My Picture Archive Post 24

Abellio London 9788 (Route 211), London United SLE48 (Route 27), Hammersmith Upper Bus Station, 02/01/12

Abellio London Trident 9788 is now with Geldards Coaches operating on the streets of Leeds, but originally started as Connex London TA97, bought by Connex for the conversion of Route 211 to double deck. The route itself started as a split of Route 11, with 11 curtailed to Fulham Broadway. It was midibus under London General from 1993, operating initially from Victoria (Gillingham Street) Basement. It transferred to Travel London/National Express in 1998. It then turned out the Stewarts Lane TMD cannot legally store buses, so the operation was sold to Limebourne from the current garage at Battersea, opposite Stewarts Lane TMD. It was then sold to Connex (2000), sold to National Express ironically (2004) named as Travel London (again!), then sold to Abellio in 2009.

London United SLE48 started out on Route 27, and is still under London United, running out of Fulwell Garage running on the 267 instead, thus it runs on the Chiswick High Road for the foreseeable future! Route 27 in 1934 had seven garages running the route. It became Sunday only in 1937 until 1952. It ran up to Richmond until 1991 when it swapped terminals with Route 391 (and 391 ran via the 90B route to Richmond from Kew) ending up at Turnham Green Church. Since the photo was taken, the route was extended to Chiswick Business Park, home of the former LT Chiswick Works. It also was converted to hybrid ADH (E40H) operation.