The end of General and the start of LT

摘要

The latest - and last -book of this series is a landmark, concluding a series that began with London's first motorbus routes in 1899. It covers a critical period in the evolution of London's bus routes, namely the last six months' existence of the London General Omnibus Company and the first 18 months of the newly established London Passenger Transport Board. Apart from the obvious firsts and lasts, it also covers the major route renumbering of 3 October 1934 when the LPTB rid itself of the logical but impractical system imposed on it by the Public Carriage Office, which had given every short working - of which there were numerous in those days - a suffix letter of its own. While common sense triumphed here, it introduced a daft quirk of its own, renumbering every route worked by single-deckers with a 200-series number. When any were converted to double-deckers, they were then renumbered below 200, a practice that continued into the war years.