After a very good lunch, attended by 27 members plus our speaker, of pork escalope, apple sauce, new potatoes and seasonal vegetables, followed by a panna cotta with summer berries, we were given a very knowledgeable and comprehensive talk by John Parkin entitled “Sutton’s Buses over the Years”.
John took us through the history of public road transport in Sutton from 1906 to the present day, starting with trams which ran here until 1935, when they were replaced by trolley buses, with Sutton Green becoming an important point on the bus map because there was space there for them to turn round. These electric buses were replaced in the 1950s by expanding the routes run by diesel buses. They had been run by a number of independent companies but were taken over by London Transport in 1933. The many photographs of buses throughout the period covered by the talk gave us the added interest of seeing how the face of Sutton and the surrounding borough has changed during that time, even if some of the bus route numbers have not! The talk completed with noting how we are now back to electric buses. John received a well-deserved round of applause.
John Gilbert
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