What I look for on the side of a Bus.

In the bustle of Trafalgar Square, where tourists consult their maps to find Big Ben, and Japanese girls get busted for feeding the pigeons (not allowed here), and tourist buses disgorge the listless masses, it’s comforting to see a 29 bus with WN 121 on the side. 121 is the run or shift number that the bus is busy on, and WN, in the sometimes baffling, occasionally logical, system of London Bus Garage Codes, is Wood Green. It’s like seeing an old friend. Wood Green garage opened in 1904 as a Metropolitan Electric Tramways depot, housed trolleybuses from 1938, and motor buses from 1961.

Around 1913 the London General Omnibus Company adopted a series of single-letter depot codes to identify what garage the bus belonged to. Some made sense: E for Enfield, S for Shepherd’s Bush, but then X for Westbourne Park, Q for Camberwell? It soon needed to grow to two letters, all starting with A: AB, AC, AD etc. and made no sense whatsoever, except AM: Amersham , and AW: Abbey Wood. But there is a story to them……….

Then a ray of light shone and a method emerged, about the early 20’s I think: BN for Brixton, BX for Bexleyheath. But LB for Leyton??; because it’s in Lea Bridge road. Dooooh.

Which brings us back to WN; except for WY, Addlestone, (because it’s near Weybridge, and all the A-something codes had already been used up), and WW; Walthamstow. Eccentric? I think so, but they’re like that here.

Wood Green depot today.

2. On the side of a bus: A DAF bus, with Low floor, bodied by Alexanders, doing run 226 from Enfield Garage.