to offer powerful acceleration and smooth braking 7:53 easy gear changes and automatic chassis lubrication london transport was convinced that a 8:00 daimler type pre-select gear change but operated by air pressure would give the 8:05 optimum combination of comfort and durability and their experience with the large 8:11 engined leyland std confirmed the belief that a large engine derated was a better 8:18 philosophy than a small engine working hard 8:24 in the late 1930s london transport was a world leader in transport design its 8:30 publicity its underground and stations were far ahead of its contemporaries 8:35 for its new design of double deck bus london transport was to seek a highly standardized fleet of vehicles offering 8:42 unsurpassed ease of driving maintenance and passenger comfort 8:48 when rt1 first came out in 1939 the effect was quite dramatic because the appearance was quite different to any 8:55 london bus that had gone before i was a 13 year old school boy at the time and i remember the copy of the 9:01 paper with the photograph in it and the impact it made and it's something i've been interested in ever 9:08 since the body design was clean looking practical in the sense of being easy to 9:13 clean but also in line with modern ideas on appearance and certainly keeping up the london transport standard of of the 9:20 best in other words that it should be in conformity with high standards in architecture and everything else 9:29 [Music] 9:42 the war came along and that stopped production a lot of the stuff on the pre-war rts 9:49 was german air pressure equipment and it was difficult to get and it wasn't possible to get as much 9:56 mileage out of these vehicles because the difficulty of getting spares and small fleets are difficult to 10:03 service so some of them came off the road 10:09 the design of the body on rt1 was very largely metal framed and quite advanced 10:15 at the time london had built most of its bus bodies in its own workshops at chiswick up to 1939 10:23 this body was built there and so were the production vehicles the manufacturing plant wasn't equipped 10:30 for metal frame bodywork at that time and it was decided that this first production batch of 150 would have 10:37 timber framing but in fact the body of rc1 was nearer what london transport wanted 10:45 well also chiswick changed its output he became involved in london aircraft 10:50 productions which was to produce handy page halifax bombers in conjunction with 10:56 several other people duple express motor bodies park royal and so on 11:02 and therefore bus building virtually came to an end and london learned quite a bit about 11:07 aircraft production jig construction because it was always thought that it'd be better to have bodies that are 11:14 interchangeable with chassis and so on because it takes longer to overhaul a body a week longer than it does a 11:20 chassis and therefore when we bought vehicles we used to perhaps buy a 11:26 hundred buses and five extra bodies the idea was that the bodies would have 11:32 to be interchangeable with the chassis and therefore when the body was built it was checked on a jig to see that it 11:39 lined up with the fixing on the chassis the chassis was jigged so that there was no problem of dropping another body onto 11:47 that particular chassis it was decided immediately after the war 11:53 that chiswick would be incapable of dealing with the numbers of vehicles that would need to be 11:58 overhauled after the war and they addressed that in the best possible way by going for a completely purpose-built 12:05 workshop to deal with the standard rt fleet that was being delivered fortuitously they had large works 12:12 available at aldenham which had been set up for the northern extensions of the 12:17 underground lines and those underground lines had been planned in the 30s under the new works programme and they would 12:24 have been built and the works at alden would have served the underground routes had it not been for the creation of the 12:30 green belt planning laws moved on a great deal in the later years of the war 12:35 and the creation of the green belt meant that housing wasn't going to grow up in those areas without the suburban housing 12:42 the underground lines couldn't be justified so they weren't built although some of the earthworks for them had been 12:47 built but they had this huge works on their hands what were they going to use it for and with some adaptation it was 12:54 able to be used as a bus works [Music] 13:02 they're familiar sites in london now these new rt buses and more are coming on the road every day there are well 13:07 over three thousand in service already generally speaking every bus is identical and a body made by one firm 13:13 will fit the chassis made by another a resident london transport inspector works in each factory where the buses 13:18 are made to see that the manufacturer keeps to the london transport specifications and the buses go through a number of tests even before they leave 13:25 the factory quite early in their lives for instance they are tested to see that they won't 13:31 get in the rain it's when they're delivered to the london transport works at oregon that 13:36 they're rarely put through it london transport staff and a ministry of transport inspector go over every bus to 13:43 see that it agrees in every way with the ministry of transport regulations it must be too high or too low 13:52 [Music] its width and length must be exact so 13:58 these are accurately marked on the ground to be measured later 14:07 [Applause] gangway's space in the space between seats is very important 14:13 [Music] [Applause] [Music] 14:23 checking all these measurements ensures that within very narrow limits every bus is identical 14:30 but it's not only the dimensions of the bus that have to be exact every bus must be mechanically perfect 14:38 a london transport fitter watched by the ministry of transport representatives inspects selected parts of the bus to 14:44 see that they are sound and up to standard [Music] 14:52 every bus goes through every one of these tests so the ministry inspector knows that each individual vehicle is 14:57 satisfactory [Music] 15:04 lastly the buses are weighed and the first one of each new type to be delivered to london transport goes through a tilting test 15:14 the result of this can be taken as a standard for every bus of that type indicators are fixed under the bus to 15:19 show the angle of tilt and safety ropes are put around it as a precaution but on the actual tilt itself there is nothing 15:25 holding the bus onto the ramp 15:32 this test makes sure that the bus will hold the road under conditions far worse than anything it is liable to meet in 15:37 service [Applause] [Music] 15:42 it's only when each bus has been tested and passed and has been approved by the ministry inspector that it's certified 15:48 as fit to operate as a public service vehicle [Music] the new rt's guaranteed safe and sound 15:55 leave ornament to join their garages where they'll play their part in carrying some of the thousands of passengers who travel every day on 16:02 london's buses [Music] 16:17 1947 i started after the army and drove and went to trams driving 16:22 we was on the route through the tunnel the kingsway subway 16:27 78 victoria to norwood and a general run around london on the trams 48 that 16:34 after that we went to the buses started at stockwell 16:40 [Applause] may i have two on the twos please two on 16:46 the twos thank you see you outside right 16:55 and from there we was on the twos with two a's 78s and then after that on once the crystal 17:02 palace gold is green the hyde park corner baker street gold is green swiss cottage 17:08 north finchley and at times i mean it took you an hour and a half from victoria to stockholm 17:14 which was normally a 10-minute run on account of the traffic and he was really you know stuck in the 17:20 queue nothing you could do apart from wait wait wait 17:42 this is the east anglia transport museum at cotton colville just outside lowerscofft 17:47 where we as a group of volunteers over the past 25 years or so have created 17:53 a museum including a street scene where amongst many other vehicles we run 17:58 london trams and trolley buses the relevance of these to the rt story 18:04 is of course that rts replace both the rt 18:10 in its post-war concept was designed and built as london's first 18:15 totally standardized bus fleet an aim which london transport had sought in fact since it was formed in 1933 18:22 which it finally achieved in the mid 1950s the first task of the large rt family 18:29 when it was built from 1947 onwards in the early post-war years was to replace the worst of the bus fleets that was 18:37 inherited from pre-war times this was principally the old lt and st 18:42 classes but also many of the stls also these vehicles 18:47 had outlived their working life in many cases and the great majority of them 18:52 were in very poor structural condition during the war years the timber bodywork had deteriorated tremendously and 19:00 although a good deal of money was spent in post-war times extensively renovating 19:05 many of them particularly the stls the timber which was used was itself 19:11 not very good and it only projected a further four or five years life which meant 19:16 that by about 1954 the whole of the pre-war and indeed the wartime utility 19:22 fleet would have to be replaced the rts then between 1947 and 1949 were used 19:32 to replace the whole of the older type vehicles in the fleet from 19:37 1950 onwards tramway replacement began the rts were also ordered in bulk to 19:43 replace the whole of the remaining tram system before the war the principle had been to replace trams 19:50 with trolley buses it was a sensible move because it made use of the electrical infrastructure 19:56 and it was certainly a cheaper arrangement at the time than replacing with motor buses 20:03 after the war though much of the pre-war trolleybus system was halfway through its lifespan and um the economics of electric power had in any case changed the situation had arrived where it was now proving no cheaper to run trolleybuses and it was motor buses in fact london transport's own examination of the subjects in about 1950 showed that the costs the running costs of both were equal it took two years from october 1950 through to the middle of 1952 to replace the tram fleet using almost entirely brand new rts only on the last conversion where other vehicles use in order to bring the conversion forward somewhat once that was finished the rts then were used to sweep away the remnants of the non-standard bus fleet which then consisted of the wartime vehicles wartime utilities the remaining stls and 21:00 the non-standard post-war vehicles stds and aimless and so on that had been bought in 1946 when the purchase of non-standard new rolling stock was inevitable in 1946 the war damaged rt97 was rebuilt as an experimental pay-as-you-board bus but it caused many delays for people getting on board and was withdrawn a year later the post-war rt now had all-metal body construction park royal and wayman went on to build 5380 of the 6820 post-war rt bodies these new buses resembled the pre-war rts except for losing the rear roof number box the sloping cab windows and tapered rear corner panel and they had new front destination screens the rts were the largest fleet of standardized buses anywhere in the world 22:01 but demand for sufficient bodies brought some necessary diversity metro camel of birmingham saunders of anglesey and cravens of sheffield were all contracted to supply bodies to fit the rt type chassis these went into service from 1948 onwards this saunders rt is still at work for unitrans in davis california unitrans run six rts all the drivers and conductors are student volunteers and the red flag is necessary for the safety of passengers a lighting and boarding since the rear platform is 22:38 obviously the far side from the pavement 22:46 london transport needed vehicles quickly and 22:51 it was decided to farm out the bodybuilding side of it to different 22:57 companies cravens went along with london transport some of the way and then decided to 23:02 build the cravens to their own sort of fashion and the differences between the cravens 23:09 and standard rts and the saunders and the ones built by women 23:15 and part royal very greatly the interior is totally different to any r2 23:21 the obvious difference is the five beer windows which was the standard sort of practice 23:26 of that period [Music] 23:32 well then we had a surplus of bodies a bit later on it always goes like that 23:37 and we did a conversion of some stl chassis and produced about 150 what we 23:43 called srts we remade the chassis to take the rt type body 23:49 it wasn't successful and we didn't proceed with it the srt proved to be the one major 23:56 mistake in the rt program its converted stl chassis was underpowered and it's breaking 24:02 inadequate following strong complaints from drivers the decision was taken to order 24:07 additional new rt chassis the still new srt bodies were then transferred and the converted stl 24:14 chassis was sold for scrap [Music] 24:20 also in 1948 the first of over 1600 chassis from leyland went into service 24:25 with standard rt bodies the only visible difference of these new rtls being the new shape leyland 24:32 radiator at the front 24:40 by the end of 1948 the mass replacement of london's bus fleet was in full swing 24:46 with 755 rts of various types entering service 24:53 in 1949 an experimental rt coach entered greenline service the rtc 25:00 it was none other than the previously unsuccessful pay-as-you-board rt-97 25:06 and it was again to prove unsuccessful 1949 also saw the eight-foot wide 25:13 leyland rtw introduced people were talking about eight foot 25:19 wide buses all up to date have been seven foot six we've done trials around london we built 25:26 a dummy body to eight foot eight foot was chosen because that was the next clean imperial size 25:33 so we got permission from the metropolitan police and city police to have five 25:41 hundred 8-foot wide buses which we call rtw's and then we did an experiment 25:48 with roots converging on piccadilly circus 25:53 high street kensington well that was always a favorite dodge so that uh we changed all the allocations over so that 26:00 they were swamped with eight foot wide buses you know for three months or so but anyway we got a clean bill of health 26:07 out of that from the police and we put the rtws 26:13 into central service and used the other ones more on the 26:18 outskirts [Music] this is a model of the wide version of 26:24 the rt bus the rtw the w in this case stands for wide and the model you're looking at is 26:31 a model of the actual bus that you can see here the extra six inches of width was made 26:38 up on the inside of the bus by one inch spacers which were placed between the 26:44 seats and the interior panels on both sides of the vehicle leaving an extra four inches in the 26:49 gangway this was very useful for the conductors in central london 26:54 the conductors of the rtw like the extra width it gave them more room when there 27:01 were standing passengers on board however they were not quite so popular with the drivers 27:06 the drivers found them a little bit heavier steering we think it's probably to do with the extra width and the extra 27:12 weight the rtw being over eight tons as compared with the rt and rtl seven and a 27:18 half tons in august 1950 a number of new rts were 27:24 delivered for use on greenline routes in east london these buses were no different from other 27:29 rts but were given a distinctive appearance by being kept free of advertisements and by being fitted with 27:35 a green line bullseye symbol in later years further greenline rts 27:41 were provided while many ordinary rts were used on greenline services during 27:46 busy summer weekends [Music] 27:53 if you talk about london transport everybody immediately thinks of great fleets of red buses thundering around 27:59 london they totally forget that for many years there was a great fleet of green buses thundering around the outside of london 28:07 they served the entire area of essex hertfordshire buckinghamshire and in the south they covered kent surrey and sussex and they poked into berkshire and they sort of wandered here there and everywhere some of these routes were extremely rural but um the rts first came into the green area back in july 1948 at hemel hempstead and tring in the northwest and from then on they took over all the double deck workings more or less with a small exception and they ran through the new towns and through the countryside and proved to be a very satisfactory vehicle this is one of the fleet of green line buses introduced to rompered in august 1950 these were used extensively on the busy east london route the 721 and the 722 running from brentwood and upminster to all gates the passengers must have found these 29:03 buses very luxurious compared with the buses they went on before which were daimler wartime they were very uncomfortable and very noisy the green line itself was a standard rt bus all over green with raised bull's eyes on each side now this stood out as different to the others and people felt they're very exclusive getting on them the seats were of a latex phone and very comfortable when you were sat on top of rt it was like riding on air there was virtually no sound but all you could hear was the wind whistling through the vents at the front and people seem to enjoy them being designed for hard work in the centre of london of course the much lighter duties of the country area were superb for them and they were very very reliable and they continued until the end of green london transport buses which happened in 1969 and this came about because the greater london council was given responsibility for london transport and it was obviously quite unacceptable 30:05 that they should be running buses in the countryside far from their own area was equally unacceptable to the people who were going to travel on the buses of course this led to the setting up of an organization called london country bus services limited which was part of the national bus company london country took over 484 of these green rt's the youngest of which was 16 years of age so they did rather well for a short while they looked exactly as they'd always looked but then they started to introduce canary yellow as a relief color with the green the rts were pretty rapidly painted into this color scheme but equally rapidly they were disposed of because by then they were old-fashioned they're very small they only take 56 people they needed a crew of two and they were hopelessly uneconomical so they were rapidly got rid of but in the rundown one or two rather 31:01 strange things happened london transport 2 found they were short of reliable buses and very surprisingly they bought 34 rts back from london country painted them red and put them into service and in fact they actually ran until the last days of the red rts in london which came as something of a surprise because london country didn't look after the vehicles that well [Music] by the mid 1950s the rt family had almost completely taken over the london bus fleet the only exceptions were two batches of low height double deckers of the rlh class for routes with low bridges and batches of single deckers mostly of the rf type between 1950 and 1957 london transport participated in a number of ambitious overseas goodwill tours using rt rtl and rtw buses these tours promoted tourist travel to britain and were to establish the red double decker as a symbol of london 32:07 the most ambitious tour was a fourteen thousand mile tour of the usa and canada taking six months all the buses gave trouble free running and proudly carried gb plates and commemorative notices for many years afterwards now to the outsider the fleet remained pretty well standard but underneath it all we were doing development for the next breeder bus which was to be the rm and to that end we put on some aircraft braking systems on some rt's eternal green hounslow and ryegate mr darwin who was chief mechanical engineer for a long long time he always believed that we should try and do something to speed the london bus up because it was a known fact that the speed of london's traffic was really governed by the bus 33:01 and he was keen for us to have two pedal control a sort of not automatic but a semi-automatic system so we used the rts for that so people didn't see a lot of change in the rt family over the years but a lot was going on underneath here we are underneath the chassis and here we have the the engine and 9.6 liter engine in its first wall form with a fluid flywheel attached the fluid fly was very important because that in fact gives a very easy working life to uh to a driver for the fact that the drive of the vehicle isn't actually engaged until the engine revolutions are built up so it doesn't it means that the driver doesn't have to keep dipping a clutch and riding a clutch like it does on a manual gearbox so it makes for very very easy driving and of course the other things we can 34:00 see at the front end of the chassis the quite a lot of the air piping uh to do with the air pressure brake system and also these smaller pipes here are the automatic lubrication axle that's probably helps you in in a way in the sense it's one thing less you have to do to to grease the vehicle if it's well that's right alan because in fact there are 24 lubricator pipes which go to all four corners of the vehicle and the system works on a turret rotating inside the head there which every foot application of the foot brake sends a jet of oil down each one of the twenty four lubricator points so it's a self lubricating chassis it's a good system it's a major servicing job saved isn't it really that's right yeah that's right moving on from the fluid flywheel because obviously that's the next part of the train that brings us down to a front carbon shaft which most people would know as the propeller shaft that takes us to the gearbox which is a mounted midships on an rt from the front carbon shafts there are pulley wheels which in fact drive the 35:05 dynamo which is over on the near side of the vehicle which provides power to recharge batteries and for saloon lighting and over on the offside of the vehicle we've got the compressor which provides air to operate the pre-select gearbox and air brakes air brakes were something new on most buses generally there had been some earlier experiments trolleybuses had them but it was something quite new when the idea of combining the air system to operate both the brakes and the gearbox meant that there was quite a big demand on air supply and they had to you know provide a bigger compressor than was at first thought but by the time the post-war production rt was it was on the line they've got all that sorted out that's right moving on from there from the from the gearbox which is mounted to the midships we have the carbon shaft leading to the differential and the rear axle here we have the cylinders for the air operated brakes 36:05 coming further back we have the body riser which has the platform supports can to lead it off of it and supports the back end of the body the difference with the rt was that the chassis tail ended just behind the rear wheels and the back end of the body was supported by the body itself rather than the chassis springs here which are lubricated by the rp lubricator which we covered earlier in the country era they had higher ratio diffs for higher running in the central area they had lower diffs for a much slower takeoff and obviously they didn't get to the higher speeds that the country buses did the controls for naughty are very very simple the gears first gear second gear towards you 37:03 third gear to the top and fourth gear to the back and towards you reverse is to the neutral position then to the first gear pull out the stop and forward and you're in reverse gear back to neutral bus will tick over quite merely until you operate the operating pedal which is the left hand pedal air operated brake and accelerator on the right hand brake is mounted on the right on an rt and the controls for your indicators are to the hand on the right in front of you you have a flag which will warn you that your air pressure is dropping and that gives you several applications of the foot brake before you're completely out of air horn conveniently placed on the left together with the dip switch and a single speedometer which registers your speed basically the controls are very very simple the cab heater a saw or emergency 38:06 extraction of people under the lifeguards and the wiper switches to the left starter and emergency handle for the window over the bonnet the rt cab is a very well designed layout you can see all corners of the vehicle you can see to the rear and if the driver looks round over his shoulder he can see right way through the bus and can see the back of the bus where it reverses into the mirrors are nicely placed good visibility it's a very comfortable cab cab heater for the winter the door slides open so it doesn't open out jeopardising traffic coming up from behind and the cab is a very nice environment for the driver to work in 39:02 we rightly expect all sorts of things of the bus that carries us [Music] we expect the convenience of bill pushes that work clean comfortable and well designed seats sturdy platforms firm stanchions efficient weather proofing in all weathers [Music] and a smart and cheerful appearance to enliven the urban scene high standards particularly when you consider that none of these things wear out and need replacement at the same rate so in addition to day-to-day care in the garage after three and a half to four years on the road every standard bus of the eight thousand in the world's largest unified bus fleet comes into the largest public service vehicle overhaul factory in the world all in them with a standard design the inspection of each bus is simplified by standard forms 40:01 which become the blueprints for the work of stripping and assembling [Music] the body was then removed from the chassis the process involved first of all putting the vehicle on an inverter when the rt was put on the inverter it was tilted over and the underside was steam cleaned and all the grease and road dirt removed the vehicle was then lifted by overhead crane and went down a production line called the standings where each body simply sat on special stilts without any wheels or chassis underneath it when the body was in the standings damaged parts were marked up and removed replaced with new the vehicle was thoroughly cleaned inside and out and repainted inside and out or anything that needed repairing was done to the body [Music] 41:07 the chassis meanwhile went down a separate production line parallel to it in a separate workshop on a very slowly moving track where it was gradually dismantled until it was just basically a frame after having been cleaned off the units were changed on an exchange basis and then at the end of this production line the chassis was silver sprayed and reunited with the body the body meanwhile having come down the workshop on an overhead crane [Music] the works were so large that it had its own internal road system and the bus would be taken in a rather patchwork quilt of colors and so on maybe green wheels on a red bus pink primer and so on and taken for break tests and anything that required amending was taken back into the workshop and modified until they were satisfied that 42:02 the bus met what you would now call their mot requirements they were then taken round to a different part of the workshop and prepared for painting windows masked off at the door area blocked off so the paint didn't go inside the vehicle it then went through the paint shops with a wet on wet paint process which gave very strong bonding qualities it was then baked in an oven and various parts of the bus that were baked in separate oven such as removable fittings bonnet tops and so on those were were then reunited with the vehicle the vehicle then emerged gleaming at the other end all the masking had to be removed and there was then a finishing line which must have been a wonderful site to behold in its heyday because there was a line of shining rts all pointing towards london having the fleet names put on with the transfers having the advertisements put on and so on finally of course the bus was moved to the licensing shop with its new identity it was fixed with its license and it was 43:02 taken by a ferry driver to a garage sometimes the one it would come from but sometimes a completely different garage and bear in mind this bus although it's the same bus that went in at the start of the process might have had a different chassis attached to a different body and with a completely different number on it so nobody really knew whether it was the bus they'd originally sent in for overhauling or not and that bus would then go to that garage and be used in service every day for another three or four years and it was this quality production line that really ensured that the rt had such a long-lived life i think without the aldernan overhauling process perhaps just doing what you now call a patch and mend ad hoc maintenance system at garages the rt wouldn't have given anything like as many years of service as it was in the event able to do [Music] another three and a half years of carrying londoners in the comfort the economy and the style 44:00 to which they're accustomed [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] in the 60s and the 70s when london transport conducted a very large program of converting to oppo as we now call it one person operation um then called omo a one-man operation but driver only operation if you like getting the economies of getting rid of the conductors basically 45:02 is what it was all about many of the rt routes were then converted directly to dms's fleet lines and what went with it at that time was a sharp reduction in scheduled frequency the thinking at that time was this was the best way to get immediate productivity so you went from an rt with a capacity of around 56 plus five standing up to a fleet line that had a capacity of 89 wonderful the efficiency of it was mind-boggling it wasn't successful it missed a key point about bus services particularly by services in london and that is frequency is is an extremely important factor frequency matters but reliability of course matters as well so if you cut the frequency and you aren't able to deliver the service reliably at a stroke you've worsened the service now add to that the unpopularity of getting rid of conductors getting rid of the bus that we love 46:02 and you really have got a recipe for things going wrong and they did because the dms's were unreliable there was a staff shortage the scheduled frequency was cut and they ran slower because there was no conductor it wasn't a happy time and it wasn't entirely to do with the phasing out of the rt but it certainly came at about the time that the rt was being phased out they were by the late 60s early 70s getting run down the london transport fleet itself was becoming run down at that time the swifts and dms's had come in and really i think maintenance was drifting as the engineers struggled to maintain the new types of vehicle with inadequate resources as it turned out but most of my time as a garage managers was that was with rts when i was an area traffic manager down at catford 47:04 we had one of the last areas of rt operation catford and um and bromley and when the artie's there were finally withdrawn i thought well that's the end of it as far as i'm concerned i have another 20 or whatever working years of working life and this will be rt less then i became manager of the training school at chizik i was actually reintroduced the rts there we kept two of them for the skidpan to give demonstrations on principally anyone who's ever gone around chizik on an rt on a skid pan will know the thrill of doing it and um this continued until i left chiswick in about 1980 or 81 i suppose and and that really was the end of my time with rts between the mid-1950s and the mid 70s hundreds of rts rtls and rtw's were sold for further service with other operators 48:02 or a staff transport in london the last rts ran in service in 1979 rtls had finished in 1968 and london country sold its last rt in 1981. fortunately many were purchased by enthusiasts for preservation this bus is rt3251 it was built in 1950 started work as a green line vehicle working from romford london road garage and um carried on doing green line work up until 1965 then it was demoted to country area work and instead of the green line fleet name on the side it carried the london transport fleet name which was more well known and it carried on like that until 1970 and with 483 other rts passed into the london country 49:02 fleet did two more years service with them london transport had a severe bus shortage in 1972 and with consultations with london country brought back some of the rts and this one i've kept in red london central area colours merely to show what the red rts were like the aim is to present it at bus rallies and let people see what these buses look like when they were working for their living [Music] the rtw when it was withdrawn from public service was used quite a lot by london transport for driver training the reason for this was that the eight foot width matched the eight foot width of the route masters which at that point in time were gradually replacing all the trolley buses 50:00 however sooner or later they all had to go the last one left service 1970 that is also preserved however the bulk of the class 279 in fact were bought by the ceylon transport board and they were run on service in colombo where they literally ran until they fell to pieces [Music] the rt of 1979 would still have looked very familiar to its designers of over 40 years earlier it's this familiarity that has endeared it to generations of london transport passengers and staff my interest in rt started when i was about eight years old and i was a bus spotter like a lot of my friends were we spotted the bus numbers in uh in little books that you could get markov numbers you know and people of my generation we all went to school on them they were part of our life and suddenly in 1979 they were gone 51:00 and the root master has in fact taken over the mantle of the rt so if you look around london now you will not find rts and it's amazing that you can go to other places in the world and you'll see rt's running perhaps carrying fair paying passengers but you won't see any in london at present we're operating three uh open top vehicles and we are in at present refurbishing what will be a closed version of the rt but the leyland type we've decided on a specialist delivery which will now be blue and cream for the open top vehicles and i've assumed the closed vehicle will eventually follow this originally of course they were all the standard service vehicle for london transport operating in the city of london they eventually went off to various owners after their service with london transport number 14 was actually known 52:00 as the matchbox bus because it was sold to lesney products number 15 was sold to the inner london education authority as a mobile classroom they've been an excellent vehicle and certainly they've caught a considerable stir through the bus industry and the enthusiasts of course basically because it's a vehicle that had seen its life out within london transport and been passed over for later vehicles such as the rm but it's nice to see such vehicles with their excellent design and construction are still able to operate in modern conditions providing they're looked after properly this is the company's latest project number 19 which is the closed version of the rt island which uh as the rear entrance closed off the rear staircase removed a central staircase constructed and a set of front loading air doors 53:00 fitted for one man operation we have excellent facilities and we also have an excellent craftsman who is perfectly capable of doing the work in-house well back in the 19 early 1960s i used to be a driver at sutton garage for london transport and after immigrating to australia in 1966 he seemed to to miss the bus life so i returned in 77 and bought this rt-1024 the rt chassis is 1948 and the body 1950 both started life as green in the country area they stayed green until 1969 when they were put together painted red and ended up at battersea garage before transferring to sutton and then a short period at kingston where david bought it from 54:21 last call eli downtown f street j street last call eli hi i'm wally mellon maintenance manager of uni trains i'm responsible for the upkeep and repair the london double decker buses here in davis why do you use them because they're very unique to the city of davis davis being a small city with narrow roads they have the ability to wind their way through the city streets with no major problems and what do you do when they wear out we're out they'll never wear out while i'm around 55:01 road [Music] three of the unitrans rts are now fitted with cummins b series engines and allison four-speed automatic transmissions in tests they travel comfortably at 65 miles an hour on the freeway although of course they keep to the legal speed limit of 55 returning eight and a half miles to the gallon with a full load only their saunders rt will be kept with an aec engine [Music] 56:01 [Applause] 56:06 how do we come to run an rtl in cape town as many of you will know 177 56:13 of the rt family were bought by cape town city tramways in the early 1960s 56:18 10 by east london and one bus was brought here privately 56:23 so that's a total of 188 rt family came to this country currently there are nine left three of them are sadly in very bad condition one just a chassis another just a body and one i visited recently in port elizabeth is a wrecking a scrapyard we started in 1991 running the the open top buses you see behind me which are daimler fleet lines and people kept ringing up and saying do you have the beefeater bus i didn't know what they meant but it soon became clear that the original open top bus in cape town was rtl 1394 57:00 and it always carried the beefy to gin signs on the side hence everybody referred to an open top bus in cape town as a bee feeder bus and even our daimler and fleet lines were beefeater buses once we discovered the old bus in mikey's fontaine we negotiated purchase brought it back to cape town and what you've seen today is the results of two years restoration and she's now in absolutely magnificent condition she has a current public service vehicle license and she will carry fair paying passengers [Music] the rt encapsulates the best of design in buses it was to use frank pick's phrase fit for the purpose it absolutely epitomizes it it was absolutely right for the streets of london it was right for the passengers and it was right for the staff and you couldn't say more than that and that's why it did such wonderful work 58:04 for so many years for many people the rt is the classic london bus which served london for some 40 years and was extremely successful and in fact was built in more numbers than any double deck bus for london before or since [Music] 59:01 [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] you

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