London Transport
Red Plates

Last updated 28-03-08

“E” plates with red backgrounds were rarely used for route number, being confined to the Tourist/Vintage Bus and some of the City of Oxford routes, although there were some exceptions for special purposes. They are not easily found nowadays.



TOURIST BUS / VINTAGE BUS

100 TOURIST BUS
 100 VINTAGE BUS
On this plate the word VINTAGE has been signwritten onto the space where it previously read TOURIST. Many of these plates were officially altered by grinding off the original word and signwriting the new text on top.		 100 VINTAGE BUS SERVICE
184 MON-FRI RUSH HOURSA further version was made in vinyl and used a typeface known as Granby which resembled Johnston at a time when the latter was not commercially available or released outside London Transport’s main letterpress printers. These stickers were affixed onto old “E” plates—note the white enamel peeking out along the left and right edges. This one was made out of a 184 MON-FRI RUSH HOURS plate.
D 142
 ← On a summer day in 1980, 55-year-old Dennis D142 [XX 9591] approaches the B(C)E9 stop at Charing Cross station.
Kevin McCormack photo; HLB
Three punch tickets from London Transport’s Vintage Bus service 100. It was operated in the 1970s with several different routings, normally by ST922. It was sponsored for a time by Johnnie Walker whisky, and the bus and these tickets carry an advertisement for the company. →
Vintage Bus tickets

Leon Daniels (former Director of Obsolete Fleet, operator of Vintage Bus route 100) writes, “Route 100 first ran from 1972 and existed many (but not all) summers from then on. In fact, the routings often changed each season and had little in common, although the route number and the use of ST922 was consistent. Following the opening of the London Transport Museum at Covent Garden [in 1980], the last iteration of the service—from Covent Garden to Oxford Circus (and subsequently Marble Arch)—ran using ST922 mostly, D142 from time to time, and RT1 a little towards the end.”

Route 100A was a planned variation to the service in the late 1970s which never operated, but some “E” plates were produced. The letter As were added to stock route 100 “E” plates in preparation, and then subsequently obliterated to be used for the regular service.

This is an astonishingly rare “E” plate and the 100A didn’t appeared in any other form. The edge chip is possibly caused by this being a very thick plate and therefore a tight fit in the bus stop runners.

 100A VINTAGE BUS

FARE STAGE & HEAD STOP

FARE STAGE FARE STAGE

These FARE STAGE plates were a new way of showing fare stages on bus stops. Fare stages were the points from which a new fare was calculated. They previously had been shown by means of a small circular black disc near the top of the post. In a few cases, such as on bus shelters or in bus stations, there was not a suitable pole and an “E” plate was used instead, sometimes placed in runners on top of the shelter. It was a short-lived method, and was subsequently changed to a tall vertical red strip, the depth of the bus stop flag, attached between the post and the flag.

A headstop sign, either of the “E” plate or G3 Q variety, was used when one-man buses were being introduced, and stopped at a bus stop with conventional rear entrance buses. They were needed in cases where just forward of the stop there might have been a driveway which was not to be obstructed by a bus at the bus stop, so the sign was used to tell drivers of rear entrance buses to stop with their front, or “head” at the stop. If there was only a rear entrance bus serving the stop, the bus stop post would have been moved further back, about 30 feet, so the bus could stop in the correct position. Similarly, there were also TAIL STOP “E” plates and G3 signs, and in those cases, it was to tell the driver of a one-man bus to pull forward and stop with his rear at the bus stop. The latter were quite unusual.

HEAD STOP “E” plates normally had black—or occasionally green—lettering on a white background. The red HEAD STOP plate was spotted on the internet, but was probably experimental.

 headstop

CITY OF OXFORD MOTOR SERVICES LTD.

OXFORD 70
It is very unusual to find “E” plates with numbers on a red background, although there are a few that exist. Interestingly, many of those that do are for Oxford services.

The City of Oxford’s route 70 was the service from Victoria to Oxford. It was replaced by Oxford–South Midland route 290 and Green Line 790.
Oxford timetable Nº 169; 31 May 1959
City of Oxford Motor Services Ltd. timetable book Nº 169, dated 31 May 1959, contains 176 pages and a fold-out route map inserted in the rear cover.
Oxford/South Midland timetable - 11 July 1976
The City of Oxford/South Midland timetable of 11 July 1976 listed all the Oxford City services, including routes to London and a summary of country services. In the intervening 27 years it had shrunk to 80 pages, but the price had only risen fourfold, from 6d to 10p.
Uxbridge Station stop A
Uxbridge Bus Station stop A had a red OXFORD 290 “E” plate, as well as blue ones for Green line express routes 724 and 727.
COMS 84
Andrew Colebourne caught Oxford/South Midland 84 [RBW84M]—a Bristol RELH6L with ECW DP49F body—approaching stop A on 26 June 1977.
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