Day 210 To Brent Cross Shopping centre once again for the No 324.

 I caught a bus to East Croydon with the idea of catching a Thameslink train to St Pancras and changing to an all stations stopper there so as to get to Brent Cross West station again. What I was not aware of, and until arrival at Brent Cross there was no information about, was that there had been a points failure at West Hampstead. The fast trains were running as forecast but only one slow train was running each half hour and even some of these were cancelled. I had almost half an hour to wait at St Pancras when there should have been six trains an hour. Thus I caught the 1103 at East Croydon arriving at St Pancras at 1138 and my next train was not until 1203 which arrived at 1227 at Brent Cross instead of the booked time of 1155. I then followed the signs on the station concourse towards the shopping centre. I expected it to be fairly straightforward and I also anticipated there might be the odd direction sign after leaving the station. There were no signs at all, so knowing I was in the west with the sun to my south on a glorious sunny day with copious windchill I walked to the Brent Cross Town Pavilion which was signposted beside Claremont Park. As I approached the Pavilion I found bus numbers I recognised going past behind it, the No 102,143 and 189. Thus I knew I was getting close and following the direction these buses were going I could see the shopping centre in the distance. I crossed over the North Circular by the bridge and arriving at the first shopping centre bus stop I saw it was where the No 324 stopped. However, it was not where it started. This was on the other side of the North Circular at Brent Cross Tesco. I finally arrived there at 1259, just over half an hour after leaving Brent Cross West railway station. I quickly went inside and bought a Costa Latte to warm me up having checked I had 10 minutes to wait since I has seen a bus leave Tesco on my way in.

The turning place for the bus outside the shop

The timetable shows a twenty minute interval service which takes just under an hour.

Metroline's DE1018 awaiting
departure as I had my egg
sandwich and Latte.

At 1317 I boarded the bus and we set off back the way I had come to stop at the stop in Prince Charles Drive outside the shopping centre. From the shopping centre the bus turned left along the A41 to run into Hendon Broadway at 1326. Descending the hill from Hendon War Memorial the bus started a hail and ride section as it moved left of the A41 into Colindeep Lane. Apart from the initial run out of Tesco's car park this was the first time the bus route was on its own. 

Lots of building work going on north of Colindeep Lane

The hail and ride continued until we reached the Edgware Road where the bus joined with a No 204 in front of it and another of these behind it. These buses then turned right up Hay Lane and then descended to Roe Green at 1338. From here the bus made its way to Kingsbury High Street where we arrived at 1344.

Shop where Charmaine used to get her milk and
 TV Choice on way to work at The Village School

At Kingsbury Circle the bus did a 240 degree turn and headed up Honeypot Lane beyond the turning for Queensbury station to the next roundabout where it went left along Streatfield Road in company with the No 114. However at the roundabout with Culver Grove the bus started another hail and ride section which was rather longer than the previous one largely through early post war housing estates but also some sports fields.

Semi urban area of sports grounds and the like as we approached Stanmore

Eventually this hail and ride section ended when we reached the main road into Stanmore which saw us go through the high street to the Underground station where we arrived at 1406. Beyond this the bus turned left and climbed up the hill to go past the National Orthopaedic Hospital before descending the other side to reach the roundabout where the A41 is on top of the M 1. This is the start of Centennial Park and we entered this industrial estate and terminated at a bus stop labelled Roundabout at 1415.

The final stop in the industrial estate

Bus stop just called Roundabout. Only the
No 324 stops here

I then walked back the way the bus had come to the National Orthopaedic Hospital. The surface water streaming down over the bridge over the M1 is on a north facing slope in total shade at this time of year so was a mass of ice which I gingerly crossed. As I was walking up the hill a brand new Metroline bus came by, a Volvo BZL EV fleet number VMSL2843. This bus did a circuit of the roundabout at Centennial Park and then headed back to Edgware garage presumably on driver training. After catching a No 107 to Edgware station I went for a look at the bus garage and found two further buses of this type.

Metroline's VMSL2843 I had seen earlier 

VMSL2850 which went for a test
 drive as I walked]out of the bus garage

I then caught a northern  line train to London Bridge and a Southern train home at 1555 which got me back to Waddon two hours after alighting from the bus in Elstree.