The last Routemaster to ply a proper London bus route retired in 2005. But over 15 years later, this indestructible bus still pops up everywhere. It’s just that nowadays merely in London Routemasters are wedding buses, Ghost Buses, afternoon tea buses, mobile yoghurt stalls on the South Bank… And elsewhere, all over the world, they have found new homes and been put to the most unlikely but serendipitous uses.
In Routemasters of the Universe Harry Rosehill catalogues all the possible uses of a Routemaster bus, from a tea room in Essex to a posh B&B in County Durham, a promotional bus for a theatre company in Moscow to an office in Bermuda, not to mention making history during the Iraq War as a Human Shield in Baghdad. Along the way he explains how Routemasters were built to last so long, why they’ve become so cherished, and where you get a spare big end for a 70-year-old commercial vehicle.
Here Harry Rosehill explains how he, a proud bus nerd, came to write this alternative history of a true London icon:
Learning to love myself as a bus nerd
by Harry Rosehill
‘I’m not a bus nerd, though!’ I’ve uttered that qualifying sentence countless times over the past nine months, a follow-up comment I can’t wait to spurt out as soon as someone asks what I’m currently up to. “So I’m writing a book about Routemaster buses, but…” After a while, however, I suddenly started to question why I was so keen to disavow any passion for something I was writing a whole book about?
Well, obviously there’s a stigma. While the bus nerd is a less common stereotype than the trainspotter, the image is largely the same. Mostly male. Grey-haired. Likes spending their weekends with unwieldy camera drooping round their neck, hunting down vintage vehicles at specialist meet-ups. The look is completed with notepad in rucksack to jot down registration numbers. In the course of writing my book on the afterlives of Routemasters I met countless folks who fitted that exact description (although I’d like to make clear, I also met plenty who didn’t). And do you know what? Their passion for buses is infectious. And it rekindled my own.
Growing up in London I’ve been riding buses since before I can remember. The nearest Tube station was a 15-minute walk down a treacherously steep Highgate Hill, so I caught a bus when going anywhere. When I started secondary school, I rode the 17 between Archway and St Paul’s daily. On the journeys when I wasn’t chatting with mates – punctuality has never been my strong suit, and sometimes I’d miss the bus they were on – I spent my journey gazing out the window listening to music. I’d stare at other double-deckers, taking mental notes on which operator ran specific routes, and what type of buses they used. But one bus stood out above all the rest. The 15H.
The Routemaster was phased out from regular London bus routes in 2005, but a heritage service meant a few were retained on two routes: the 15 and the 9. These vehicles were a halfway house between proper bus routes and tourist attractions. I was never fully convinced they were that successful as either – they only served a portion of the full routes (the bits where you could see the most tourist attractions from the window). However, most tourists didn’t really seem aware of their existence, leaving the old buses rarely more than half full, as the conductor convivially patrolled the aisle, checking fares. But once a week, I didn’t head north towards home, but west, meeting my Dad outside his office, and got there by riding a ‘special’ bus. An original Routemaster.
In 2016, I started writing for Londonist. I quickly discovered that a huge section of its audience was obsessed with public transport. They wanted to see new twists on the Tube map, watch videos depicting secrets of individual routes, and read about the eternally-delayed Elizabeth line. But they didn’t really care about buses. This despite usage of London buses usually sitting at double that of the Tube. In the pre-pandemic era, it regularly topped over two billion journeys a year. There was an exception to this rule, however: Routemasters. When they were drafted in to provide extra capacity on Tube strike days, page views of the Londonist would spike. People didn’t care for buses, but they did hold a candle for Routemasters.
Then in 2021 – the same year the death knell sounded for the 15 heritage service – an opportunity arose. A chance to write a book documenting what happened to the Routemasters after they left service in London. To speak to the people who’d turned them into radio studios, playbuses, luxury hotel rooms, and even a submarine. Document Routemasters that made incredible journeys far beyond their makers’ wildest dreams: crossing the Andes, driving to Baghdad ahead of the Iraq War, and off a cliff in Kent.
And as I dove deeper down the Routemaster rabbit hole, I realised that loving the classic bus wasn’t limited to a niche portion of society. A few months ago, I was on a Routemaster during the London Bus Museum’s running day in Ealing. All along the route pedestrians stopped and stared at all the vintage vehicles, whipping out smartphones to try and grab a quick picture. This culminated in one man holding up a road full of traffic by stopping in the middle of a zebra crossing to get his shot of our Routemaster. The bus nerds I described at the start of this article just love them a bit more than most.
After all this rambling about buses, you might be unsurprised to hear that I can no longer deny the truth. I am a bus nerd. That this realisation has occurred at the same time as me starting to notice a few stray grey hairs might not be a coincidence.
Routemasters of the Universe by Harry Rosehill is available now for £12.99
Join us at Stanfords on Tuesday 30th November 2021 to hear Harry talk about this new book. Tickets available here