Sunday 31st August 2025
Sorry readers, it’s another one of those blogposts containing pure personal nostalgia. But, don’t worry, more normal topics return this coming week with lots happening to report on.
But this coming week …. 60 years ago in September 1965 …. also saw a major milestone in my life as I started secondary school at the age of 11 …. while exactly ten years later, and 50 years ago, in September 1975 …. was the week I began full time employment as a Senior Management Trainee with the National Bus Company (NBC) aged 21. Fast forward ten more years to September 1985 …. age 31, I was six months into the job that defined my career – running the newly recreated Brighton & Hove …. for the next 30 odd years until retirement.
1965
Back in 1965 the first week of September saw a nervous 11 year old walk through the gate of what’s now called Southgate School for the very first time. Ironical it’s located in Sussex Way, perhaps indicating a foretaste of what was coming later in life, located between Oakwood and Cockfosters. I recently took a nostalgic trip back to relive the bus journey to and from school from the family home in Grange Park, just north of Winchmore Hill in the London Borough of Enfield.
The journey to school involved taking a bus from Green Dragon Lane in Grange Park to Southgate station and then either a bus to Oakwood or towards Cockfosters (and on to Potters Bar/South Mimms), alighting at Bramley Road to walk through to Sussex Way.
The bus was cheaper than the Underground but it was always a rare treat to use Southgate, Oakwood and Cockfosters stations as an option.
If I was starting school this week the travel options are remarkably similar. And, of course, all bus travel would be free for me too – what a bonus that would have been back in 1965.
Route 125 links WInchmore Hill and Green Dragon Lane with Southgate before it continues to North Finchley and on to Colindale.
As a mark of consistency over the decades, 60 years ago the same 125 linked Winchmore Hill and North Finchley on Sundays. In the week it began at Southgate station (although peak hour and Wednesday afternoon journeys did extend back to serve Highlands Hospital). It was route 244 that plied the roads from Winchmore Hill to Southgate before continuing to Muswell Hill and in the peak hours further on to Highgate.
The 244 ran every 15 minutes whereas today’s equivalent route 125 runs every 10 minutes. So not only would I enjoy free travel to school but 50% more buses on the first leg of my journey. And today it would be on a smart First Bus electric Enviro400EV City based at Edgware garage whereas 60 years ago it was an RT from the long closed Muswell Hill garage.
Southgate station is not only one of my favourite Underground stations with its wonderful Charles Holden circular design and gorgeous uplighting on the escalators…
… but its adjacent bus station is also very practical…
… with a two-way bus only road where all the bus stops are located.
60 years ago there were shops around the edge on ‘Southgate Parade’ including public toilets, a popular sweet shop and a barbers (the only things I can remember) and an art-deco waiting room now used as a fast food outlet.
It’s great to see the bus station’s famous wall mounted clock was restored last summer by the Heritage of London Trust…
… but sadly it had stopped when I visited recently.
In 1965 the bus station was a one way (clockwise only) affair with buses bound for Palmers Green and Muswell Hill bypassing it by stopping on the other side of the roundabout on Southgate Circus.
It also meant buses heading to Oakwood, which did use the bus station, stopped on the right hand side of the road with their offsides against the pavement making for an awkward boarding arrangement in the middle of the road for passengers to climb up on to the rear platform of an RT – definitely something which would be completely unacceptable today.
Route 29A used to make the journey from Turnpike Lane to Southgate and on to Oakwood every 20 minutes. Today the road is covered by route 121 on its way to Enfield and Enfield Island Village running every 10 minutes making for a doubling of the number of buses on that leg of the journey.
If I went towards Cockfosters I’d be catching a 29 or 29B, the latter number used for journeys to Potters Bar Cranbourne Road and a projection in to the Industrial Estate with the former seeing some journeys terminate alongside Cockfosters station and others continuing to South Mimms.
Today that route is numbered 298 and continues south to Arnos Grove and north only to Potters Bar station every 20 minutes and using a route number that’s been in use since 1968.
And that was it for the bus network in 1965. A route 107 passed through Oakwood on its way from Enfield Lock (107A) and Ponders End over to Barnet, Edgware and Queensbury with the same route number still used today for the western end of what is a split route west of New Barnet (to Edgware) with a 307 taking the eastern section from Barnet to Brimsdown.
Oakwood is another wonderful Charles Holden station…
… and another of my top favourites and not just for nostalgia reasons, but because the more you look at the design, the more you realise just what a genius Holden was.
As mentioned, the 29A was replaced by the 121 which continues eastwards to Enfield via the previously numbered 107/107A
Oakwood also has a 377 introduced in 2001 to Ponders End linking residential areas unserved by the 307…
… and Cockfosters has the 384 introduced in 1990 across new residential territory to Barnet and, from 2020 on to Edgware …
… as well as the 299 which wanders through different roads to the 298 to Southgate and then the former route of the 244 to Muswell Hill.
Southgate has three more routes it never had in 1965. The W9 to Enfield and Chase Farm Hospital – one of the first minibus routes introduced by London Transport in 1972…
…the W6 to Palmers Green and Edmonton introduced in 1992…
… and the 382 introduced in 2003 to Finchley and Mill Hill East.
It very much demonstrates just how much the bus network has vastly improved over the last 60 years but I still get that pang of nostalgia for the old days whenever I visit the area.
Sadly the Piccadilly line is at a very low point at the moment pending the arrival and entry into service of the new Siemens trains which looks as though it’s still many months away.
As I mentioned in a recent blog, Cockfosters station could do with some TLC…
Let’s hope the impetus of the new trains and all the expenditure of depot expansion will see a paint pot or two cracked open for the station.
1975
Coming forward ten years saw a nervous 21 year old take the train north to live in a town he’d never been to before nor knew anything about – Wakefield.
I’d been allocated for the two year management training scheme to the West Riding Automobile Company which was jointly managed with neighbouring Yorkshire Woollen. It had a rather grand looking head office building based at the huge Belle Isle complex just south of the city centre on Barnsley Road where there was a large depot as well as engineering workshops for the company.
It was only eight years since the fiercely independent West Riding had been acquired by the Transport Holding Company to become part of NBC and one year after the newly formed West Yorkshire PTE had begun making its mark. On top of that I was the first NBC senior management trainee the company had had so there were lots of new experiences for everyone involved,
I remember being made immediately welcome and at home by all the management led by recently appointed General Manager Dion Wilson and a very young team in the Traffic Department led by David Rabey as Traffic Manager (TM) and Tim Archer as Assistant Traffic Manager (ATM) with Chris Moyes and Geoff Rumbles as Area Traffic Superintendents (every bus company had Superintendents in those days) and Mark Thomas and later Peter Fry (not long finished their management training) as Assistants.
It was a fantastic two years in which I got to love my new home of West Yorkshire and the time just flew by.
I popped back up to Wakefield last week to reminisce and take a look at the very sad and sorry state of the Belle Isle complex.
The whole site had to close at short notice last September due to “significant structural problems with the roof”…
…with Arriva dispersing the bus allocation to other sites including the bus station in Wakefield which must have been a very challenging time for everyone.
However I was pleased to see the southern side of the site is now back in use…
… with three pits for engineering…
…temporary cabin style units for offices for drivers, engineers and supervisors and a parking area for buses.
The rest of the site, including the office block is all boarded up and plans are being drawn up for a complete redevelopment.
Fifty years ago the Traffic Department was located in a former two storey house with a basement on the front edge of the site by Barnsley Road (as can be seen in the photograph of the splendid model shown earlier). The TM and ATM were on the top floor (in what were bedrooms) and the Schedules and Customer Service on the ground floor (in the lounge and dining room) with the basement housing licensing and fares and service development.
It was all rather cozy but sadly there’s no trace of the house left now and I can’t believe how small the area was where it once stood by the bus stop.
A year into my training, the company kindly offered Peter Fry and myself the opportunity to rent a bungalow which was one of three belonging to the company in Belle Isle Crescent, adjacent to the site and for which there were no other plans for its use.
It was a great opportunity and Peter and I became good friends and still keep in touch. We called the property appropriately enough French-Fry’s.
Sadly all three bungalows have long been demolished and the road in which they stood is now fully overgrown.
I don’t think I’ll be going back to Belle Isle any time soon, or perhaps any time. But it holds fond memories of a wonderful two years.
1985
By September 1985 it had been decided to formally split the Southdown bus company into two operating companies and an engineering company. Brighton & Hove would be recreated as a separate stand alone business within the National Bus Company taking over all Brighton based operations from January 1986. We set about creating everything you need for a new company including a livery recreating the red and cream colours used by the erstwhile Brighton, Hove & District Omnibus Company which had been merged into Southdown on NBC’s formation in 1969.
My 1985 diary records frentic activity during September to get everything in place including the intrdoduction of minibuses which were all the rage at that time and a meeting with Paul Tredwell from cartographers FWT who oversaw the design of the initial livery which was later launched by the Mayors of Brighton and Hove – then two separate towns.
You can read more about my experiences during this period from these previous blogs here and here and, you can always find a copy of my book lurking in a charity shop, or online, at a bargain price which continues the story through 1995, 2005 and almost to 2015 (I retired in 2013).
But that’s it for 2025’s anniversaries. Now, looking forward…..
2035
Who knows?
Roger French
Summer blogging timetable: TThSSu
BusAndTrainUser 
Your secondary school era largely overlapped mine and for this Surrey boy (Hersham) this was my Twin Rover era too. Those Holden stations remain stunning. The man has a public house named after him near Colliers Wood Station. The days of “suffix” route numbers are long gone, and one must not forget the final northern end of Route 29 for certain journeys to Clare Hall Hospital now a Cancer Research Institute. Fast-forward to my Go As You Please ticket era and Southgate reminiscences bring up in my mind’s eye the FS Class on Route W9. I recognised the Southgate clock as your first image instantly. As to Wakefield, this was a calling point on one of my motorcycle era summer tours specifically to visit the cathedral – 19/07/1978. As to Brighton & Hove – too many memories but I single out one. I am old enough to have witnessed a Volk’s Railway driver control the train using the overhead contactor knob.
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Lots of the names mentioned at West Riding made their mark in the post 1986 environment, it looks like it was a good incubator for talent.
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I don’t think your ENCTS card would be valid in London now before 0900 M-F? Wasn’t the validity reduced from 24/7 a few yeas ago? I know that one has to “flash” one’s provincial bus pass at the driver…
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I think Roger meant he would have a Zip card if attending school in London now.
Kim
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The sad state of Belle Isle is beginning to be matched by the Piccadilly and Northern underground lines. From 1959 until 1962 I was responsible for all Station staff movements on LT railways, and cannot believe how standards have plummeted since those days…..and money was much tighter then, so no excuse for the grubby decay now in many locations. More “third world” than “world class”
I also conducted RTs and RFs for many years, and can never remember one instance of passengers complaining about steps, particularly the three on an RF. Of course low-floor buses are an improvement and allow many to travel who would otherwise be unable. But a some people might be a lot fitter than they are if they had steps to climb and I notice Nobody complains when climbing coach steps on holiday journeys.
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If TfL is like the TOCs, everything like that is outsourced nowadays and getting any minor maintenance done outside the planned cycle is unbelievably expensive – if you can get a manager to agree it needs doing and sign off it in the first place.
Most managers in big companies nowadays seem more interested in either protecting their little empire or polishing their CVs ready to apply for jobs in a completely different industry.
Outsourcing and ‘management as a career’ (i.e. in its own right as opposed to ‘a career in managing industry X) have a lot to answer for.
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It does show how much denser the London Bus network is compared to its “heyday”, albeit with the trade off of lower frequencies on many trunk routes. But that just makes it all the more annoying that TfL can’t get some things right like timetables in bus stops being current.
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September 2025 is important for me too as it’s exactly 40 years since I started at Brighton & Hove (actually just Southdown for three more months) on 2nd.
Mike Best
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Wonderful.
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I remember a visit to Belle Isle in the 1960s when it seemed to be full of Wulfrunians. Although I lived in Doncaster, Wakefield was a fascinating town to visit with many interesting buses about. I made many trips there on United Services lowbridge buses. I even remember the red centre entrance AEC Regents and a few red Wulfrunians operating on the old tram route. Good to see more recent images too. Thank you
Paul Roberts
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Great to read of your schooldays in Southgate. I’m the same age as you and started in 1965 at Minchenden School in High Street Southgate, now closed and in other uses.. I lived in Wood Green- still do- and got the 29/A/B to school. As this was more than 3 miles, I qualified for a free bus pass, but this was strictly limited to use to and from school only!
Jeremy Buck
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Thanks for those memories Jeremy; I remember Minchenden.
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For my trips between Hersham and Esher in my secondary school era I was issued with a permit for half fare after my fourteenth birthday.
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If anyone wants to buy Roger’s book, the PSV Circle currently have a copy for sale in their used books section. Unless it’s been sold since I looked yesterday.
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My paternal grandparents lived in South Kirkby, next door to Mr & Mrs Cooper of the Cooper Bros element of United Services. I think family members, appropriately named Austin and Laurie, drove some of the buses on the Wakefield to Doncaster service. The West Riding and Yorkshire Traction buses and crews were generally well turned out, Ideal Service maybe less so. The conductresses wore heavy greatcoats in the winter.
One difference in practice one had to learn quickly was that, certainly on “Tracky”, unlike in London or on Thames Valley, passengers were not supposed to touch the bell themselves. If they wished to alight at a request stop, they had to shout out, “Next stop, please love!” and the conductress would do it for you. You ignored that practice at your peril!.
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Yes, I remember on COMS (Oxford) buses you didn’t touch the bell yourself. Of course in those days there was a conductor to shout to. And I once had a ride on a West Riding Wulfrunian. Upstairs, the front two rows of seats had been removed, presumably to try and minimise the weight on the front axle.
V ….. Saltash
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I think Charles Holden referred to the design he used for Oakwood Station as “brick box with concrete lid”.
Peter Brown
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Many thanks for a most enjoyable blog – as it always is. Keep ’em coming!
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Such wonderful memories Roger . Thank you for sharing them with us all.
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Perhaps – and maybe write now – forward on five years on each , set date for publishing on the blog as Aug 2030
JBC Prestatyn
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Dear Roger,
You don’t need to apologise on my account!!
I remember, when I was at School, we had the old ‘Block’ Services, which served the ‘New’, in those days….more or less 10 years before I was born in 1971….Arbury Estate, in Cambridge – the 185 and the 186, by Eastern Counties.
They ran every 15 minutes, and yet the Service we have today, by Stagecoach East – ‘Cambus’ -runs at every 12 minute intervals.
Yes that is good, and I am not knocking it, but it is only a 3 minute ‘improvement’, within 40/50 years!!
Our Services now go via the Rail Station….which is just as well, because the people who ’emerge’ from the Station, are an ‘avalanche’, every few minutes, or so!!!!
Kind regards,
Ben Walsh,
Cambridge.
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What a sad site Belle Isle is now compared to when I had a look at the old place last year. I remember your time with me in the basement of Hector’s House (as we nicknamed it) and of course the many industry stalwarts that passed through West Riding during my 20 years there. As you know I moved to Wilts and Dorset then Poole Council and we finally met again after over 40 years on the day Morebus replaced Yellow Buses.
Ken Aveyard
former Licencing and Fares Officer – West Riding Group
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Wonderful to hear from you Ken; thanks so much for commenting.
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Absolutely nothing wrong with a little personal nostalgia. I imagine many of us have connections with certain places and times – homes, visits to relatives and friends, holidays, workplaces – which interconnect with our transport interests and heighten the emotion of the reminiscence. Adding the human-interest element to the pure ‘what ran where and when’ provides an interesting additional dimension.
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I didn’t know you were a Winchmore Hill boy, Roger. I spent the first seven years of my life living just around the corner from the Green Dragon Lane stand used mostly by MBSs and later DMSs on route W4, with the 125 being my main link to Southgate (SMS operated then) with route 123 and its RMs providing the link to Enfield Town as well as Wood Green (but more expensively than the flat fare W4) with Green Line route 715 and its RPs adding a bit of exotic flair. In 1976 we moved across Enfield to Ponders End, just over the road from the bus garage. Happy days indeed. One small note on the bus routes serving Chase Road, between the 29B and the 121 came route 298A.
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Indeed I conducted both the 298A and 123 during both my spells working at Palmers Green bus garage in 1972/3. Those were great days. I can just remember trolley buses turning round at the bottom of Green Dragon Lane on the 641 to Moorgate and 629 passing through to Enfield (and Tottenham Court Road) – we lived in Firs Lane then.
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We lived in River Bank, just off Firs Lane.
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It is good to remember the people and places of the past.
1985 was when I joined East Midland Motor Services, initially at Chesterfield and then Mansfield. Was very hectic in schedules with the run up to deregulation. I got involved over the years with routes in Essex, London and Manchester as East Midland – as Frontrunner – expanded until Stagecoach took over in 1989. I’ve recently been catching up with former colleagues from that time, we had a day out on the Peak Sightseer.
Later in my career I was with Arriva and spent sometime in the Wakefield offices – schedules was in the main building then. So sad to see what has become of the place.
Richard Warwick
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The Bus Archive also has copies of Roger’s Brighton book on on it’s EBay shop
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A wonderful read as always Roger. Very sad to see the state of Belle Isle now, I have fond memories of working there, first in the waybill office when I left school in 1977 and then went ‘on the road’ as a conductor when I was 18.
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I have just bought your book from eBay so some interesting winter reading ahead. I can not get used to the current Brighton & Hove livery after always in my memory being cream & red except Coasters and specials.
Regarding Wakefield Belle Isle complex and the whole site having to close at short notice last September due to “significant structural problems with the roof”… I wonder if genuinely unforeseeable or a lack of inspections then rectification which would have prevented closure and if done in time maybe cost less too?
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Not only are those routes you mention more frequent now but the buses themselves have more capacity as well.
Steven Saunders
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WAs it the W9 that used the Ford Bread vans ?
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Yes.
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I recall that in the 1960s the 125 was run by RTs from FY garage. I’m open to correction, but I don’t think FY ever had another RT route.
Ian McNeil
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Well after your time Roger but I lived in Harlech Road, Palmers Green for a few years from 2011. Typically I’d walk to Palmers Green National Rail station and get a train to Highbury & Islington to connect for my onward journey and return home via the Piccadilly Line to Southgate and get the W9 bus to Fox Lane.
Some quirks of the W9 come to mind. It’s Hail & Ride for much of its route between Southgate and Winchmore Hill – and the first passengers always used to get off by the first few houses in Fox Lane, and I don’t ever think I saw it stop in The Bourne, so I was never quite sure of its status along that road. Another Hail & Ride issue is the tendency for passengers to always alight and / or wait in the same places, such that they become ‘bus stops’ known to both locals and then drivers – the problem then becomes when people new to the area try to hail the bus or get off it in a different location, and I tried this once at a safe place a little ahead of the usual place which was the bench opposite Conway Road – the driver refused to stop and said that the location by the bench is the bus stop. Sadly I suspect that this is typical (I’ve had the same issue elsewhere). The other quirk is that when going through Highlands Village on a CLOCKWISE loop (used for both directions) the bus turns LEFT four times before finally turning right back onto Worlds End Lane – most disconcerting!
Stephen H
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On three of the early minibus routes, using FS single deckers, LT erected timetable posts along each route, but riding an early journey on one of these roues an Inspector was with us. He told the driver that “Hail& Ride” was absolute but LT installed the timetable posts as “muster points” in the hope that buses were not stopping every few yards. W9, P4 and B1.
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Should the Superloop bus service be replaced by new Greenline service that extend out into parts of the home counties
What routes would you come up with ?
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No. Superloop, at least the ‘loop’ routes, serves a different purpose to Green Line.
There may be a case for a recreation of cross-TfL boundary limited stop services on certain axes, but I doubt it would be anything like the LT or LCBS Green Line network people remember, or even the 21st century “greenline” routes.
The upcoming cancellation of some of Uno’s cross-boundary routes into TfL-land and the fairly limited amount of cross-boundary ‘ordinary’ bus routes today suggest that such routes might not be commercially viable, though.
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The 377 replaced part of the 517.
Finchley did get a small group of RT during the vehicle shortages in the 1970’s, they worked the 26 with non-standard blinds.
The 107 started life as the 307 – it was renumbered 107 in October 1934.
The W9 replaced the 244 in September 1982 – the peak hour extension to Golders Green was withdrawn, then the new 299 took over the Southgate – Muswell Hill section when it was introduced in 1992.
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great days at B & H 1991 to 2013, many memories of working with some great colleagues. It was good to be part of the ethos that you got the very best out of people by treating them with respect and giving them a story that they could buy into, as opposed to dishing out the big stick treatment, which was very rarely necessary or effective.
I’ve still got my signed copy of your book btw!
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Thanks very much Steve; a huge pleasure to have you in the team.
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The neglect and subsequent closure of Belle Isle are a metaphor for Arriva UK as a whole.
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