RTs in the Tropics

Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, nearly 7,000 members of the RT family of double-deck buses, dominated the London scene. But, also during the 1960s, hunderds of them, surplus to London Transport's needs, but still with plenty of service life left in them, were sold for further work overseas.

Cape Town, South Africa, was one of the recipient cities, and I managed to get a few short clips of them in their new home in February 1974.

But it was Colombo, Ceylon (now called "Sri Lanka") that received the vast majority - at first the 8 feet wide RTWs, and then RTLs - along with a minority of RTs - and I was fortunate to be able to film some of them at the very end of a month-long tour of the Indian sub-Continent, mostly photographing steam, in January 1980.

I very nearly didn't, because, at the end of a long trip, I had completely run out of 16mm Kodachrome for my Bolex camera - but amazingly, we not only found a photographic shop that had some in stock, but it was actually in date!

The bad news, however, was that it was the artificial light version - but the good news was that my Bolex kit included exactly the right filter to enable me to use the two 100' rolls of film that I could just about afford to buy at the end of a long and exhausting trip!