Imperfect 10

Hello and welcome to another late post! As you may know, route 10 converted to full New Bus For London operation on 26th April 2014. As I was unavailable on that date, I decided to cover it on a much quieter Monday May 5th (bank holiday), although I could tell instantly that the conversion had a rocky start and the LT's were still malfunctioning. For example, I know that LT170 managed to crash itself into a tree on the first day of the conversion, and I also saw LT149 in the middle of the road with its hazards on, clearly showing it had broken down. The buses seem to spend ages at stops and the service has now become extremely bunchy and you can often find big gaps in the service, especially on Sundays.
                Nevertheless, I arrived at Hammersmith Bus Station at 11:45 and then found out that LVF wasn't working. This was bad because I was trying to catch the new Gemini 3 buses for Stagecoach London and the LT's for the 38. Luckily, I found out later that they weren't out after all. The allocation numbers for the 10's batch of New Routemasters are LT148 (LTZ1148 etc etc)-LT175.

The rear of LT154, a bus which I annoyingly just missed.

In the end I boarded LT174 and rode it end to end. I took quite a few pictures of number 10 buses passing in the other direction, as well as some pictures that I took whilst on the ground.

LT161 heads west towards Hammersmith.

  I also accidentally discovered a running day on routes 9H and 15H that same day. I do have a few pictures, and they will be on a post which should come out within the next week.

Tut Tut Tut. Here is a broken down LT149, which is standing on Tottenham Court Road like a lemon. Personally, I thought this was quite a surprise, although these buses seem to be constantly breaking down and getting involved in incidents.

Rear of LT156 at the stand on York Way, Kings Cross.

Oh, it's LT154 again. This is the sole picture I have of a new LT on the 10 displaying Kings Cross on the front of it.

This is a rather special bus, because it's the first LT in a chrome Year Of The Bus livery. It first appeared on route 9, where I got a picture of it in a Random Observations post, but it has now become part of the 10's allocation. Having said that, this bus and quite a few of the other buses allocated to route 10 are straying onto route 9, meaning that its LT's seem to be straying onto route 10. There is a picture of one of the Routemasters allocated to route 9 on the 10 later on in the post.

The bus I was on, LT174, stands at Hammersmith Bus Station.

OH, NOT AGAIN!! Here is the front of LT154 at Hammersmith Bus Station.

  Routes 9 and  10 are the best of friends. They are very similar routes and are both based at Stamford Brook Bus Garage. However, they had a falling out in October 2013, because the 10 was jealous about route 9 gaining new, classy-looking buses (which are just a dark and dingy prison cell on the inside). But thankfully, the falling out ended when route 10 also received the new buses exactly half a year later. Because the 9 and the 10 are now friends again, I thought it would be nice to include a picture of them together, both with new buses.

.Here is a picture of the two routes together at Hammersmith Bus Station.

The iBus on route LT174 is deafening. Also, TFL installed a 12-hour clock on iBus from 11th April, which can be really handy if you don't have something with you that has a clock on it. However, it only appears when the Bus Stopping sign isn't present, so if the bells on the bus keep ringing, it's bad news for you.

Here is LT88, straying onto route 10 despite being allocated to route 9.

  Although the mixing and matching between the two routes at Stamford Brook continues to happen, the 10 mostly keeps its newer Routemasters to itself. However, at Holloway garage there are also two NB4L routes, and Metroline have decided to put most of the newer Routemasters allocated to route 390 onto the 24 and vice versa.

Finally, LT156 on stand at Kings Cross.

The Scania Omnicity buses that were allocated to route 10 will transfer to route E3 from 31st May, when London United win the contract from Metroline. Thanks for reading!