The oldest history is at the bottom. The site started off with the London Bus Routes section, which is much the largest part of the site and has now moved to its own server. However, I decided to expand it to include other bits as I thought of them.
I have constructed this site from scratch, by looking at HTML code for other sites I liked (primarily The Unofficial Croydon Tramlink website in its original form) and figuring out how to do it. To anyone else considering this approach I would recommend John Hewes' Browser Test Page to learn the basics. Some pages have an extraordinary amount of code to do relatively simple things, making them slow to download and display, which I can only assume is put in by poorly designed page editors. As the PC I produced this on originally had only IE2, pages should appear fine under practically any browser; all pages were tested in the latest versions of IE and Netscape during my college years. Nevertheless, if something looks odd in your browser, I'd like to know. But I aim to keep the coding as simple as possible, hence no fancy fonts, graphics etc.; although some pages are quite large (in a literal sense), I hope none take too long to download.
Milestones achieved so far
12 March 2015: Added a critique of TfL's proposed Bakerloo Line Extension. Major revamp of accident statistics article.
2 December 2013: Added a new article on road accident statistics.
29 July 2011: Somewhat overdue, the Registrations page was updated again, with the latest plate spots and links. Thanks to all for contributions.
16 October 2009: The site has moved been to a new server, still with Easily, but under a more favourable package. This gives me five times as much server space (though I have never needed to breach the previous 200MB limit) and a fixed rate for data transfer (aka "bandwidth") which, given the very high level of traffic that this site receives, will be much cheaper. The site is currently just over 50MB in total, but around 150GB of data transfer takes place per month. The data had to be re-loaded to the server so I took the opportunity to clear out a load of redundant files. Please report any broken links resulting from the switch.
3 June 2009: There has not been much to report, but a minor enhancement, following a request, was the addition of a CSV version of the garages page.
14 January 2008: The ongoing programme of converting the summary timetables (based on the former TfL panels) to full timetables has now been completed following reception of the final routes, 155, 194, 255 and 355. This means that all routes now have full timetables online, showing every trip. Hopefully we will be able to maintain this position, barring short delays following timetable changes.
5 June 2007: There is a new version of the Music Editor at last, now incorporating a facility to export the music directly to the BMP format for printing. The help and tutorial buttons on the welcome page now work, although some other items on the wish list will have to wait! The Registrations page has also been updated with one or two more select marks, and with the table of new marks that was previously linked to on the DVLA site incorporated into the page, as the DVLA page has been removed.
4 February 2006: After a period of neglect, I have completed a comprehensive review of the contents of the "private" sections of the site, and made some adjustments where needed. This includes a more up to date(!) photo. (The London Bus Routes section has continued to be updated roughly weekly.)
2 December 2005: An unexpected development was the cessation of panel timetable publication by London Buses from this date. This had been one of the main sources of data for London Bus Routes, but fortunately my industry contacts have so far been able to keep me supplied with full timetables as they change – which is actually a better level of information than provided previously! My thanks go to them – you know who you are.
20 August 2005: I have now applied the "photo gallery" treatment (see previous entry) to the main site, so all the data is stored in an Excel database and macros are used to generate the pages. This will help avoid inconsistencies in formatting and with the timetable links, and also means the garage route lists and PVRs can easily be kept up to date rather than having to be calculated and input manually.
8 January 2005: I have at last updated the Photo Gallery once again. Every update to this section entailed a large amount of work updating cross-references, and I set out to automate the process by way of an Excel spreadsheet and VBA macros. Unfortunately this project turned out to be much more complex than anticipated – but is at last complete, apart from one or two bugs to iron out, so hopefully I will manage more regular updates to this section again.
4 December 2004: A further update for the Registrations page again, including further comments, suggestions and corrections from readers.
8 November 2002: At last I have updated the Registrations page again. It now features a more comprehensive guide to the mark letters on the old system, as well as having been updated to reflect the introduction of the new registration system and to include a large number of comments, suggestions and corrections from readers.
8 November 2002: Due to a technical problem related to LineOne’s takover by Tiscali, I have had to move the site content to my londonbusroutes.net server. The old URLs will (hopefully) continue to work but my own website is now based at http://www.londonbusroutes.net/miscellaneous.
22 October 2001: Due to increasing problems with the original LineOne server I have decided to buy my own, hosted with Easily which has reliably provided me with the www.londonbusroutes.net domain name for a year. For the present all the London Bus Routes stuff is on there, but I may eventually move the rest over onto the server as well.
20 July 2001: Percolation program added — this is something I learnt about recently in the maths course. I highly recommend it – it gave me hours of entertainment, despite its relative simplicity!
29 March 2001: Map of London added to bus photo gallery with hyperlinks to lists of photos taken in the various London boroughs.
16 March 2001: Operators and garages page revamped containing operator correspondance addresses and background on garage codes.
15 February 2001: You can now see what I look like on the personal page. Registrations page revised.
3 October 2000: British registrations page added.
2 October 2000: Bus Photo Gallery added.
27 September 2000: Application submitted, and accepted, for inclusion of London Bus Routes section in the London Transport Web Ring.
7 September 2000: London Bus Routes section separated from the rest of the site. This is a self-contained site, which I hope will be of more serious use, hence the domain name. At this stage www.londonbusroutes.net pointed to the existing pages on the LineOne server.
25 August 2000: Domain name londonbusroutes.net secured from Easily.
22 August 2000: Entire site (so far) uploaded with LineOne.
10 August 2000: Work begun on Personal and Basic pages.
8 August 2000: Semi-complete London Bus Routes pages placed (and subsequently removed!) on the London Bus eGroup (as it was then).
4 July 2000: Work started on London Bus Routes page. At this stage pages were largely experimental and were not put on the web.
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