Today on Monday Mysteries we find an answer to a question that Chris and I had when we were in London in September: why are some of the London buses painted silver?

Most of the London buses were red, which is what they’ve been for a long time. However on this trip, we periodically noticed a bus go by that was silver.

When I looked up information about the London buses, I discovered a newspaper article from earlier in the year. It talks about how 2014 is the “Year of the Bus” in London, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the introduction of the Routemaster bus in London.  The Routemaster was a famously popular model which was retired a while back as it couldn’t easily be retrofitted to be handicapped accessible and otherwise compliant with emissions regulations, etc.

However a new version of this Routemaster bus was introduced in 2012 in time for the London Olympics. Not all of the red buses have been replaced yet, though, so there are several different models now on the street. You can see two different types waiting at this bus stop:

Two models of the red double-decker buses, seen in London in September 2014

Most the buses in London are still the traditional red. But according to that article, to celebrate the “Year of the bus”, one of the new Routemaster buses was painted silver to celebrate.

Now, the 60th anniversary is traditionally “platinum”, not “silver”, of course. So perhaps the color is supposed to be platinum, it just looks like silver.

Anyway, one key point is that the article claims there was just one bus painted silver.  But Chris and I are certain that we saw more than one. It’s just hard to believe that it was just the same one we kept seeing, since we saw it fairly often.  Of course, it is true, though, when I tried to actually get a photo of a silver bus, I had a hard time getting it, catching it only from behind:

Silver double-decker bus in London, September 2014

Anyway, when I read the article on my smart phone that day while we were sitting in a coffee shop in London across from a bus stop, my  main take-away point about the silver bus was that it was energy-efficient: i.e. it was “green”. Hence the title of this post.

Of course, as it turns out, all of the new Routemaster buses are green, even the red ones. So, my comment to Chris that day in the coffee shop about the silver ones was a bit misleading, although not inaccurate.

The funny thing was that after we noticed the silver ones, we started to notice ones in black:

Black double-decker bus in London, September 2014

Presumably, these, too, are the new Routemaster model.  But why are they black? The better to show off the advertising? The article doesn’t mention any of them being black. In a search that took longer than I wanted to spend looking for this on the Internet, I couldn’t find an answer to that question. However, I did run across this article with 18 facts about London buses. More than you might have wanted to know, perhaps, but have fun with it anyway.

And of course don’t forget to remember the 19th fact that isn’t in that article: the silver ones … and some of the red ones as well … are green.