The Routemaster Reunion (RM 70) will be held in the Chiswick Business Park over the weekend of 20/21 July.

Please click here to read more. 

We are delighted that these iconic buses will be coming home. Not only because the business park was the former site of the London Transport Chiswick Works but also more specifically because Colin Curtis OBE, who played a key role in the design and development of the Routemaster, was based at the Chiswick Works.

Click here to read his obituary in the Guardian

The timing of the event is also fitting as Curtis was born on the 21st July 1926.

We are sure that the event will be very popular with Chiswick families some of whom will have memories of members who worked at the bus works. A founder member of WCGS, the late Beryl Cross, who lived her entire life in Silver Crescent, was proud of her father who worked there including during the Second World War, as recorded in one of her poems about the park (extract below).

Another has a certificate awarded by London Transport to a local man for 53 years and 11 months service! 

As part of the Society’s local history focus, we would welcome more memories of those times. Contributions can be sent to our Secretary, Kate: secretary@westchiswickgs.org

The following link is to an interesting item by Ian Wylie whose photos of Chiswick were much appreciated locally.:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/ianwylie/8173520238/in/pool-2058001@N22/

Extract from:

Autumn Intimations; Chiswick Park by the late Beryl Cross of Silver Crescent

And I shall walk on plank-board pathways

Past glass-fronted, metalled buildings

Sometimes remembering how my father,

In this plot’s previous incarnation,

Helped to rebuild London’s buses;

One, from a direct hit,

Ravaged with blood and flesh.