London Transport buses being refurbished in the 1950s

[The Saint]

Filmed at the Aldenham Bus Works in the 1950s, this interesting film shows London Transport RT buses being stripped down and refurbished.

The Aldenham Bus Works was the largest bus overhaul operation in the world, it opened in 1956 and closed in 1986.

Although film the title mentions 'Routemaster', there are no Routemasters in the film as they were not launched until 1959!

The Saint

[Cartman]

Fascinating stuff Saint, thanks for posting. Aldenham was massive and was set up to overhaul buses on an assembly line technique. London Transport were the only operator to seperate the body from the chassis in this way, and this is why the DMS class Daimler Fleetlines bought in the  early 70s didn’t last long in LT ownership as it wasn’t possible to do this on them. Aldenham tried it on one and the body distorted and was a write off.

[Dirty Epic]

Good stuff Mr T and interesting about that happening to the DMS's Cartman.

Shame Alderham bit the dust but even if privatisation didn't happen probably facilities like these would have closed sooner or later from the 80's onwards. As soulless as the modern kit is now only needs a mechanic in a van to usually jump start them these days.

[D.C. Burtonshaw]

Yeah, thanks for that Saint! Always fascinating those documentary films of Britain days gone.

[Cartman]

I like these optimistic looking public information films from the late 50s/early 60s, they show a prosperous looking Britain which seemed to be moving away from the austerity of the immediate post war years. Sadly, it was to go pear shaped about 20 years later.

London Transport provided a great service and their maintenance regime was second to none. When they got bus designs right they were excellent, like the RT and Routemaster, but they were a bit insular and had a mentality of anything not invented or designed for London, they didn’t like or want. 

Occasionally they did did get things badly wrong, like the Daimler Fleetlines, which were a good, reliable bus but because they didn’t fit into their standardised overhaul technique, they discarded quickly even though Manchester and Birmingham had large numbers of them with no problems. Another mistake were the Red Arrow AEC Swift and Merlin single deckers, again these were withdrawn after a very short time, and sent to gather dust at Radlett Airfield. 

The SRT was another, this was a good idea, on paper, but didn’t work at all. It involved the RT buses, in Saints film. In the late 1940s, when deliveries of new RTs were in full swing, the bodies were being delivered faster than chassis and a backlog of spare new bodies built up. At the time, London we’re still running some worn out open staircase stuff from the early 30s, on which the bodies were well past it, but the chassis were still OK, so they had the idea of putting the new bodies on these old running units, except that the RT body was about a ton heavier than the lightweight timber framed bodies and was designed for the 9.6 litre engine, the pre war buses had only 7.7 litres, so they wouldn’t go and, more crucially, wouldn’t stop either. 

Wonder how the Borismaster will turn out in service?