RM1 is 50 years old, to celebrate Cobham Bus Museum held a Routemaster Family Day

Happy Birthday RM1

Just as with RT1 before it the actual "date of birth" is slightly confused however RM1 was officially 50 years old on 24^th September 2004. At least RM1 is complete and original and didn't get scattered like the poor old RT prototype. Mixed in with all the send offs and last days of operation as Transport for London vandalise the Routemaster from the capital's streets were an altogether happier set of events known as "Routemaster 50". The last main event was at The London Bus Preservation Trust's Cobham Bus Museum on Sunday 31^st October 2004.

Sunday lunch by Routemaster

The Black Swan, Old Lane, Martyr's Green, Cobham, Surrey is an ideal venue for such an event with a large field at the rear to line up displays of buses. The management very generously allowed their car park to be almost completely taken over by access to the field, plus a turning circle and stand for Routemasters on Museum route 411 shuttling between Cobham Bus Museum and The Black Swan via Cobham Village. With very little space left at the pub, even for people not attending the event, the best option for parking was Weybridge Station and catching special service 462, using RMC1461. The down side of this was that the lone bus was allowed a half hour headway with one trip deleted for the crew's lunch break

The Routemasters themselves.

A gallery of the pictures taken can be found at Fotopic by following the link. The list below is sorted into bonnet number order, the Fotopic gallery is presented raw in the order I exposed the film. If I photographed the front of a Routemaster then at some time later got a chance to run round behind the pack like my sheep dog and get a nice rear view, that's what you get.

The stars of the show

Must be the front entrance RMF1254 and of course rear engine FRM1. In all my childhood list writing and after school sneak peeks into AEC's factory, plus visits to shows and open-days I had never seen either vehicle in the flesh. Although they are well known and extensively documented in the public domain I found some fascinating and frightening truths about both while trawling the internet for something to add to the comments column.

RMF1254

A Routemaster demonstrator never intended for London service. Neil Fraser, Webmaster of the excellent AEC tribute website Remembering The Associated Equipment Company Limited publishes pictures showing how close the world came to loosing this unique Routemaster.

FRM1

Sadly remained unique but in a website dedicated to his father Alfred Hill to recount his long career with Park Royal Vehicles Graham Hill shares memorabilia implying that PRV harboured ambitions that Routemaster would become a generic name for a whole range of AEC powered semi-integral buses, both single and double deck, sold on the open market

© Martin G. Layton 2004

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