London buses between the wars

In 1912, London’s biggest bus operator, the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC), was taken over by the Underground Group, the umbrella company running the District Railway and London’s Tube railways. The bus manufacturing side of the business at Walthamstow was set up as a separate company at this time, known as the Associated Equipment Company (AEC). 

Fresh from their development of the B type in 1910, the vehicles developed by AEC for the LGOC after the First World War, the K, S and NS types, were at the forefront of evolutionary bus design. Each one was an improvement on the last, but designs were held back by strict safety regulations introduced by the Metropolitan Police in the early 1900s. Restrictions were relaxed progressively through the 1920s as the LGOC demonstrated to the regulators that bigger, taller buses with pneumatic tyres and covered tops could still be safe.  

The Underground Group takeover of the LGOC gave them a virtual monopoly over public transport in most of London. As vehicles were made more comfortable and inviting in the 1920s, the number of bus passengers rose rapidly, with rising income effectively subsidising the loss-making Tubes. This was criticised by some, but the coordination of services proved to be efficient and successful. 

This arrangement was challenged by a new wave of independent bus operators in 1922. Some were quite large and provided regular efficient services, while others only ran a handful of vehicles on popular routes at peak times to ‘steal’ the LGOC’s passengers, earning them the name ‘pirates’. 

It could be said that competition fostered further improvements in LGOC design, such as fully upholstered seats, but more buses on the capital’s busiest streets proved chaotic and dangerous. The government intervened to pass the London Traffic Act of 1924, to set clear limits on the number of buses allowed to operate. This eliminated the worst of the pirates, but clearly benefited the LGOC, leading to further criticism. In 1926 independent bus operators raised nearly a million signatures on a petition to reverse the Act, but to no avail. 

AEC were facing increasing competition of their own during the 1920s, from the Lancashire based Leyland company. Undeterred, AEC head-hunted their Chief Engineer George Rackham in 1929 to head up their huge new facility at Southall. He developed a new range of buses that finally broke with earlier horse bus-derived designs, effectively creating the modern bus. The new T, ST and LT types were on the street by 1930, followed by a longer version of the ST, known as the STL.  

In 1933, all London’s bus companies were merged under the government-funded London Passenger Transport Board, soon known simply as London Transport (LT), to form the largest integrated public transport system in the world, responsible for all bus, tram and Tube transport. 

LT continued the LGOC’s progress towards standardisation, mass production and centralisation. Bus production under LT control continued the relationship with AEC. Production of the STL type bus was rolled out, with it becoming the standard double decker of the 1930s. 

The next major development in double deck bus design was the RT type. Masterminded by Eric Ottaway, an ex-AEC man, it combined all the elements of modern bus design and set a benchmark for the future. Destined to form the biggest bus fleet in the world in the 1950s, the first RTs were introduced in 1939, though only 150 were built before the outbreak of the Second World War interrupted production. Post-war shortages meant that mass production did not get into full swing until the late 1940s. 

Many of the stories and objects here can be seen within the London’s transport at war gallery at the Museum.