Finally, the tender of the long anticipated Routemaster Heritage Routes in London
has been announced. Both routes will have a peak vehicle requirement of 5 buses,
and operated by TfL-owned examples (i.e. the "Dartmasters" refurblished in 2002-
2005).
Both services are expected to commence in November this year, just before the
last normal Routemaster operated service, the 159, to convert to opo.
Those two new routes would require 5 buses each- or about 15-16 buses [including spares]. the specification for the tender is for routemasters with Euro2 engines.
after2000, 50 [or 51] routemasters were bought by TfL- and still owned by them- and refurbished for further service- including euro2 engines. those buses still run on route 13 38 & 159. from what i have heard, the intention is to select the best 15-16 buses from this batch for those new routes [the earliest buses are the 20 allocated to route 13- and they are the worst!]
so, during October, the process of replacing the routemasters on route 13 [by crew operated Scanias] would begin, releasing a float of routemasters , so the best ones out of the 50 can be selected. after 29 october, many more such buses would become available from route 38.
