This attractively packaged picture album — with short articles — covers a period around 100 to 120 years ago, as the motorbus progressed from new-fangled novelty to establishing itself – and the London General Omnibus Company — as London’s main form of street public transport.
To many, this might seem like ancient history, but it is well told and impressively illustrated, with tales that resonate with what is happening today.
The story begins in the Edwardian decade when it was by no means a done deal that petrol engines, clutches and gearboxes would be the prevailing form of propulsion. Petrol electrics (the hybrid of the day), paraffin-fired steam engines and early battery-electrics all had their supporters.
Pictures from 1912 suggest that elements of the Bus Safety Standard that Transport for London (TfL) is implementing today were being given serious consideration by authorities concerned then, as now, by accidents in which pedestrians fell into the path of moving buses. Today’s focus on modifying the shape of bus fronts to lessen injuries contrasts with what look like cowcatchers and elaborate safety nets 110 years ago, fearsome looking devices never put into production.
Something we take for g…
