 | Photo © Danny Robinson. This photograph is shared under a Creative commons license. |
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The trunk 3 from Crystal Palace to Oxford Circus is more of a touristy route than might at first be apparent. Crystal Palace itself is maybe not the tourist destination it once was, but it is home to London's main caravan park (though maybe not for much longer if the local authorities have their way), and the 3 provides a handy link into central London for its users. On the way it passes Brixton, centre of black culture, then passes near the Oval Cricket ground, Imperial War Museum and Lambeth Palace before reaching Lambeth Bridge. Not far away lies the Tate Gallery, before buses proceed north through the tourist hot-spots of Westminster, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus to Oxford Circus.
The route was a surprise award to newcomer Connex Bus from 5 February 2000, its first route which proved to be the first of many. Incumbent London Central was undercut by a large margin, and the bid was rumoured to be a loss leader. Unlike some other upstart operations the Connex Bus operation was fairly successful, though service quality was a bit shaky at times; at least it avoided going bust! Operation was, and still is, run from a base in the Beddington Cross industrial estate, some distance from the route.
A batch of new Dennis Tridents with Alexander ALX400 bodywork was obtained. Unusually for London they were specified with the uprated engines, which if nothing else helped with the climb up to Crystal Palace! Connex sold the London bus operation to National Express which rebranded it as Travel London in allover red. The early Tridents have largely been moved onto other duties now and their place taken by newer examples, and 9741 (YN51KUW) pulls onto Lambeth Bridge on a southbound journey on 1 October 2009.
| Photo © Danny Robinson. This photograph is shared under a Creative commons license. |
The operation had actually already been sold on by National Express to NedRailways, the Dutch state operator, and just a few weeks after this photograph was re-branded as Abellio London. A second photograph of the same bus in Parliament Street, Westminster on Tuesday the 5 January 2010 shows the alteration. Note that the illegal upper case blind display in the first photograph has now been corrected!
 | Photo © Brian Creasey. |
The previous operation by London Central was noteworthy as the route used 24 of the batch of 25 Optare Spectras bought by London Transport in 1992. These were specified with single doors, most unusually for a central London route – although of course Routemasters, still the mainstay of the West End then, are single door, or single hole more like! If nothing else, the SPs certainly proved that dual doors are not essential, though clearly they can aid passenger flow in some circumstances. But the Spectras were topped up with dual door Titans, and there was no discernible difference in overall speed between the types.
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