Route 216

Kingston's north of the river route to Staines, essentially unchanged for the last 75 years and recipient of Kingston Garage's first RFs.

Five to five on Saturday 18 Sep 76, a week before the 216's conversion to Bristols. By the end of the year, the remaining Kingston RFs will only be running on the 218 and 219. RF532 loads for Staines via Sunbury, RT4286 on the 71 still shows Kingston as its destination.

Photo © John Parkin

Dates of RF operation

1 Jul 59 to 25 Sep 76 (and unscheduled to 30 Mar 79)

Converted to OMO 18 Nov 64

(total 17 years 3 months, of which 5 years 5 months crew-operated)

Destinations

KINGSTON Bus Station and STAINES Moor Lane via Sunbury

RF Garages

K Kingston

NB Norbiton (Sunday allocation until 13 Oct 59)

Reason for single-deck operation

Initially, the route was one-man operated, presumably for eonomy due to low passenger numbers, which required small single-deckers. However, once the route was converted to full-size buses during the war, there is no obvious physical reason why the route could not have been double-decked, in accordance with LT policy. Can anyone provide a reason, or should we assume that the traffic never justified it?

The old terminus at Kingston Station forecourt. The 216 shared the stand with Leatherhead's 406 and 418 routes. Here in 1950, new RT3169 on the 418 waits next to T738, half way through its nine year life with LT. All three routes still operate from Kingston, with the 406 and 418 now the only two interworked routes on the network.

Photo © J Aston

Route history

The General introduced route 198 between Kingston and Staines via Sunbury on New Year's Day 1933. The route used four one-man operated 18-seat DA-class Dennis Darts, running seven days a week. The General became the LPTB in July and the route was renumbered 216 in October 1934.

Traffic built up on Saturdays and summer Sundays, with an increase to 10 buses required by 1936. The little Darts were however retained until the 1939, when they were replaced by brand new CR-class rear-engined Cubs, the first of which were delivered to Kingston for the 206 and 216 just after the outbreak of war. Despite their half-cab design, these operated as one-man buses and enough had been delivered by November 1939 for the petrol DAs to go into store.

The CRs with their untested design were not suited to wartime use and were put into store within a couple of years. January 1941 saw the Kingston to Sunbury short-workings converted to crew T operation and the route was converted fully to crew operation, using LT Scooters, on 30 Sep 42.

The allocation of Scooters continued, supplemented by Ts at the weekends from 1946, until replaced by new TDs in 1949. Still the Saturday and summer Sunday workings required extra buses, so the dozen allocated TDs continued to be supplemented by Ts. The number of Sunbury to Kingston short-workings was halved in June 1951, when the 264 was extended from Sunbury to Kingston. At the same time, their terminus moved from Sunbury Village to Sunbury Station. Extra journeys on Wednesdays from 1951 to 1955 were covered by TDs borrowed from the 215. The additional 6 TDs provided on Saturdays for the Kingston to Sunbury short-workings were replaced from May 1959 by an extension of double-deck route 71 to Sunbury, using 5 RTs. From 1952 to 1959, the extra Sunday buses were operated by Norbiton, first allocated Ts, then TDs, and finally RFs.

A summer 1968 view of RF442 loading passengers, presumably at the start of the route in Staines.

The 216 was one of the Central Area routes selected for the re-introduction of one-man operation planned for 1959, as part of the efficiency savings resulting from the 1958 bus strike. Drawn from the pool of RFs available from their replacement by double-deckers on the 233 at West Green, plus a few of those released by the conversion of the 208^A into RLH route 178, red RFs 502 to 538 were converted in the spring of 1959. However, union agreement was not forthcoming and so the buses were used as crew buses to replace TDs at Uxbridge and Romford and on the 216 at Kingston. 11 of the batch were licensed on 1 July (RFs 506, 511, 518, 523, 525, 526, 527, 529, 530, 531, 533, of which the first and last had preceded the others as trainers), Kingston's first RFs. These buses also replaced TDs on the Sunday operation of the 206, recently switched to Kingston, from the following Sunday.

Crew RFs operated the route for nearly 5½ years before OMO finally did return to the Central Area. The 216 was one of four routes converted on 18 Nov 64, along with the 201, 206 (by now operated from Fulwell) and the 250. In another 6½ years there would be no more single-deck crew operation in London.

Otherwise the stability of the route continued, with RF operation giving way to BL-class Bristols on 26 Sep 76 - but with RFs appearing regularly up until their last day in service. September 1982 saw the route move to Norbiton and convert to LS operation, with an extension to Tolworth coming at the start of 1983. This section gained a brief double-deck operation on schooldays from 1984 to 1987, when the Tolworth section became the K2. Otherwise, the 216 has been single-deck operated since its inception, and apart from a summer extension to Thorpe Park between 1985 and 2002 continues the service started in 1933. Today's Darts are worked from Fulwell.

RF492 sits at the Three Fishes in Sunbury Village, terminus of the 237, on 30 Mar 79, the last day of RF operation at Kingston and well after the 216 had converted to BL operation. RM863 behind illustrates the change that came over route 237 after its long run of RF operation.

Red RF routes

Route 216