Route and Fleet History Monday 2nd April 2001 was the first weekday of town services in Crawley under the Metrobus flag. 767 M507 VJO, seen here loading in Crawley Bus Station, was hurriedly acquired from City of Oxford Motor Services and was one of several acquired for the new operation. This bus survives in preservation today. © John Chisholm Correct at 20 January 2018 Preface This book sets out to detail the history of the company’s vehicles and routes. By doing so, it is hoped to show how the company has grown and developed from its early days of a variety mix in the fleet to today’s standard batches of buses. The company has grown from one depot in Orpington to a total of eight different sites that have been used over the years. It is with no doubt that there will be gaps in the history of routes and vehicles within this booklet. If anyone who can help to fill these gaps, we would be pleased to hear from them. Please email your comments to us at
[email protected]. The information has been collated from numerous sources namely London Omnibus Traction Society’s The London Bus magazine, Andrew Boag’s Metrobus – The Company’s first ten years book, Ian Armstrong’s Ian’s Bus Stop website, Gary Wood, Peter Larking and numerous staff at Metrobus whose memory of days gone by has played an important part. A number of codes and abbreviations are used throughout the book and some of these are shown below. Fleet numbers were not officially used until 1997 however, for clarity, the fleet is listed in numerical order and vehicles that were never allocated a fleet number have been marked with an asterisk.