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London Buses route 55

London bus route

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ6670117 ↗
Source-derived summary

London Buses route 55 is a Transport for London contracted bus route in London, England. Running between Walthamstow bus station and Oxford Circus station, it is operated by Stagecoach London subsidiary East London.

History

The route number 55 came from tram 55, replaced by trolleybus 555, which had run between Old Street and Hackney.

In 1990, the section of the route that linked Leyton and Oxford Circus was withdrawn. It was reinstated in 1997 after a campaign by Waltham Forest residents.

On 13 October 2001 conductors were reintroduced on route 55, using standard two door double deckers that were previously one person operated. The vehicles employed generally had bell pushes that would only ding once reducing the effectiveness of the second crew member. The trial was short lived and not extended to other routes.

Stagecoach London successfully retained route 55 with a new contract starting on 27 February 2010 and a further contract starting on 28 February 2015.

New Routemasters were introduced on 28 February 2015.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “London Buses route 55” as london bus route. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around London, Buses and route.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1990, 1997, 2001, 2010—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with London, Buses and route providing the first useful test.
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Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “London Buses route 55”, the useful work is to connect “london bus route” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6670117. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1990, 1997, 2001 and 2010.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  2. Expand the search: follow London Buses route 55 primary sources, London Buses route 55 archive and London research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “London Buses route 55” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.