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Title: Downloadable London Transport Archive Documents
Summary: An index of downloadable London Transport documents relating to service vehicles. Various items covering the years 1939 to about 1990 will be added over time.
Category: Downloads
Author: Thomas Young
Posted: 01/06/2016
Last updated: 13/05/2020
Download:
Content:
London Transport kept fairly detailed records of most of its activities and, fortunately for us, a lot of the documents have survived. There are four main groups of documents relating to service vehicles, as follows:
Variation Sheets: These were issued most working days and listed all changes to the road vehicle fleet. Naturally the bulk of the content was buses, though service vehicles were well covered, especially in terms of additions and disposals. Coverage of SVs reduced in the early 1980s (leased vehicles were never included) and finished in 1986. Almost 20,000 variation sheets covering most of the period from 1944 to about 1995 were scanned by John Marshall several years ago. Following the closure of his Picasaweb galleries, these documents can now be found in a new branch of LTSV at www.ltsv.com/lta.
Advice Books: These were hand-written ledgers containing all changes within the service vehicle fleet. The contents should tie-up with those on the variation sheets, but this was not always the case. Three books are in existence, covering the period July 1939 to February 1963 and these will be added here in due course.
Registers: These were periodically issued documents listing the then-current service vehicle fleet, usually with allocation details and broken down by operating department. Separate documents covered the private car fleet. Various registers covering the period 1939 to 1990 are available and will be added here.
Vehicle Record Cards: These are index cards (one per vehicle) giving full technical and operational details for each vehicle, including all allocations and disposal details. They were used from at least the mid 1920s until the mid 1960s. It is intended in the future to add record cards to the relevant records in the vehicle database on this website. I will also add documents containing collections of cards to make downloading simpler. These will be listed here.
Most of the documents below are held by the Omnibus Society in their archive at the LT Museum Depot in Acton. The pages were photographed and the information contained was used to update the vehicle database. I am now in the process of enhancing each image and grouping them into PDF collections to enable them to be downloaded. This is quite a labour intensive job so it may take a while. Any comments would be welcomed and can be e-mailed to tom@ltsv.com.
Advice Books
Sorted by date
Title Date/s Uploaded Pages Size Link
Advice Book for Miscellaneous Vehicles 1939-1948 01/06/2016 118 106 MB PDF icon
Miscellaneous Advise Book (sic) 1948-1956 Soon
Miscellaneous Advice Book 1956-1963 Soon
Registers
Sorted by date
Title Date Uploaded Pages Size Link
Miscellaneous Vehicle Register 01/11/1946 01/06/2016 13 12.9 MB PDF icon
Miscellaneous Vehicle Register 01/05/1969 01/06/2016 14 6.9 MB PDF icon
Miscellaneous Vehicle Register 01/08/1970 01/06/2016 17 8 MB PDF icon
Register of Private Cars 18/04/1972 01/06/2016 5 3 MB PDF icon
Miscellaneous Vehicle Register 01/09/1972 01/06/2016 22 12.5 MB PDF icon
Register or Private Cars 01/02/1973 01/06/2016 5 2.7 MB PDF icon
Miscellaneous Vehicle Register 01/01/1974 01/06/2016 20 10.7 MB PDF icon
Miscellaneous Vehicle Register 05/1978 01/06/2016 30 17.8 MB PDF icon
Miscellaneous Vehicle Register 04/1983 01/06/2016 20 11.8 MB PDF icon
Register of Miscellaneous Vehicles 30/01/1986 01/06/2016 27 19.2 MB PDF icon
Register of Business Cars 12/02/1986 01/06/2016 16 12.0 MB PDF icon
Fleet Listing - Distribution Services 23/04/1990 01/06/2016 33 10.2 MB PDF icon
Vehicle Record Cards
Sorted by vehicle fleet/registration number
Title Uploaded Pages Size Link
Numbered vehicles 1E to 50Z 01/06/2016 93 31.5 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 51Z to 100N 10/09/2016 76 23.1 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 101N to 150B 10/09/2016 70 20.3 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 151D to 200C 17/01/2017 67 21.5 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 201C to 250M 17/01/2017 90 30.1 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 251M to 300M 17/01/2017 93 29.0 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 301M to 350X 17/01/2017 80 22.8 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 351X to 400W 13/05/2020 83 22.3 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 401W to 450W 13/05/2020 83 23.1 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 451W to 650J 13/05/2020 76 23.2 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 651J to 796F 13/05/2020 84 28.0 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 809B to 900AS 13/05/2020 55 19.1 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 901AS to 991AS 13/05/2020 53 17.8 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 1009J to 1100F 13/05/2020 61 19.2 MB PDF icon
Numbered vehicles 1101AS to 1452AS 13/05/2020 37 16.2 MB PDF icon
Pre-1939 numbered vehicles B1809 to NY13 13/05/2020 58 16.0 MB PDF icon
Pre-1939 numbered vehicles TV1 to TV31 (Trojan vans) 01/06/2016 31 11.7 MB PDF icon
Pre-1939 numbered vehicles V1 to V50 (LGOC vans) 01/06/2016 50 13.3 MB PDF icon
Un-numbered vehicles BM9201 to YX5494 13/05/2020 64 16.0 MB PDF icon
Un-numbered vehicles AYV800 to VMM763 13/05/2020 38 10.0 MB PDF icon
Private cars EV6814 to YX6759 13/05/2020 66 16.8 MB PDF icon
Private cars AGP63 to CXX425 13/05/2020 81 24.5 MB PDF icon
Private cars DGX361 to FYW400 13/05/2020 66 20.0 MB PDF icon
Private cars GRA886 to MXX498 13/05/2020 72 20.2 MB PDF icon
Private cars NLE782 to SLT100 13/05/2020 109 30.1 MB PDF icon
Private cars TXV832 to TXV896 13/05/2020 45 14.6 MB PDF icon
Sweepers RL1 to RL32 (Redshaw Listers) 01/06/2016 32 9.3 MB PDF icon
Trailers and un-registered vehicles 13/05/2020 10 3.9 MB PDF icon
Additional notes about Vehicle Record Card documents
1. The documents are incomplete, as the project to photograph all the record cards is still ongoing (though suspended at present due to lack of access to the museum). Some cards are missing, particularly from the later periods (1950s/1960s).
2. A few photographs are low quality (dark and/or fuzzy) and will be replaced in due course.
3. Most cards are double-sided (some from the 1960s were single-sided). The documents have been arranged so that both sides of double-sided cards appear on the same page.
4. Some vehicles had 2 (or even 3) cards during their careers. These are arranged in chronological order.
5. Cards are 'filed' by the vehicle's final number. For example, the card for Morris van M33 will be found under its later number of 266M. The card for M34 is in the pre-1939 documents, since M34 did not get a new number.
6. Some of the vehicles (and some of the details of other vehicles) are not yet included in the main database.
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