General Private Hire Regals: T150-T154

This small batch of Regals for the General was for Private Hire work. As such they were exempt from the Stage Carriage Vehicles Regulations in force for London buses. So they were 27ft long, rather than the London 26ft, on the standard 17ft wheelbase of the time. They had rather low-slung bodies by Hoyal, that had fold-back canvas roofs and dual doors: one at the body front and one at the rear, on the nearside. There was also an offside emergency door, behind the driver's half-door. Full-drop windows provided plenty of ventilation when required. These features produced a long, low, fairly sleek machine that still contrived to look old-fashioned in the rapidly changing fashions of the day.
T150-T154 were given registrations in reverse order from their fleet numbers, and went into service in May 1930 from the Private Hire Depot in Brixton. In July 1930 they were transferred under the control of Green Line Coaches Ltd. Two years later, in July 1932 this became part of London General Country Services. The coaches received the GreenLine green, black and silver livery, with Green Line fleetnames, although continuing on Private Hire duties from Brixton.

During their career with LGCS the order of fleet numbers was inverted, so that the registrations and fleet numbers were in the same sense. (LGCS, and the Country area of LT was methodical about registration numbers, whereas the Central Area of London Transport was notoriously chaotic in their registrations. One wonders whether someone at Chiswick ran a book about the next registration, pulling registration numbers out of a barrel into which new ones were periodically mixed).

In due course London Transport took over LGCS, and the renumbered Ts were refitted into the sequence. As time went on they received modern embellishments such as rear view mirrors, and had their side-lights moved from cabside and nearside mudguard onto the front of the roof.

They continued with Private Hire work until 1938, when they were replaced by the LTC coaches and sold.

T51-206: bus histories photo references