A Ramble Through Metroline-land
6 March 2022
ABOVE: The light is already fading at 1536 on Bank Holiday Monday 3 January 2022, as I leave TE1095 on route 204 in Wembley High Road. All pictures in this article were taken on 3 January 2022.
NOTE: This article was originally published at view-from-the-top-deck.blog, where it did not include the "title" picture above. Please bear this in mind when reading the first paragraph below or nothing will make sense!
I start my article today with a photo of an Arriva bus and an RATP bus in Harrow. As it turns out, the journey I was about to undertake would be exclusively with Metroline, but I didn’t know that at the time, and I didn’t take a picture of a Metroline bus in Harrow. Still, all London Buses look the same, don’t they?
ABOVE: Harrow Bus Station: Arriva London’s HV187 completes a journey on the 340 from Edgware (the modern equivalent of the 286 that I mention below), while brand-new BCE 47105, of RATP Group, is about to start its limited-stop X140 journey to Heathrow Airport. Meanwhile, just out of sight is the 186 that will start me on my six-route Metroline odyssey!
It’s Bank Holiday Monday and I am heading to Brent Cross; after which – who knows! If you’re going to Brent Cross from Harrow, you should catch the 182 (Harrow Weald to Brent Cross). You might get there even more quickly by taking the 183 (Pinner to Golders Green) to West Hendon and changing to the 142 (Watford Junction to Brent Cross), but you could lose time on a poor connection. You should certainly not catch the 186 (Northwick Park to Brent Cross), which goes the long way round – the very long way round.
At 10am on a Sunday / Bank Holiday service, the 182 is scheduled to take 47 minutes between the two; the 186 takes 69. Have a look at this route map and you will understand why the 186 takes its time!
I knew this was the case when I boarded the 186, but I suspect some people get caught out. The 186 just shows “Brent Cross” on the front, with no clue as to all of the exotic places that it will pass through en route. A display showing “Edgware, then Brent Cross”, might help, as might a nice big “Going to Brent Cross? Take the 182” poster in Harrow Bus Station.
The 186 is the quickest way to get from Harrow to Edgware. In fact, when I first discovered it, the 186 only ran between Harrow and Edgware, taking 20-28 minutes via its main intermediate traffic objective, Belmont Circle. There was also a 286, which linked Harrow and Edgware via a slightly longer route, taking 5-8 minutes more.
Long before I knew the route, though, it was part of trunk route 18, which still runs today between Sudbury and Euston. Prior to 1970, the 18 ran all the way from London Bridge to Edgware, with journeys on to Aldenham Works (although it worked in sections and I don’t think any journeys covered the full route).
When route 18’s peers were being cut in two, the 18, being so long, was cut into three, and both the 182 and the 186 were born. Funnily enough, the 286 arrived the same day, as a stump of the old 114 (which still exists and now runs Ruislip to Mill Hill).
The logic of the 186 / 286 numbering for two different but linked routes was later completely lost when the 286 was tagged onto the already long and busy route 140 (Heathrow to Harrow Weald) – first on Sundays and then daily.
At most times of day, the 140 ran in two sections – the ‘old’ route and the ‘new’ one. But there were some through journeys, especially as Edgware Garage had an allocation (alongside Harrow Weald). I once did the complete trip from Edgware Station to Heathrow Terminal Four, at the back end of the Friday evening rush hour. It took not far short of two hours. The only person with us all the way was the driver, from Edgware Garage, for whom two ’rounders’ would presumably have made up his entire working day.
But I digress [surely, not: Ed]. Even once you get to Edgware, the 186 is still not the quickest way to Brent Cross; that would now be the aforementioned 142. As we leave Edgware, with Brent Cross to the south-east, the 186 now turns north.
We turn east onto the busy A41 dual carriageway. There are still some Request Stop flags on bus stops round here, even though I thought they had all long-since been removed. We pass Apex Corner, where two major roads – the A1 and the A41 – meet. Not a junction for the faint-heated motorist, this one.
After pulling off the A41, we reach Mill Hill Broadway station, where a bus station has been tucked in right under the M1 motorway. Bleak doesn’t begin to describe it. Only at this point do we start to make a broad heading towards Brent Cross.
We pass down Lanacre Avenue into the Grahame Park Estate, and on to the Colindale Campus of Barnet Southgate College. I don’t think any of these points are especially significant in the grand scheme of things, but they are significant to this trip, as I will explain in a moment. Finally to Brent Cross for that tea and cake.
I’m planning a separate article about Brent Cross and its bus station, but suffice to say here that I’m heading out of Brent Cross again on whatever comes first to stop C (which is served by 10 routes). That turns out to be a C11 to Archway. This started life in 1972 as one of the minibus services operated with FS-class Ford Transits. It has progressed to 10.2 metre Enviro 200s, but would probably merit a double-decker nowadays if its roads could fit one.
It’s certainly a busy run today. Most seats are taken from Brent Cross, although the first person leaves after only two stops. There’s a steady turnover of people as we head through West Hampstead and onto the Finchley Road. After Swiss Cottage we turn left and head for Chalk Farm, but turn off again before we get there, in favour of Belsize Park.
Another unexpected turn takes us to the Hampstead Heath terminus of the 24 (from Pimlico – one of the longest-established unchanged routes in London).
Immediately after, the bus has its tightest squeeze due to an illegally-parked van on Constantine Road. Clearance is a very small number of inches wider than the bus. The van driver is in the cab, totally oblivious, with his McDonalds lunch. “TfL is sorry for the late arrival of your C11 service, as it’s the van driver’s lunchtime.”
Further along, we skirt the western edge of Hampstead Heath itself and enter the classy area of Parliament Hill Fields. Archway itself takes me by surprise as we suddenly turn onto Highgate Hill and we’ve arrived.
Next, I take a 263 up into central Barnet. It’s a very straight route through some of the nicer suburbs of north London – East and North Finchley and on into Whetstone. The Sunday timetable is clearly too generous for this Bank Holiday, though, as the service is “regulated” not once, not twice, but three times during the journey.
The bus is heading for Barnet Hospital, but I bow out a few stops before, at Barnet Church. From here I am taking one of my favourite London routes – the 107 (New Barnet Station to Edgware).
ABOVE: Metroline TE 1312 at Barnet Hospital. I had travelled on this bus up to Barnet Church before transferring to the 107. The two routes run parallel for a short distance and I have taken this picture from the top deck of the 107.
The 107 used to have a very complicated fare chart, in the days of graduated fares in London, because, it leaves the Greater London boundary but then, uniquely for a Transport for London service, goes back in. It’s a lovely ride past some very posh houses in Arkley, before it crosses into Hertfordshire and digs deep into the residential part of Borehamwood, coming to the Elstree Studios, Borehamwood Tesco and Shenley Road, the main shopping street that completely hides the fact that there is a huge Retail Park just yards away out of sight.
ABOVE: Metroline’s TEH 1224 near the Hertsmere Civic Offices in Borehamwood
And just behind that, according to my map, is Walford Police Station. But I’m not sure if it’s still open or not. That’s not an observation about the number of Police Stations that have closed in recent years; rather it’s because this is part of the BBC’s Elstree complex where EastEnders is filmed. They’ve just started using a newly-built replacement set and I don’t know whether the map, which also shows Albert Square, Turpin Street, George Street and Bridge Street, is showing the old set or the new one.
(Apparently they film Pointless in Elstree as well. Alexander Armstrong, after his morning show on Classic FM, reportedly travels from the central London radio studio to Elstree on the back of a motorbike!)
There are two London bus routes in Borehamwood – the other being the 292. They both go to Edgware, but the quirk of their routings means that they do so from opposite sides of the road.
So I’m back in Edgware, and trying out the 204 to Sudbury Town station. Something nearly always seems to go wrong when I try this route – last time my bus got terminated suddenly at Preston Road, and the time before, I got stuck in a solid traffic jam at much the same point. But on this occasion the ride is straight-forward and relaxing.
On a London bus ride I can end up anywhere, and it’s not unusual for me to end up back on the same roads that I have already used earlier in the day, travelling in the same direction. I reflect on this as we pass down Lanacre Avenue into the Grahame Park Estate, and on to the Colindale Campus of Barnet Southgate College; roads I had covered on the 186 about four-and-a-half hours earlier.
I bail out from my 204 in Wembley High Road. It’s 1536 and the light is starting to fade already.
I finish my day on a 92 down through Sudbury and Greenford, to Brunel’s famous Iron Bridge east of Southall. It’s dark by the time I get there of course. Still, the shortest day of the year has already passed and the evenings will soon open out.