First And RATP - The History

 A Delicious Mixture?

In the calendar of the Established Church, the last Sunday before Advent (Nov 24 in 2024) is called "Stir Up Sunday". That was the day, apparently, when the Christmas Pudding would be stirred. Congregations would also be exhorted to stir up their fervour for preparing for CHRISTmas spiritually, ready for "the off" at midnight on Christmas Eve.

Mrs fbb's puds (ooh, she does do a really yummy pud!) were assembled and steamed on Friday last.

A Dubious Mixture?

In 1933 a number of private operators in London were compulsorily merged to form London Transport, operator of buses, trams, trolleybuses and the underground. One of the companies was called London United.

Move on fifty years or so and London's buses were being prepared for "privatisation" in a different style from the rest of the country. These companies would be contracted to London Transport, later named London Buses Ltd. It would be a franchised operation, although the "f word" was not used back then.

One of the companies took on the old name, London United.

The company was sold to its management.

Its new owners soon realised that being wealthy was less hard work than running buses and so they sold out to RATP, a group which was aiming to expand significantly in the UK.

Next into the mixing bowl that was the bus business in London comes a small start-up company, Borehamwood Travel Services. Readers may be able to guess in which part of London BTS began its operation.

BTS bid for, and acquired, a major London service, Routemaster operated, namely route 13.

BTS was bought by Blazefield Holdings (part of the Giles Fearnley empire) and rebranded as Sovereign.

Whilst most of the service was crew operated as above, Evening and Sunday buses were "one man" and run by other companies including MTL (a Merseyside excursion into London) ...

... and Metroline.

Eventually it all came under Sovereign management, just in time for Blazefield to be sold to Transdev!

Are you keeping up at the back? 

For a brief period, Transdev had branded its acquisition "London Sovereign"!

Then it gets more complicated!

Transdev (part of the French Government) and RATP (part of the French Government) played a game of musical buses and RATP got Sovereign as the prize. 

But it was not even as simple (?) as that. 

RATP formed a partnership with the Australian owners of Tower Transit, so, for a while, the 13 was operated by the Aussie lot.

Eventually it all became RATP - thankfully.

Epsom Salted Away?

Epsom Coaches was a respected quality operator of coaches in the Surrey area. With deregulation, the company expanded into bus services ...

... including dipping a tentative toe into London tendered work.

The "group" was bought by RATP who developed the bus side as Quality Line ...

... then closed down the coaching business and ultimately merged Quality Line with London United.

There have been a few twists an turns on the way, but, in general terms, that is how the Pudding Mix that is RATP Dev London evolved.

On  Wednesday , we look at some of the specific operations that First will be taking over.

But not everything because it's a big list!

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"NOT the Advent Calendar", but ...

     The      

  CHRIST -mas 

  Criss-muss  

   Confusion  

 Critique  16 

 Greeks, so they say, have a word for it!

One of those words is ...

... which would be written in English letters as lexi. From this we get "lexicon", a word list; and "lexicographer", a writer of words, i.e. a dictionary compiler.

Another word is ...

... logos. From this we get "logic", "logo" (a "word" which describes a business), and any amount of "ologies".

Theology is words about God

Tegestology is words about beer mats

Philumenology is words about match box labels

Omnibology is words about buses

The last one has yet to make it into any dictionary, but give it time and it will be there.

So what does John mean by "The Word"?

The Word was the source of life.

Maybe think of phrases like:-

In all these cases the word implies activity and authority. 

The word of God is His activity and authority that supports those human beings who seek his help.

So John tells us that the word is essential for life.

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  Next Cement mini blog : Tues 17th Dec