Thousands flock to Cavalcade

Thousands flock to Cavalcade

There was only one place to be today in London and that was Regent Street where the Year of the Bus cavalcade brought out the crowds in their droves as hundreds of thousands explored London's bus heritage.

Most buses made it under their own steam, but the Museum's Trolleybus was towed into position and LT 165 arrived on the back of a low-loader.  The remaining buses arrived in small cohorts from Albert Embankment where they lined up earlier in the morning, although the horses and the horse bus went straight to Regent Street.

The stars of the day was undoubtably the newly restored Battle Bus - which with help from the Friends was restoresd to commemorate all who lost their lives in World War 1- and the horse-drawn bus.

Routemaster 2 was making its debut after being painstakingly restored to its original condition and green livery over the last 10 or more years. The project was entirely funded by Friends who are delighted to see the bus back on the road. It will take over some of the future front-line public appearances from RM1. Scooter LT 1076 - fresh from its award winning appearance at Brighton - was also on show.

The oldest London bus in preservation, a 1908 London Central bus, was also very popular. Owned and restored by Mike Sutcliffe, known by many as the Leyland Man because of his immaculate vehicle restorations.

A special mention should also be made of the Leyland Cub C4: A splendid recent restoration by Ensignbus of a classic 1930s small single-deck bus for lightly patronised routes. This one was in green, but they also came in red.

One of the class celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, was a RT 8 Pre-war RT. And one of the few buses not to be red or green was the BEA coach. One of an interesting small fleet of one and a half deck coaches, operated by London Transport on behalf of BEA to convey air passengers between London Airport and the West London Air Terminal.

Two late entrants came from the recently auctioned collection of the late Michael Banfield and included the S-type double decker and the Tilling Stevens. Both went for substantial sums at auction in excess of £200,000.