The "Londoner"
In June 1965 deliveries began of 50 Park Royal bodied Leyland Atlanteans, mainly for trial in the Central area, designated the XA class.
Starting at the same time 8 similar specification Daimler Fleetlines called XFs were evaluated by the Country area.
With the Routemaster still in production the search was on for its replacement.
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XF1 has been preserved & is seen at Cobham Museum's open day April 1998 |
©Martin G.Layton |
The reason for the quest was London Transport's enthusiastic embrace of the Bus Reshaping Plan calling for
open platform half-cab buses with conductors like the Routemaster to be swept away by a tide of new "OPO"
(One Person Operated) vehicles featuring automated fare collection and crush loading.
The Daimler Fleetline chassis combined with a body style dubbed "The Londoner" was favoured with large orders.
The "The Londoner" looked more like a London bus than the XA & XF evaluation examples, but was under specified for London conditions.
Like many decisions taken on partial data and viewed in the glare of hindsight the saga is awarded a place of dishonour in bus history.
207 was actually worked with the crew operated DM version of the Fleetline.
Such was the rush to get the DMs into service that 207 was converted in two stages.
Hanwell being "upgraded" in February 1976 with Uxbridge keeping its Routemasters until October.
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Offside view of DM1812 at Uxbridge. |
Standing on what looks like exactly the same spot,
but believed to be by different photographers
DM1216 (left) & DM1809 (right) |
Three uncaptioned and unsigned photos bought on a stall at a bus rally |
Upon leaving Uxbridge the road rises all the way to Hillingdon Heath.
I saw several cases of one DM failing on the climb then one or two more succumbing to
over-heating in the resulting traffic chaos.
The class was guilty by association of all the faults of its OPO sisters and survived
only 6 years before the Routemaster once again reigned supreme on 207.
From here we can go back to the RMLs or link on to the next chapter & bring the story of 207 up to date.
