London Buses 1989-Stratford Leyland National's & Titan's 

Thank you. Yes, i still have a fair bit from the East End to get, having lived there from birth until i was 29 it was easy to go out and film. There will be more....happy viewing!

When i first went to Stratford it was on an MBS on the S1! With plenty of RT's & RM's around with the odd RLH! Plus in those days you could see the shiny 1962 stock running on the Central Line at Stratford Station from the Broadway as the shopping centre had not been built!

The S1 was ‘my route’ from Boundary Rd! DMS in the early days, then Titan. 👍🏼

Well, when you consider i got a full sized E180 tape camera in 1985 and just before that it was all cine film (5 mins of silent film at the same price as the 3 hour vid!) this was a massive improvement! Mind you, it's just as well we have digital now as the tapes from this era have degraded and are no longer watchable. I copied all mine to DVD in the early 2000s and since copied across again to MP4 (& on several hard drives).

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Back in the early 80s I did consider renting a camcorder which as you say, took E180 cassettes in those days and were massive. I believe the price was £60 for one day which was more than a weeks wages back then, so I never did it. Such a shame, living in Ipswich and all those VRs and REs etc.

@@BristolRE The early ones had a power-pack with the cassette hanging around your waist with leads up to a camera on your shoulder. I believe the Panasonic M1 (which i brought new in Aug 85) was one of the first all-in-one combined video cameras. It would be considered large now but was quite compact for its time. Of course now the camera i have sits in my hand and is ultra light! There was more i wish i had done now but the RMs were going so i mostly chased them along with some BR & Underground trains as work sort of got in the way!

Driving in the East End was always fun, the rules of the road being optional at best!

The chaos on London's roads is worse now than then-more people in London so more traffic! By now route tendering had taken hold on the London bus network with privatisation looming in the 90s so there was various subsidiary London bus units set up ready. In 1986 things were at the end of 'proper' LT bus operations (of which i still have more to come!)....

Yes, i rememeber the Newham council office, i forget its name now. I have seen old photos where it was all buildings on that corner until the pyramid was built......

Within 10 years there were only 500 or so Titans left running in London!

@Leonard Ssenkindu Yes, Titans were good buses. I still have more to upload of them over time.....

Yes, the workers took the company down, end of 1991 or early 1992. Management wanted to cut pay & conditions (part of the London Buses privatisation process) but the staff went on strike, the company lost a lot of work on route tendering so the company folded with what routes were left split up between other bus operating units. The staff view was if they were going to work worse hours, pay & conditions it might as well be with the new operators (they still needed staff to drive buses) but the management could crash & burn as well (not something they were used to!)....

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Blimey. Thanks for the detailed reply, much appreciated. Cut pay and conditions? What else is new. The same old story; I wish we still had London Transport today, before it was all broken up and messed about with.

@@Barison82 After London Forest went down, kamikazi style, London Buses were a bit more restrained in future reorganisations so it had some (small) benefits.

November 91. Walthamstow and Ash Grove shut, Leyton passed to East London and Clapton to Leaside.

The S1 disappeared not long after this vid was shot (i was out filming because of these changes, i grew up with the S1 when it had MBS type buses, and then DMS's with the odd SMS substitute and finally Titans), the route was covered by new route 104 and a diversion of the 238s. I believe the S2 still runs and the 299 was an experimental route out to Eastway/Hackney area started in 1986. I still have more from this period, Wanstead, Leytonstone, East Ham and more from Stratford which i will upload over time.

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus oh ok I haven't seen any S2 in Stratford but maybe elsewhere in London and Im looking forwards to see the videos in the other areas you specified from 1980s/90s

@@DanielsUKT No, you are right, the S2 is now history, i'm getting confused by time....lol

The black smoke was the Volvo engines. As built they had blue smoke from the Leyland engines...... The UK gave up on clean transport back in the late 1940s when they got rid of London's last trams and replaced them with diesel buses. By 1962 the Trolleybus network had gone (it had been the largest in the world) and that was a sad blow for clean electric street traction......

Also I believe this was taken in 1989 not 1990

@@mabelreversetunes It could well be, i haven;t got detailed notes as to dates and it was 30 years ago now. I will change the title soon, thanks!

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus np

@@mabelreversetunes Plus i don't have much from Dagenham sadly. I seem to recall filming Ensign yellow RM 429 working route 145 back in 1991 and may have that somewhere in Dagenham. Plus i have film at Martins Corner of routes 5, 62, 145 & 148 taken around 1985/86 time, if you consider that Dagenham rather than Becontree?....

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus okay do it that way then

What?

@@johnnyxlundja What do you mean What? ? That's Cockney, that's what that is

@@AndreiTupolev Yes, in those days people spoke like that in the East End....but not really any more, more likely in Essex now....

@@AndreiTupolev oh so I can magically understand cockney then?

Yes, it was in St John Street near Farringdon Station. The part of the street from Clerkenwell Road to Charterhouse Street. It is quite wide at the Charterhouse St end and buses used to turn in the roadway in one wide sweep. I'll see if i can get a vid uploaded i took there of Routemasters on the 279 in the late 1980s.

When i remember it in the 1970s/80s (RT and Routemaster operated) it ran from Romford Station to Limehouse (stand on corner of East India Dock Road/Burdett Road). Was cut back & then extended again at various points over the years. Originally ran from Upminster Station to Limehouse up until 1971 time when the 248 was converted from RLH to SMS operation and extended to Romford over the 86 route (the route the 248 still takes today).....