Every Wednesday at 11.17am, a Metroline "rail replacement" bus arrives at Stop A by West Ealing Station and makes a 20 minute one way journey to West Ruislip Station. Whilst I bought a ticket, the bus driver rarely asks to see one.

This bus has no real practical use (as there are existing routes you can use to make this trip anyways) and no return trip. It's merely a hangover from the era of "parliamentary trains" where train companies were mandated to run journeys for those with less affordability.

A "parliamentary" train used to run from Paddington to Ruislip. This eventually got whittled down to a regular train from West Ealing to West Ruislip, which itself redcued to a once a week service. Eventually, the railway line itself become defunct owing to HS2 work, and is now a once a week bus service.

The only reason it still exists is because the process to relinquish a route is bureaucratic and costly.

Nonetheless, despite the lack of practical use, it was a fun trip, and about 3 or 4 other passengers were also on board. Nobody was on their phones and it felt quite surreal. For that reason alone, I'd recommend it!

by Jibran_01

17 comments

  2. Love it!

    Other unusual journeys to try if you have the time:

    – 2x daily overground services that run from Battersea Park to Wandsworth Road, instead of Clapham Junction

    – Daily SWR service that runs on the District Line between Wimbledon and East Putney, then joins the “windsor lines” to head in to Waterloo via Wandsworth Town

  4. Cool ticket. Now get one from catford to catford bridge.

  7. This may be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever read. I love it! 😀

  8. They are using that bit of line to test trains and so they were allowed to use a replacement bus service instead of the usual ghost train service.

    I assume all this silliness will end when GBR takes over all the services? 🙂

  9. In terms of odd tickets, you’ve also got the one you can buy to walk yourself across the Blackfriars Thameslink Station bridge

  10. There was a documentary on Radio 4 about these lines about a month ago! They were trying to get from Lymington Town to Lymington Pier, a service technically still live, but it took them hours (for a 20 minute walk) to finally arrange a taxi from one station to the other. They had a ticket, but no one they called to sort out transport even knew there were two stations.

    It was an old doc, but there’s a regular service there now.

  12. I only learned about this journey on tiktok this week, and now I’ve seen another person who’s done it! This is the kinda stuff I find super interesting!

  14. West Ealing is not Chiltern Railways? Also I thought there was now a £3 cap on bus fares…

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