Motor bus

The first London General Omnibus Company route map, 1911.

Motorbuses could run over much longer routes than horse buses. B-types began operating on services all over central London and the suburbs, and there were soon night bus services as well. The buses could cope with all weather conditions, although the level of comfort was not much better than a horse bus. There were canvas covers for top- deck passengers to use in wet weather, but no roof. The driver's cab was completely open, apart from a short canopy.

B-type on the first night bus service in Piccadilly Circus, 1913. The bus is outside Piccadilly Underground station at 02:15 in the morning.

Exposed to the elements, circa 1918.

Dominating London's streets, at Piccadilly Circus, 1919. Every bus in this photograph, taken just after the First World War, is a B-type.

One of the first Sunday excursion services to Windsor Castle ready for the road outside Hounslow Barracks Underground station, 1912.

After the LGOC became part of the Underground Group in 1913, bus and rail services were more closely coordinated. At weekends, special services ran out to London's countryside from stations at the end of the line like Hounslow and Golders Green. Buses that carried people to work in the week now also took them on Sunday outings.

The Homeward Way at the End of the Day, 1914. Poster by Walter E Spradbery

B-type bus fitted with an open charabanc body for private hire and excursion work, Islington, 1921.

Eighteen B-types were fitted with 20-seat single deck bodies to operate the Blackwall Tunnel service, 1912.

B-type buses under fire on the Western Front, circa 1914.

In the First World War, over 1000 B-type buses were commandeered for military service. Some were used as troop transport, often with their London drivers, on the Western Front in France and Belgium. Others were adapted for use as ambulances, lorries and even a mobile pigeon loft. Many of these buses never returned to the streets of London. Those that remained in London service with the LGOC soon had new female staff taking fares as conductors and servicing the buses at garages as cleaners and mechanics.

B-type bus converted into a mobile pigeon loft during the First World War, in France or Belgium, circa 1915. Carrier pigeons were often used by the army to carry messages on the Western Front.

Wreck of a B-type bus at St Eloi, France, on the Western Front, 1914. The bus was hit by shell fire only two weeks after leaving Willesden garage in 1914. It later gave its name to Bus House War Cemetery at St Eloi.

A wartime female bus conductor in Chelsea, circa 1916.

K-type buses on Aldwych, the next development from the B-type by the LGOC, 1923.

B340 at the Museum of British Transport, Clapham. It has been on display at London Transport Museum in Covent Garden since 1980. Photograph taken in Clapham, 1972.