ROUTEVIASTER REVISITED
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Costing just £4,000, the two-crew Routemaster could still make financial sense if operated in the right areas
11 Most of the interest in bus deregulation and the opening up to tender of hitherto monopoly-controlled routes has centred on the new generation of miniand midibuses. For many of the routes which independent operators will take up in the next few months, however, all those light van or truck-based buses are just too small. With new double-deckers out of the reckoning for most independent operators at 280,400 or more, there has been a resurgence in the market for second-hand deckers.
The obvious vehicle choice for the smaller operator in this area is the second-hand Leyland Atlantean, Daimler Fleetline or Bristol VR. An outlay of somewhere between 27,000 and 210,000 will usually buy a good used vehicle with many years of service still in front of it. There is, however, the intriguing alternative of an even cheaper doubledecker, in the form of the ex-London AEC-built Routemaster.
Being a front-engined half-cab vehicle with an open rear platform, the Routemaster is not the ideal bus for most small operators, if only because of its need for a conductor. There are, however, some high-density urban routes outside the high-wage South East where it might pay to run a two-crew bus, as long as the price is low enough.
We have tested just such a vehicle, a 1964 Routemaster which costs just 24,000 in as-tested condition with a current Freedom From Defects certificate.
The Routemaster represents the pinnacle of development of the traditional British double-decker; indeed, by the time it entered service it was conceptually obsolete, the rear-engined doubledecker having already appeared. When first seen in prototype form in 1954, the Routemaster was certainly advanced compared with existing urban buses. Gone was the traditional ladder chassis frame, replaced by a load-bearing aluminium-alloy integral body and underframe structure.
Instead of leaf springs, the Routemaster sat on coils all round, those at the front acting through independent double wishbones, also in light alloy. The brakes, too, differed sharply from previous (and subsequent) practice in being actuated via engine-driven continualflow power hydraulics.
The vehicle which we tested was sold by London Buses some time ago. It served as promotional transport for a London store (in whose unusual colours it still was at the time of the test) and is now back for sale at AlIco Passenger Vehicles of Ruislip.
The Routemaster was designed to take either AEC's AV590 engine (of 9.6 litres) or Leyland's 9.8 litre 0600 unit: this vehicle is fitted with the latter. It is a naturally-aspirated engine, delivering 86kW (115hp) at 1,800rpm, while the maximum torque of 556Nm (410Ibft) comes at a lowly 900rpm. This unstressed engine is connected via a fluid flywheel to an electro-hydraulicallycontrolled automatic gearbox with full manual override.
• PERFORMANCE
The Routemaster has always had a reputation for being a rapid, nippy machine. While that must have been true when it was announced, it is not quite so true now, if our example is anything to go by. Although the vehicle certainly did not disgrace itself on our urban test route which takes in the West End of London and some country and normal town running, it was by no means a sparkling performer.
Part of the blame for the apparent lethargy must be laid at the door of the transmission. For an early commercial vehicle automatic transmission, this is rather good in many areas. When left to its own devices, its change quality — especially on full-throttle up-shifts, is high, and downchanges are also generally smooth, but the unit is reluaant to change down except when the engine is really labouring. If the driver attempts to hasten or smooth an up-shift by feathering the throttle, the transmission returns the kindness with a thump.
The horizontal gate on the side of the steering column (with a pull-out guard on reverse) offers easily-operated full manual override; manual up-shifts also need care for smoothness.
The real problems with the transmission lie in the gearbox settings. The unit is set to start off from rest in second gear, and to change into top before 40km/h has been reached, This tends to leave the Routemaster struggling when heavily-laden unless manual gear selection is used. In the congested traffic of central London, we found that the Routemaster would not keep up with Metrobuses (which were admittedly not as full as our bus was with the equivalent of 60 people on board). Acceleration was better if first is selected from rest — but that defeats the purpose of having an automatic gearbox.
The Leyland 600 engine is, in any case, a much less powerful and much less torquey engine than modern bus engines. Its distinctive knocking noise in this installation hints of power, but that power is lacking. Loaded as it was, the Routemaster would not climb our standard test incline of Muswell Hill in London in second gear — but made a noisy, slow climb perfectly adequately in first. On the long incline out of Hemel Hempstead to our intermediate fuel point, the bus was unable to get above 40km/h, and it did little better on the gentle rise of Seven Sisters Road in North London. On the flat, it wound up to its maximum speed (at which point the sometimes erratic speedometer was almost dead accurate) of 66km/h quite quickly.
• DRIVEABILITY The steering is quite good, with little lost motion and an acceptably heavy weighting at the rim of the vast wheel. Tired hy draulics on this example meant that the power assistance could drop away quite markedly if engine speed dropped to the idle. This could catch out the unwary when entering tight bends with the accelerator pedal fully released; unless and until the transmission changes down the steering becomes surprisingly heavy.
The brakes, in contrast, are a pleasure to use. The full power hydraulic system has none of the over-sensitivity of the modern air system. The pedal — again pleasantly heavily weighted — has good feel, and it is easy to feather to a smooth stop. There is little discernible engine braking, but the service brakes felt perfectly reassuring on those few long downgrades we encountered.
The handbrake, a massive mechanical affair to the driver's left, has enough mechanical advantage to hold the bus easily against transmission creep and on inclines like Muswell Hill.
Some of the most important points for an urban bus are ease of manoeuvrability and ease of placing in tight traffic, and here the Routemaster scores highly. The driver sits high and upright — well above the saloon seating level — with vertical windows close by to the front and both sides. The position of the front wheels right at the front of the vehicle makes gauging position and turn radii very easy, but while the lock angles are good the extreme length of wheelbase compared with those of modern buses can cause problems.
• RIDE The long wheelbase has a benefit for vehicle ride quality: there is none of the pitching associated with short-wheelbase rear-engined buses. Although the steering column can shake quite violently on the ever-more-common rough urban streets, little road shock comes past the sophisticated suspension. The ride, in general, is to a high standard — certainly when the vehicle is heavily laden. The impression of smoothness is heightened by the general rigidity of the integral structure, and the absence of rattles from the interior trim.
While the seating upstairs and down for the passengers comes close in comfort to that used in newer vehicles, the same cannot be said of the driver's compartment. There is no getting away from the fact that this is a small, isolated box, and appears to be a monument to lack of planning.
• CONTROL
The main driving controls — gear selector, handbrake, horn and the everso-simple, huge indicator rotary switch — all fall easily to hand, and the pedals are well positioned. The starter switch, a curved pull-down handle, lives above the driver's left ear, along with the lighting master switch and the cabin lighting switch. The headlamp switch, which only operates when the master side/tail lamps switch is on, is by the driver's right knee, with the dip switch on the floor to the left. The engine stop control is behind and below the driver's left elbow: pulling it triggers a charming "stop" sign which drops like a tired railway signal arm from above the windscreen. The ceiling of this compartment is a jumble of wiper motor and mechanism and destination blind controls. The entire instrumentation consists of the speedometer (with no odometer) and a repeater lamp for the direction indicators.
Ventilation of this compartment is via a sliding side glass on the nearside, vents under the windscreen and a drop-glass in the sliding door, which can itself be left open. On the then hottest day of the year, none of this compensated for the lack of forced ventilation when the vehicle was stationary in Knightsbridge congestion, but a satisfying gale of air could be generated at any speed above 10 km/h. There is a heater for winter.
While the passengers are offered typical London Transport moquette seat covers, the driver gets a traditional leather seat which does not breathe at all, so that on hot days he/she will end up bathed in sweat after quite a short time. To counter any feelings of claustrophobia from sitting in such a narrow compartment, the driver is provided with an emergency release for the entire lefthand window.
Ventilation in the saloon is by individually-controlled drop-glasses, and there is saloon heating whose effectiveness will obviously be limited by the presence of the wide platform opening.
The platform step is very close to the ground — an easy step up from the road and an near-level movement from the average kerb.
Access to the engine for routine maintenance is very good. The glass-rein forced plastic engine cover (the rest of the cab front and nearside wing is also in GRP) lifts on spring-assisted hinges to ex pose the top and left-hand side of the en gine. The replacement engine in this vehicle was exceptionally clean, apart from traces of soot from a leak in the ex haust manifold-to-downpipe joint. The four six-volt batteries live under the remova ble floor of the under-stairs luggage area, and the 132-litre diesel tank has a flip-up cap on the offside.
• ECONOMY The Routemaster has always been held to be an economical bus, but the results obtained on this test surprised even the CM
staff. Even on the dense urban part of our test route, taking in the busiest part of London and with several stops per kilometre to simulate high-density passenger' work, the bus used just 27.7 litres/100km (10.2napg). Out on the more open roads of Hertfordshire, with fewer stops and fewer fuel-sapping starts in second gear, the consumption dropped even further, to 23.5 litres/100km (12mpg). This gave an overall fuel consumption of 26.6 litres/100km (10.6mpg) — making the Routemaster the first vehicle ever to break the 28.21/100km (10mpg) barrier over our urban bus test route.
This economy was, of course, obtained partly at the expense of speed. Being driven hard on the congested urban route, the bus managed an average of only 21.11unth (13.1mph) — but in its defence it should be pointed out that the traffic in the Knightsbridge/Hyde Park Corner area was almost stationary. On the more open sections, the average speed rose to 32.4km/h (20.1mph) to give an average of 23.6Iun/h (14.7mph) for the whole route, which is not very much different from those of more recent buses.
The comparative lack of performance is shown up by the time it took the Routemaster to climb Muswell Hill from our hill-start point halfway up. This took a yawning 1 minute 33 seconds — almost exactly double the 46 seconds taken by the 11.6m Leyland National 2 (which has the same passenger capacity but in singledeck form) over the same stretch. The difference is that the National could only manage a consumption of 33.21/1001un (8.5mpg) over the whole route.
• CONCLUSION It might seem odd to have subjected a 22year-old bus to the test procedures which we use for current production models, but the results show that it was not irrelevant. The Routemaster shows itself to be surprisingly competitive in key areas such as economy and ride, and there are certain parts of the country where operators might well find that a vehicle such as this makes more sense than some of the new "deregulation" bus offerings, even after allowing for the doubled wage costs of a two-person crew.
by Allan Winn