Route 114

Route 114
8 January 2005

London Sovereign operates route 114, but it is a bit of an odd case. It had been operated by BTS (Borehamwood Travel Services) since 1991; before that, it was operated by Harrow Buses — another low cost operating unit within London Transport. However, BTS was sold to Sovereign in August 1994, although little changed on the 114 for several years, with the existing batch of Leyland Olympians bought new for the new 114 contract continuing in their orange livery. In the summer of 1996 buses received Sovereign fleetnames in place of BTS on their orange livery, and from 1998 the vehicles at last started to be repainted into Sovereign's attractive new blue and cream livery.

However, no sooner had the repaints been completed than most of the Olympians were removed to Yorkshire and replaced by low floor DAF DB250LFs displaced from route 60, latterly operated by Arriva. This was a mid-contract upgrade and a rare case where the option to lease vehicles from London Buses rather than owning or leasing them directly had been taken up. In the case of the 60, new operator Connex preferred to use its own buses, so the DAFs had to find a new home, and the 114 seemed suitable. The red and black livery carried by these was subsequently adopted for other buses at Edgware garage.

Major reliability problems with the DAFs, and the fact that there were not quite enough to go round, meant that when a new contract was awarded with commencement in September 2004, new vehicles were specified. London Sovereign's parent London United had been experimenting with different vehicle options and specified East Lancs bodywork for the first time, on Volvo B7TL chassis. Here VLE 27 (PA04 CYK) runs westbound along Eastcote Lane.

Photo © John Nicholas Bennett.

Although 19 VLEs were ordered for the 114 only 13 were delivered to Edgware, the other 6 being diverted to Shepherd's Bush for a frequency increase on the 148. This is because the 6 buses ordered for the 148 were Scanias, a new type for LU/LS, and rather than introduce a third chassis to Shepherd's Bush garage they were delivered to Edgware for the 114. So we see SLE 3 (YN54 OAC), again in Eastcote Lane, but this time near the roundabout with Field End Road. Note that both buses carry a new livery of red with a grey skirt – ever more prescriptive regulations from TfL mean this is all the colour variation that is now allowed, so the grey skirt of London United has been fused with the layout adopted from the DAFs.

The 114 is an old route, but it has changed almost beyond recognition. The oldest reference I can find is in 1933, when it ran from Edgware to Rayners Lane via present day routes 340 and H10. Thus the only common sections with the present route are about a mile each in Harrow itself and South Harrow. It was surprisingly frequent, every 10 minutes throughout with a bus every 5 minutes between Eastcote Lane and Harrow Weald – all running at all times. The first alteration was actually the short diversion between Harrow and South Harrow via Porlock Avenue instead of the direct route, which occurred in 1957.

As might be expected, the remainder of the transition to the present route occurred in two stages. The 114 swapped eastern ends with the 158 (previously Watford to Ruislip Lido) in 1966, and was curtailed back to Harrow Weald, new route 286 replacing it between Harrow and Edgware. The 114 then swapped eastern ends with the rather lengthy 140 (Heathrow to Mill Hill) in 1984, so that the 114 now ran between Ruislip and Mill Hill and the 140 between Heathrow and Harrow Weald. Incidentally, the 140 was later extended over the 286 to Edgware, but subsequently cut back to Edgware again with the creation of the 340. With the introduction of the H13 in 1986, the Ruislip - Ruislip Lido section of the 114 was reduced to Sundays only, continuing until 1996, when the routeing was standardised and a twelve minute end-to-end service introduced instead of the previous short workings between Mill Hill and Harrow.

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Chronologically 340 358

Numerically 113 115
See also routes 60, 340, H10, 140, H13

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