Heritage Buses On The 38 Bus Route
Today, was one of those days, when the 38 bus was augmented by a few heritage buses.
Everybody was swapping stories of buses and their childhoods.
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
The Anonymous Widower 
That bus design will never be beaten did the job it was designed for
Comment by Gabrielle Horwood | September 16, 2023 |
Back in the 1980s I used to know Colin Curtis who in his late 20s was made Engineering Manager for the development of the Routemaster at the London Transport Bus Works in Chiswick. Colin was by then regarded as ‘Mr Routemaster’ and I always remember listening to him at IMechE meetings questioning designers of buses about the weight of their new vehicles. For him efficiency could be equated to the weight savings that had been made in the design of ‘his’ Routemaster.
He died a couple of years before Boris’ Bus hit the roads, which is fortunate for had he been alive you can bet there would have been letters in the press about the a new bus that has a kerbside weight nearly 70% more than the original RM.
As Colin would have said “if this is evolution you can keep it”.
Comment by fammorris | September 17, 2023 |
I went to a presentation given by Wrightbus at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. I seem to remember that the weight of the battery was a big problem.
Seeing as their latest battery and hydrogen buses use new French batteries, which I suspect are much lighter, I think, Wrightbus would do much better today.
Comment by AnonW | September 17, 2023 |
The battery on the New Routemaster is of course quite small and light because the drive is a hybrid incorporating the Cummins 4.5 litre engine that obviously disappears when you adopt a pure battery-electric drive. As it is, when you compare the fully loaded weights of the New Routemaster and the Streetdecker, they are actually very similar.
All modern buses are inevitably heavier than the dear old 1950s Routemaster owing to the additional passenger capacity which adds just short of half a tonne, the increased structural requirements, an increase in length to accommodate passenger access and egress as well as air conditioning often demanded for fully enclosed buses.
Even allowing for these factors it’s hard to understand how the imaginary evolution of the original RM would have reached that of its successors, still at the moment maybe that’s the cost of devising zero emissions public transport .
Comment by fammorris | September 17, 2023