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Notes About This Vehicle |
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The life of what was to become a large fleet of RTs commenced just before the Second World War. The first such vehicles became known as ‘pre-war RTs’ though in truth this was a bit misleading with them actually entering service when the war had already started.
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The engines, chassis and running units of the ‘pre-war RTs’ RTs were built by AEC with a four different companies building the bodies. The majority were from Park Royal Vehicles and Weymann, though others were supplied by Saunders and Craven.
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The highest fleet number reached was RT4825 and these existed variously in red (central area), green (country area) and Green Line. This figure is a little misleading as a separate batch of 1631 similar buses was built with Leyland units and all but one with bodies from Park Royal and Metro-Cammell; these were separately designated RTLs.
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The RT family conformed to the then standard legislation restricting them to 7ft 6ins width; the RTLs conformed too. When legislation later permitted 8ft-wide buses, further Leyland vehicles, bodied by themselves, were built to this width, with fleet numbers RTW1 to RTW500.
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| The first post-war RTs arrived in 1947 with progress severely hampered owing to extreme shortages of raw materials; the last was delivered into 1959. |
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Inevitably during this time body features developed. The front roof boxes were omitted from late 1948, with the knock-on effect that the front blind displays became wider, having to incorporate the route number.
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August 1950 saw the arrival of fleet numbers 3224 to 3259, allocated to Romford London Road garage. This was first appearance of RTs for use on Green Line routes – in this case, on busy routes 721 and 722.
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| The buses only differed cosmetically from their standard green (and red) counterparts. Country area green buses had the same cream relief band as the central area red ones though the Green Lines had light green. They had raised Green Line bar & Circle motifs between the decks, later these were transfers, as depicted here in late 1960s condition. All this, along with the absence of advertisements, gave an air of superiority visually. The lower deck Green Line London Transport transfers added to the smart appearance. |
| A more noticeable difference was the treatment of the blinds; instead of the usual white lettering on black, the Green Lines had black on a yellow ochre background. The front ‘elephant ear’ flashing ‘trafficators’ and corresponding rear arrows depicted here were added in 1956. |
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Notes About This Drawing |
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The drawing is based on an undated Chiswick Works general arrangement drawing ‘RT0027’ (probably). This type of black & white sketch drawing, as implied by the name, is not intended to define detail but as a specification guide to builders.
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All the fine detail has been interpreted from several black & white and colour photographs of sufficient quality that could be found. Owing to the age of the photographs, some fine detail has been gleaned from current preserved vehicles, though these are far from consistent. None of the detail can be regarded as definitive.
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It should be understood that all four elevations are seen here as one would see each part of the vehicle at a truly perpendicular angle. In real life this is of course impossible.
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| © drawing copyright Douglas Rose – March 2018 |
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