London Transport “G” Plates

“G” plates were attached to the bottom of London Transport bus stop flags with additional information. There are also called “Q” plates because many of them carried "QUEUE THIS SIDE .../QUEUE OTHER SIDE ..." messages, but this label would, of course, be incorrect for “G” plates that don’t have queueing information. “Q” plates are often unique as they generally were made for a specific stop, and each side of the stop would have had opposite wording. “QUEUE” plates were not generally retained for further use. “G” plates came in three sizes, coded G3, G6 and G9 for the number of “E” plate runners that they would cover on a bus stop flag. The larger G6 and G9 plates are more unusual and these styles were used for longer messages. There were fewer of these plates, and they were less likely to survive. The last enamel signs for bus stops were made around 1980.

This plate would have been used either at—or the stop before—a bus terminus where passengers should not board buses.

This is a very unusual plate in that it shows two messages.

This G6 plate is a very rare example of the word “DEPOT” on a plate and obviously dates from when West Ham was a trolleybus depot until the end of the ’50s. It was taken down around the time of the closure of West Ham Bus Garage, and it is amazing that it lasted so long without having been changed to read “WEST HAM GARAGE”, and it is probably true to say that there are no other plates showing the garage name “WEST HAM”. The building has long since been demolished to make way for modern housing along a road now named Routemaster Close. The plate has a number of small holes, visible in the picture, caused through rusting.

This is an extremely unusual plate and came from a bus stop in the Harlesden area, although I cannot be certain exactly where. It is quite unusual for “Q” plates to carry route numbers and so this is significant in that respect.

Two rather unusual plates that would have been used at bus stands which were not normally served by through buses.

Headstop signs were used when one-man buses were being introduced and shared a bus stop with conventional rear-entrance buses. They were needed in cases where just forward of the stop there might have been a driveway which was not to be obstructed by a bus at the bus stop, so the sign was used to tell drivers of rear entrance buses to stop with their front, or “head” at the stop. If there was only a rear entrance bus serving the stop, the bus stop post would have been moved further back, about 30 feet, so the bus could stop in the correct position. Similarly, there were tailstop signs, and in that case, it was to tell the driver of a one-man bus to pull forward and stop with his rear at the bus stop. The latter were quite unusual.

The plate above is a much older more unusual version of this plate with the larger, lighter red background and two words. Later versions of headstop plates used smaller lettering on a darker red background, and “HEADSTOP” was in one word, as shown below.