Too many Routemasters

Here I explain one of the reasons why my interest in buses is waning - this may be a controversial one, particularly to London bus fans, but I firmly believe there are far too many Routemasters in preservation. Living in the Home Counties means London buses have always tended to dominate local events, but since the Routemaster was retired from London service and the remaining fleet sold off in large quantities, the number of the type on the rally scene has increased massively in recent years. They are to classic buses what the MGB is to classic cars, so common that sometimes it seems more are preserved than were ever built.

There are ten Routemasters in this lineup and that wasn't even all of them at this event!

I have nothing against the Routemaster as a bus and indeed I respect it for its advanced engineering and the many decades of reliable service it gave, but I do feel the type is over-represented in the ranks of preserved buses at the expense of other equally significant types. Of less than 3000 built, it is estimated that over a thousand still exist in various states including preservation, PSV service and non-PSV roles such as exhibition buses. Compare this near-50% survival rate with the majority of bus types, where production runs of hundreds or thousands are now represented by just a handful of survivors, or in some cases, such as the Duple Mariner/Marauder, are believed completely extinct. This of course makes me wonder how many other significant buses have been passed over and subsequently scrapped in favour of owning yet another Routemaster.

As if there weren't enough remaining in the UK already, in recent years some owners have even repatriated them from overseas, including several from Canada and at least one from the Czech Republic, and others have been rebuilt back to bus form after receiving extensive conversions for non-PSV use, no doubt at vast cost that in my opinion would be better spent on preserving and restoring the rare buses and coaches that already exist in this country. For example, I know of a near-unique Willowbrook Spacecar in poor but saveable condition that is far more deserving of preservation, yet no one has shown any interest in restoring it.

My other problem with the Routemaster is the lack of imagination shown by owners when it comes to liveries. Sure, the red London bus is an iconic symbol of Britain but there are only so many near-identical London Transport red Routemasters, relieved only by the occasional green one, I can look at before boredom sets in. A huge number of operators purchased them secondhand and applied a fantastic variety of colourful liveries, many of which are not represented at all in preservation. I for one would love to see a Routemaster in something like East Yorkshire's superb indigo and primrose, or (of local interest) United Counties' green with stripes, but each one that emerges from restoration invariably seems to be painted in London red regardless of what other colours it may have worn during its long life.

A rare thing, a preserved Routemaster that isn't in London Transport livery. Reading Mainline had a large fleet of the type.

Of course, I'm not advocating some form of mass scrappage scheme for Routemasters, but simply urging potential buyers to consider other types instead, or if they must have a Routemaster to do a little research and restore it to something other than as-new condition to provide a little more variety on the show scene. There are particularly historic and unusual examples that no one would argue deserve their place in preservation, such as the prototypes, the unique single-deck conversion RM1368, and the last one built (RML2760), but many of those to be seen today have no special significance and just merge into the mass of generic red or green buses that tend to overwhelm some events.

The unique single-decker RM1368 certainly deserves to be preserved, but are many of the others really worthy?