Title: Buses in the Border Towns of London Country North of the Thames – 1969-2019
The second of Malcolm Batten’s hardback mainly colour picture albums covering the towns where London Transport met the rest of the world is 20 pages longer and £3 more expensive than the first covering the towns south of the River Thames (Reviews, April).
This sweeps in an arc from Tilbury, Grays and Lakeside in the east where Ensignbus holds sway today to High Wycombe where Go-Ahead-owned Carousel is about to complete its unseating of Arriva. In between are five more centres in Essex, three in Hertfordshire, one (Luton) in Bedfordshire and Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire where Arriva also is on the point of exit.
There are scenes of great change in the new towns of Harlow and Stevenage which have always been a challenge to serve effectively with buses, while the survey starts just early enough to capture two memories of the corporation fleet in Luton before it passed into history and National Bus Company ownership in January 1970.
Images from more recent decades offer reminders of the many independent operators that have come and gone like Thames Weald, West’s of Woodford Green, Regal Busways, EOS London, Buzz Coopera…
