We have all heard of the proverbial 'face like the back of a bus' but at Westerham on 31 August 1980 the real thing was on show as preserved RT 3491 waits at the bus stop adjacent to the site of Westerham station. Westerham primary school can be seen in the background and the station site was off the picture to the left. Note the cobblestones, which may well have dated from the time Westerham station was built. The bus stop sign on the left is visible in numerous photographs but by August 1980 the iconic London Transport flag had been replaced by a functional but rather bland National Bus Company (NBC) example of the type which became familiar across the country. It bears a Green Line sticker complete with NBC logo. Below the Green Line sticker are further stickers informing the public of routes serving the stop; 410, 483, 485 and 705 with the latter being the Green Line Sevenoaks - Windsor service. However, not all is what it seems as by the time the above photograph was taken the 705 had been reduced to just one weekday evening Tunbridge Wells - Westerham journey and a Sunday service to Windsor before disappearing entirely. The former London Transport country area, including Green Line, had been hived off in 1970 to become part of the NBC. The resulting outfit became London Country Bus Services Ltd until it too vanished following bus deregulation in 1986. Green Line still exists as of February 2016 but is a sad shadow of its former self. For much of its existence, Green Line was billed as a coach network and although a number of proper coaches did exist prior to deregulation (albeit usually in the form of coach seats fitted in what was essentially bus bodywork) most routes were operated by ordinary buses in Green Line livery but sometimes with semi-coach seating, heaters and, in the case of some double-deckers (the RMC and RCL types for example), platform doors. Perhaps the best description might be 'limited stop bus services often using vehicles of dual-purpose layout'. That said, Green Line vehicles offered a rather more pleasant travelling experience than the vile, cramped and often stuffy coaches of today with their nausea-inducing soft suspension, funny goings-on at the back seat and constantly blaring radios invariably tuned to suit only the driver. Back at Westerham, the rear blind of RT 3491 is set to 'Private'. London Transport took advantage of their large destination displays to advertise bus and coach hire in these instances. The wording below 'Private' read "To hire a bus or coach, apply 55 Broadway S.W.1 or any local garage". Slipped into this wording was the telephone number 'Abbey 5600', the number of 55 Broadway. This telephone number was from the 'Director' dialling system which predated the London 01 code and subsequent 071, 081 and 020 codes. The Director dialling system was used in many large cities and was the original reason for telephone dials having letters as well as numbers. To dial a number one would first dial the code which, in the case of Abbey 5600, was ABB and then the number. Code ABB equated numerically to dialling 222. Thus when the 01 dialling code for London was introduced one would dial 01 222 5600 from outside London or 222 5600 if within London. Under the present system the number for 55 Broadway, or rather one of them, has become 020 7222 5600. In 2015 55 Broadway, a rather splendid Art Deco building which opened in 1929, lost its final link with London Transport when London Underground vacated to new premises in the Docklands area. Curiously, dialling codes in the Director era were usually stated in capital letters, for example ABBey 5600, but as seen on RT 3491 the entire exchange name was given in capitals. It will be noticed that the preserved RT 3491 in 1980 was well adorned with advertisements. This was once common on preserved buses; sometimes the advertisements were purely for historical effect and served no commercial purpose while sometimes the opposite was true and the practice helped provide revenue towards the expensive upkeep of preserved vehicles. The round advertisement on the offside rear corner said "Please let the Bus Go First". This request, with various wordings, was once a common sight on buses all over the country and back in the days before other drivers always had to be somewhere yesterday the request was usually granted. In fairness many of today's drivers do let buses pull out but impatience often means buses have to start nudging forward before being let out.
Photo by David Jones from his Flickr photostream