Is the AEC Routemaster the World's Greatest Ever Bus? 

That’s Mikey from ensign I know him he’s amazing come to Southend next year to see him

A smiling bus driver?Not these days where I live!

​@@damonwilliams5033 Honestly can you blame them!? Having someone else deal with the public whilst the driver drives in his own isolated little cabin must have been pretty sweet!

Happy days indeed. Now, drivers have to put up with morons, devoid of any manners...even when not drunk/drugged up....and be expected to drive safely on Britain congested roads....all in the name of "progress". We've lost the plot.

I remember having a few diecast models in 1/64 scale. Very popular toy item. 🚌Cool fact: Looking at the design of the Routemaster, low floor bus design is certainly not new. It only has evolved over the years.

Judging by the drivers compartment, I noticed that it was a single cab enclosure.

You say the best thing about the bus was no dealing with passengers.I say the best thing about all these open rear platforms from a passengers point of view was no dealing with surly,miserable,ignorant bus drivers like we have everywhere today. Bring back the old buses and the friendly bus conductors!

YEET the child

Now I see why the open platform disappeared.

Quite advanced for it's time.

Tech that we see in cars and busses today

Tech that was seen since the 1920s when Daimler mated a "fluid flywheel" to a preselector gearbox @@LegoWormNoah101

One of the finest motorized vehicles period. Considering the job they had to do daily, the conditions and the wear they have few peers.

Wot about the drivers, not good?. answers on a postcard please.

WeRnotDone WithU they had engine rebuilds and pretty much a new body every 4-6 years

they're definitely better than the new routemasters, those don't even have ventilation systems.

@@calldfwp2230 Preach! With the environmental concerns, why the heck did they allegedly fit the new buses with air con which requires more energy to run? (I say 'allegedly' because I've yet to encounter functional AC on any new bus. In summer, they're utter sweat boxes.) They should have retained the opening windows up front on the top deck. Easy breeze as the bus rolls along, lovely cool passengers, no additional energy usage.

or an l94ub for an actually good example

introduced 1997 apparently. Ask again about your l94ub in 2057 and see if anyone knows what it is.

Sadly i agree with u, breaks my heart😂

People know about the Titanic. Being on everyone's lips means nothing. The RM was a good bus for sure but I`m willing to bet when you mention London bus you don`t even know of the RT. The RM`s forerunner. 3 times as many built. The STL. The AEC Regal; the list goes on. Not to mention the Titan and Metrobus that came afterwards. All good designs. Can I name a better bus. Perhaps not but none of the designs I mention are really better than the other.

Bum point. The titanic was notorious, not famous. The RM is a famous icon. The only other bus that comes close is the greyhound interstate coach.

And then just stagecoach and arriva everywhere and yeah we have a lot of buses too.

London isn't England - it's just one small part of it, and if you went anywhere else in the country, you'd see the Bristol Commercial Vehicles/Eastern Coach Works 'Lodekka'. Arguably, this was more advanced than the Routemaster, although it used vacuum brakes initially, was manual, and did not have power steering, it used a type of unibody construction that combined a light alloy chassis with a structural body, but crucially with a height that was a foot lower than a Routemaster - essential outside of the metropolis where they didn't have the luxury of being able to easily avoid low bridges. All this with no step from the platform to the lower saloon, and on the market years before the Routemaster. No argument, the Routemaster is iconic, because it's London's bus, and Bristol were banned from trading into the private sector, so its buses would never have appeared on London Transport's routes, but it was prolific everywhere where there was a nationalised bus service.

Surely,the RT was years ahead of it’s time with air operated steering column controlled Pre selective gearbox,plus air brakes! At a time when most operators were still using crash box.

LT had more of these than they needed so they sold them for dirt cheap so they could make a quick buck because they were worth scrap money back in the 80s and then their value started increasing after they stayed in service in newly privatised bus operators upto 2005 which is when they started becomming iconic...

Emily Bishop anf for what gain ? Nothing.

Maybe Routemaster buses being upgraded for new Routemaster buses create not redevelopment, I think. Probably miss these love the Routemaster buses, isn't, huh?! 😒

They still have ten heritage ones in regular service in London, for the tourists and the like

owen lewis it was actually every 3-4 years

Ah, ok thanks

owen lewis when I was at London general driving the 11 route. we had ones with reconditioned engines. some of the newer buses couldn't keep up. the all had their own characters as well. I can count on one hand the amount of times we broke down in one... as I said my favourite vehicle to drive bar none

William Kane we have a few Routemasters here in Dublin now. All of the ones that survived into the 2000's got Iveco engines did they not? Myself and nearly every. Dublin based bus enthusiast travelled to London for the last run of these buses on the 159, though I was in London to see my favourite band Marillion play. I stayed on the extra days catching the last of the routemasters . On the last day of service I decided to go to Stretham garage and photograph the last ones coming in. On the way up while queuing for a 159 at Oxford Street I was interviewed by sky news. I guess a woman bus enthusiast wearing a jacket covered in bus badges had a bit of freak value. Then when I got on the bus I was joined by members of buntings family who. Passed out glasses of champagne to toast the ending of the buses in general service. I had to ask the conductor for permission to stand on the platform to clear my head. Never drank so early in the day before or since!

body off rebuild? mr barries video above says its a monocoque ;)

I suspect that doesn't make a difference. The monocoque frame was used to reduce the weight of the chassis. That implies the frame for the body is heavier bevause it is take a larger structural role so the difference in weight between the two is smaller: Lighter chassis and heavier body = higher center of gravity. And yeah, I know, monocoque implies there is no difference between body and chassis. Aluminium was used the reduce the overall weight.

Lots of buses had aluminum body panels not just the routy..

I rode a doiuble-decker bus in Oceanside, CA a couple years ago. I am pretty sure it was a retired Routemaster and it was being used to shuttle people to "Harbor Days" from the train station. Double-deckers are essentially novelties in North America.

Er, the RT body was built to drawings owing almost everything to aircraft design.That was carried forward to the RM. Most of the design work on the RM was done by Colin Curtis and Douglas Scott. I had to change a side & skirt panel on an RM about 12 years ago and when I took the panels off, the framing was exactly the same as when the bus left Park Royal. The only thing on an RM that is affected by rust are the steel brake pipes which carry the hydraulic fluid for the brakes, NOT brake fluid by the way, but hydraulic fluid as brake fluid rots the brake cylinder seals and also those in the brake accumulators, which have to be charged with nitrogen at regular intervals. Still the best bus in the world. Bojos Crudemasters are crap compared with an RM, with bodies by Wright Brothers of Ballymena. Drivers at Chalk Farm have been complaining about them for years. Best bus I ever drove was the single deck RF - drove like a Rolls-Royce.

Lol not as famous as the routemaster I did not know I existed untill your comment

They're the ones you see in The Day After Tomorrow, right?

@@fatpikachu1712 Yes

Are there any cities in America that still use them? Sadly I've missed the opportunity to see them in NYC along with the iconic Crown Vics

@@Flaccidtetris The only place they still run RTS is Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Respect❤May His Soul Rest In Peace In Heaven❤Love From India🇮🇳❤🇬🇧

Wut

I also started off in the Lodekkas and Leyland PD3 (Southdown Queen Mary full cab). You are correct, once you learnt to drive them properly they were smooth. Initially a bucket was required to collect all the cogs!

I grew up with the Northern front entrance ones, and the VERY strange one-off 'Tynesider', rather unkindly dubbed 'Northern's abortion'....

The reason for the arm rest was because the seat was next to the n/s destination blind box just the same as on the RT. No arm rest, you would have been resting your arm on a metal plate

We're they pre-select?

@@colinmiller5502 I recall an (oldish) AEC Coach in the 60's.... with a Pre-Select box. Unfortunately, I was only a kid and no-one at the time could explain the principle to me...but I was mesmerised....it was "magic" to me to watch. If I recall, it was a device on the left of the steering column, an aluminium casing.....and the driver seemed to select what he wanted when he wanted, as he anticipated the road ahead....it all seemed very odd at the time... But I am sure there was still a clutch pedal involved.... Weird huh? Cheers.

@@colinmiller5502 No that was the RT. The only thing to remember when manually selecting gears was that if you stopped in 3rd the drive would disengage - you had to put it back into 4th (drive) or 1st/2nd. The Leyland titan had an interesting gear select: you selected the highest gear the box would use, but if the box was already in a higher gear it would not go up, but would go down as necessary until under the highest gear selected. There was also a feature that when the selector went into any position from neutral it would select the correct gear for the road speed. You could drive them "semi-manually" by selecting H2, H3, H2, H3 (or even H2, Neutral-H2, neutral-H2, neutral-H2) as you accelerated and the box would select 2, 3, 4, 5. The only preselect gear was first. With a heavy load and uphill start you would put the gear select in H1 and when it engaged put the lever back in H5; the Titan would pull away in first and then change up as normal, going down to a minimum of 2 For a couple of titans I drove the box tended to 'bang" into gears and driving them semi-manually gave a smoother ride The only thing I can say about driving the RM I didn't like was that the cab is rather cramped for someone like me with long legs - after half a duty on the 11s my legs practically collapsed when I got out, unlike any other bus (and coach) I've driven.

"definately????"... Oh Gawd, I thought that one was an American invention. See mr k get it right in the next comment. No doubt the Routemaster is part of Britain's heritage, but so is the English language, and to a far more substantial degree. Quite definitely. Oh! I see there is a video for the AEC Regent... I shall hold very tight when I go to that one! Oh, ding-ding!

Yes things do always move on but they do not always improve . Sometimes they get worse and Bus design has got worse over the years . Ask anyone who works on them like myself , a driver or the engineers who have to keep them running. Some things do improve on modern buses , yes that is true but many vitally important things get worse . As a driver myself for many years now I find generally speaking that the older a bus is , the easier it is to drive and funnily enough the safer it feels too . Certainly on many newer buses the all round vision is NOT as good as on the older vehicles . They have design features that quite frankly are stupid , they get in the way and restrict the drivers line of vision quite dramatically . I can’t speak for every new bus of course but I have driven around 30 different models now and generally that is what I and most of my colleagues find . Then there is the reliability of course and the ease of working on them . We not so long ago had a brand spanking new fleet of about 18 buses delivered to our depot and everyone thought ‘ great , this will be good now ‘ . However from the start , almost every single driver ‘ hated’ driving them . There were so many problems and they were constantly going wrong and causing lost mileage . One night after about six months of using them I broke down , for the umpteenth time and had to call out an engineer . The garages top , longest serving engineer came out to try and get me going and I asked him , ‘ why the problems with these brand new buses ‘ and he said , ‘ It’s because they are total failures and a waste of money and the garage will have to cut their losses and get rid of them all soon ‘ . He explained quickly that generally , the more modern a bus is the more difficult it is to work on and the longer it takes , plus the newer they are , the less reliable they are . Basically the newer the bus , the more there is to go wrong with it . I was amazed at what he told me but sure enough before 18 months had passed the company had to get rid of and sell off cheap this fleet of 18 new buses . Obviously there will be some exceptions to this and it is possible to get a decent new design bus but from what I have heard , speaking to many , many people in the industry , it seems that modern bus design has gone BACKWARDS . It is like they are trying to be too clever and re design the shape of an egg . Changes are being made , just for the sake of change and so called progress when really it would be better to stick to what they know works . And Routemaster buses plus RTs and a few others were top notch , well thought out ideas that worked and stood the test of time . Minor adjustments and small changes could have easily been made to them to keep them up to date with modern safety requirements etc . But no they went instead for wholesale change and the result has been disastrous . In the last 25 or so years some garages have seen around 20 or more different bus models and designs tried out to try and replace the old Routemasters and RTs . And yet before that with the RMs and RTs etc you had a few models lasting the garage out for 40 years or so. It doesn’t take much thought to see that something has gone badly wrong in bus design over the past 20 years by looking at that fact does it .

@@choppy249 The general reason for this unreliability: more parts to break, more money to make

+gemlites I only passed my PSV license last year, But been lucky enough to drive these buses

They only run on a heritage route nowadays. As late as 1987 there were still close to a thousand of these magnificent buses on the streets of the Capital........

Ben Ter-Berg my dad driving for 45 years and he drove the rm once he went on the curb in the rain and the bus was sliding at 30 mph so he corrected it he was soo lucky that there was no cars coming on that Friday night

They all had to pass a rollover test before going into service and after overhauls. They were put on a platform which tilted them over. I believe the target angle was 42.5 degrees off vertical before the raised wheels lost contact with the platform. More modern double-deckers appear to be even more stable, not leaning as much in bends as the RM and it’s predecessors did.

Well, double deckers are more likely to roll over and are less stable than single deck and bendy buses

Does the RTS count?

@Online Stranger you're quite right. how in the name of jumpping janey did i miss that. I used to travel on those all the time here in Dublin and photographed them a lot . I could identify them half a mile away with one eye closed . This must have been at Ensign bus in Purfleet. They took a good lot of our olympians and sold them on.

That sounds interesting....Have you a link of any kind? Would love to follow your progress. Cheers.

How does a British Routemaster end up abandoned in the woods of Tennesee...for 30 YEARS?!?!

How did a British vehicle end up in usa

The use of a skidpan goes way,way back.There is footage on RU-vid from the 1920s and early 30s of London General S,K and ancient B type buses performing the same manoeuvre.

How is it interracial

They're temporarily retired while we wait for things to get better. Much in the way classic minis have had their production temporarily suspended.

Some still are but they have been mostly replaced by the 2 new ones

AEC Reliance was a great vehicle. I had an AEC reliance 760 coach which was even better than the buses.

I grew up in Oxford in the 1960s.City Of Oxford Motor Services,our local bus company were staunch supporters of AEC buses for decades.It had Bridgemasters which had box like ugly bodies,Renowns,but never tried Routemasters which I would have liked to see.Apart from BEA,the only other company which bought Routemasters from new was Northern General which ran modified Forward entrance models.

Justin Neill ...thanks for that.... Ah yes..... When we all could have a laugh and live to tell the tale....without fear from the PC BS Brigade..... Jeeze...the poor sods today.... A pencil sharpener is a weapon of mass destruction and to be feared...very greatly....in the wrong hands of course: Someone without a Hi-Viz vest, lacking eye-protection and suitable leather gloves....(Erase that, I've gone & upset the veggies now....) but you catch my drift. Happy days..."in those days"... Cheers.

join one of the local vintage bus clubs and volunteer on their public running days, get to drive anything you want

Thing is with the older deckers... like the RM (or similar AEC) or similar Bristol/ Leyland/Guy vehicles the driver is above the front wheels and gets much better road feel than one sitting far forward of the front wheels as in most modern vehicles. I know someone who did a skid pan test and he said it was just amazing how stable and controlled the RM felt... even when moving sideways in a “drift”.

Understeer is when the vehicle tends to want to keep going straight when you steer it. What you’re describing is ‘oversteer’, where the vehicle turns more than you steered it to.

The Knight Bus was a Regent III RT, not a Routemaster.

Made with spirit of the Routemaster Bus a Special Day Tours Service limited.