London Buses in the 1970s- 1975-1979 From Crisis to Recovery

Continuing with photographs from Jim Blake's extensive archives, this book examines the second half of the 1970s, when both London Transport and London Country were still struggling to keep services going. This resulted both from being plagued by a shortage of spare parts for their vehicles, and having a number of vehicle types which were unreliable, such as the MB, SM and DMS classes. In 1975, both operators had to hire buses from other companies. This continued until the spares shortage began to abate later in the decade. As the decade progressed, the two fleets began to lose their 'ancestral' vehicle types. London Country rapidly became 'just another National Bus Company fleet', buying Leyland Atlanteans and Nationals. Having virtually abandoned the awful MB and SM-types, London Transport had to suffer buying the equally awful DMSs well into 1978, but had already ordered replacements for them by that point, the M class Metrobuses and T class Titans, both of which would finally prove successful.