| Long before the chaos wrought upon London by privatisation, big groups, low floors and bendy buses, there was London Transport and its faithful workhorse of five decades, the Routemaster. By the late 1970s, the Reshaping Plan had been discarded as a disastrous failure. One unexpected and unintentional result of this was to bring the RM family back into favour, sweeping away hundreds of unwanted Merlins, Swifts and Fleetlines in the process. The bold but unworkable Fares Fair scheme of 1981 brought passengers back to the buses in their droves, but its subsequent overturning commenced a torrent of politically-motivated decisions which would, over the following decade, carry away all manifestations of state owned orderliness, dismembering London Transport and turning most of its crew operated routes over to One Person Operation. Despite this bleak outlook, it was far from the end for the Routemaster and further reprieves kept it in operation far longer than enthusiasts at the time would have dared to hope. This book can be seen in some ways as a prequel to one of the best selling bus books of 2005, Routemaster Requiem (ISBN: 0 7110 3145 2). This was published to mark the final demise of the Routemaster in front-line service, and proved to be both a critical and commercial success. The two authors, Geoff Rixon and Matthew Wharmby (the former the proud owner of one of the first Routemasters to be preserved, RM254) who produced Routemaster Requiem, have again joined forces to trace in this book the route by route elimination of the Routemaster fleet during the 1980s and into the 1990s. By the time this process was complete, there remained a core of about 600 refurbished Routemasters which kept the flag flying for London's transport identity and the traditional British half cab open platform bus, until their final withdrawal in 2003-2005. The Routemaster was more than a bus, it was one of the great British design icons of the 20th century. It was the last bus design created specifically for the capital and its longevity is a tribute to the soundness of that concept. Books about Routemasters are very popular and this one will be no exception to that rule. It will be eagerly sought by all who are united in their admiration for this great and long lived vehicle.
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