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First London

First London
FirstGroup.svg
London Bus route 58.jpg
Parent FirstGroup
Founded 26 March 1997
Defunct 27 September 2013
Headquarters Paddington
Service area Greater London
Service type Bus operator
Fleet 1,004 (March 2013)
Website www.firstgroup.com/london

First London was a bus company operating services in Greater London, England. It was a subsidiary of FirstGroup and operated buses under contract to Transport for London. It was formed in the late 1990s through the acquisition of three London bus operators. First London's garages were sold off between December 2007 and July 2013 with the last closing in September 2013.

FirstGroup was formed as FirstBus on 16 May 1995, through the merger of Badgerline and the GRT Group.

Although what became First London was established in 1997, FirstBus could trace its involvement in London bus services back to 1990 when Badgerline acquired Eastern National, the Essex based former National Bus Company subsidiary that had operated numerous routes in East London since tendering began in 1985. These operations were subsequently transferred to a new division, Thamesway Buses, before being recombined with Eastern National in the late 1990s as First Essex.

In March 1997, FirstBus purchased CentreWest, which had been established in April 1989 as a subsidiary of London Regional Transport before being sold in a management buyout during the privatisation of London bus services in September 1994. Since 1993 CentreWest had been using local identities based on each of its garages, such as Ealing Buses at Greenford garage and Challenger at Alperton garage, and in March 1996 it had acquired Southall based London Buslines from the Q-Drive group. All these identities were originally retained, buses receiving new-style fleetnames incorporating FirstBus's corporate f logo.


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