#AYearOfBuses 230: Hammersmith – Westbourne Park
It’s day 230 on #AYearOfBuses, and we’re taking a look at a London bus route which we never got the chance to feature all the way back on day 23!
It’s a tale of two halves for central London route 23. Until 2018, the 23 ran from Westbourne Park to Aldwych (and just a year before that, it ran as far as Liverpool Street, too). It took a slow crawl through Marble Arch, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, Charing Cross and the Strand, even at one point featuring branded Routemasters promoting it as a distinctly knock-off sightseeing service.
Nowadays, the 23 takes quite a different route through central London, having replaced withdrawn route 10 in between Marble Arch and Hammersmith. No longer does the 23 cross the city towards the East End, instead swapping one set of tourist attractions for another as it nosedives towards Knightsbridge, Kensington and Hammersmith.
Image credit: Chris Sampson
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I used to live in East Ham (1949-1968) The 23 used to run from Becontree to Marylebone Station back then. Many runs short turned at Aldgate as traffic congestion worsened. For most of its operation through the east end it was duplicated by the 15 (East Ham, White Horse to Ladbroke Grove, The Eagle) and the trolleybuses Barking to Bloomsbury.