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Contacts

For commercial or county council tendered routes, or for issues such as bus driver recruitment, contact the relevant company. For lost property, contact the company within 4 days of loss, or TfL's lost property office thereafter. The following routes are outside the London Buses network, and in these cases you should contact the operator directly: 32 (Compass Bus
Stagecoach (Sun)), 242 (Metroline / Uno), 306 (Sullivan Buses), 398 (Sullivan Buses), 581 (Carousel Buses), 583 (Carousel Buses), Please check on the routes page if you don’t know the name of the operator of your route – the operators are named on the right.

If you do not receive a satisfactory response or resolution to your comments, you should contact London Travewatch. Please note LTW do NOT deal with lost property enquiries.

Garage code index

These are the codes used in this site to identify bus garages, or official codes.
A AC AD AE AF AH AL AR AV AW BC BK BN BN BT BT BW BX C CP CT CY DH DS DT DX E EC EW FC FW G GW GY HC HD HF HK HO HT HZ JE KB KC LI MB MG MY N NP NS NX ON PB PD PL PM PT PV PV Q QB RA RM RP RR S SF SG SH SI SM SN SO SP SW T TB TC TF TH TK TL TP TV UB UE UX UX V W WH WJ WK WL WN X

Operator & Garage list

The table below is arranged by operator, listed alphabetically according to fleet/trading name in bold. The addresses for the company headquarters are written in red underneath, alongside the legal company names.

The left hand column gives the reference code for the garage. These are usually offical codes used by the operators, but those written in parentheses are unofficial codes. The second column gives the name of the garage/operating centre, the third the address. Some of these operators have other garages that do not operate any London routes. You must remember that bus garages are private property, and if you wish to visit a depot you must obtain permission before entering the site.

The fourth column is the list of London area routes, but in some cases the garages operate other bus routes, or other kinds of work such as coaching, which are not listed. Beware that just because a garage is shown as operating on a particular route does not mean it is the only, or the main, garage to do so. The fifth column is the garage PVR, or the maximum number of buses on the road on these routes at any one time. Of course, all garages have spare vehicles allocated in addition, and in some cases driver trainers etc. Please note that these figures include only the "main network" of TfL contracted or LLSA routes – some garages also operate non-TfL or non-London services, coaches, rail replacements etc. These figures are also subtotalled by company and by group.

The last column gives the official LBSL garage code (see foot of page for more information on garage codes).

The data in this table is available as a CSV file, suitable for importing into spreadsheet programs such as MS Excel.

The grand total PVR is 7418.

LBSL Codes

Every garage operating services that form part of the LBSL network is given an official LBSL garage code (right hand column). Such codes are given not only to garages running LBSL contracts, but also to those running commercial bus services under London Bus agreements. There is also a code for the Croydon Tramlink! The codes are used internally by LBSL, for administrative purposes.

Many operators also give their garages codes, sometimes for similar administrative reasons, or sometimes – particularly where they only have one garage – for "enthusiast reasons". These are not always the same as the LBSL codes, although they often are.

Many of the codes are long-established, going back to LBL (and in many cases LGOC) days, and are well-known among staff and enthusiasts. There is usually some sort of logic to the code allocated. In the early part of the 20th Century, the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) allocated its garages codes by going through the alphabet – initially A, B, C, etc; and then AA, AB, AC, etc. Codes allocated since often reflect the geographical name of the garage (e.g. Fulwell, Alperton, New Cross (NX)), although some have since been renamed (HT, Holloway, was called Highgate).

Since the start of tendering in 1985, some codes have also reflected the name of the owning company, examples being AH (Armchair, Brentford), EL (Eastern National, Chelmsford), BE (Blue Triangle, Rainham). Such company names may not still be in use today: DX (Arriva London North East, Barking) originates from Dix Travel, which was absorbed into Grey-Green, becoming their Dagenham operation, and subsequently relocated to Barking, and now absorbed by Arriva. Similarly, Hounslow Heath code WK originates from Westlink, although parts of the company now use HH to distance themselves from some of Westlink's more dubious practices! FE comes from F. E. Thorpe & sons, sold out to Metroline; in this case TfL have changed the official code to a geographical one, PA. WS comes from Wings of Uxbridge, which subsequently sold its bus operations to Tellings-Golden Miller (which used a code of TM internally), which in turn sold the operations to Travel London. The official code FR for Metrobus's former Crayford base is especially obscure, referring to the original owner, one Chris Freeman of Freeman’s Coaches, which was absorbed into Crystals, which subsequently sold out to T-GM in 2003, which then sold it on to Metrobus in 2005! (Thanks to David Stewart of LOTS for that one.)

In several cases (TB/TC/TL and QB) the code reflects both the location (Bromley/Croydon/Lewisham (Catford), Battersea) and the original owning company (Tilling, Q-Drive).

BT (London Sovereign, Edgware) originally came from Borehamwood Town, depot of the erstwhile BTS, which was subsequently bought out by Sovereign and re-located to Edgware. The code also rather conveniently formed the first two letters of the company name, and was therefore adopted by LT.

Some garage codes have been used for more than one garage over the years, sometimes when an entire garage has moved such as at Peckham (PM), and sometimes when a code has been "dormant" for some years and then been reused. Some premises have had different codes at different times in their life, and indeed three (Edgware, Fulwell and Ash Grove) currently have two codes simultaneously, one for each operator.

Thanks to David Connor for most of the above information.

Page generated 29/01/2023 00:11:44

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