RT Bus 30th Anniversary

Believe it or not it's 30 years since the RT bus was last used in regular service. The last route to use them was the 62 out of Barking garage. To mark the anniversary, preserved buses (RTs they hope) are running between Romford and Brentwood, Romford and Ongar, and Brentwood and Epping (via Ongar) on Sunday and Monday 12 and 13 April 2009. See www.thelondonbuscompany.co.uk.

Ongar Station will be open for visitors to see the restoration work towards opening the Epping and Ongar Line as a preserved railway - see www.eorailway.co.uk and there will also be classic buses running from Victoria to Ongar via Aldgate - see http://tclbs.org/2009_programme.htm

Train tickets

The recommended website for buying train tickets is www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com/
It's really well designed and easy to use and copes well with railcards. In conjunction with the machines at Barking station that can print out the tickets you've bought, it makes for an excellent and quick ticket buying set up.

However, I tried to buy a return from Barking to/from Romford. The cheapest it offered me was £4. Then it let me go all the way through to typing in my credit card number and then said the minimum purchase was £5. Annoying, but I'm glad in a way because when I bough the ticket directly from a machine at Barking Station, the fare was £2.65