Home | Bus routes | Operational details | Service changes | Operators & Garages | Photo gallery

The route number 163 has had several incarnations in different parts of London. The present route is a relatively recent creation, in July 1987, taking over the Morden - Raynes Park section of route 156 on Mondays to Saturdays, and overlapping with the 156 from Raynes Park as far as Wimbledon. The Morden - Lower Morden section was also served (until the following year) by route 164, which is no doubt how the route number was selected. And that is all the history there is to report, other than a Sunday service being added when the 156 was curtailed at Wimbledon in 1991.

Operation was initially from Merton garage with Leyland Nationals. However, in the Sutton area tendering scheme the route was successfully tendered for by the new SuttonBus low-cost unit (even though it does not go anywhere near Sutton!), based at Sutton garage, which took over from 26/11/88. This also saw the route converted to double deck, with Fleetlines. The route was later moved to Sutton's outstation at Colliers Wood, but this was soon merged into the allocation at nearby Merton, where the route has been based ever since, albeit with a little help from Sutton.

Nowadays the route is single deck again, running more frequently than previously with up to 8 buses per hour, and scheduled double deck workings on school days. The main allocation is from Merton with a mixture of single and dual door 10.2m Dart SLFs. However, on Saturdays Sutton has a one-bus allocation, and hence we have LDP69 (R469 LGH), a recent acquisition from Merton, running as A161. The location is Morden station, on 29 December 2007 at approximately 14:55. Sutton also covers certain evening journeys using buses on their way on/off night duties.

Photo © Alex Harrison.

Navigation

	Previous	Next
Chronologically	453	210
Numerically	162	166

See also routes 156, 164

Photo Gallery | Bus route list | Operational details | Service changes | Operators & Garages