Routemaster Production

Since the Routemaster was a monocoque and chassis-less, the front & rear assemblies were delivered to Park Royal on trucks rather than being driven, as was usual with conventional chassis.  Whilst most of the mechanical units came from AEC some were delivered from Leyland and these assemblies themselves were an amalgamation of other manufacturer's units.

Construction of the Routemaster at Park Royal was a very different process than that used for conventional buses. Not only was the bus chassis-less but the large order and the prerequisite of interchangeability (of unit parts) demanded the use of production line techniques that other small-order/value production would not allow.

Here are some photographs of the Routemaster in production at Park Royal. Dating from 1965 these images are of the RML in production and were kindly provided by Andrew Morgan from his collection.  These four images are also shown in his book "Routemaster Bus Manual" published by Haynes in 2011. 

AEC front sub-frames as delivered to PRV	Lower deck construction of an RML
RML upper deck construction	An RML upper deck being lowered onto its lower deck

The following images are of Routemaster front subframes at the AEC works in Southall before delivery to PRV.

The photographs were kindly sent in by another site visitor but I am grateful to Andrew Morgan for his confirmation of my suspicion that these images are indeed of Routemaster subframes.  Andrew suggests that the engines are probably AV590.

Routemaster front sub-frames being inspected at AEC	Routemaster front sub-frame in a wheel alignment test jig