London Buses route 25

London Buses route 25 is a Transport for London contracted bus route in London, England. Running between Ilford and City Thameslink station, it is operated by Stagecoach London subsidiary East London.

Route 25 began operation on 30 October 1910 between Old Ford and Victoria via Bank, Holborn, Oxford Circus and Piccadilly, the same routing as today's route 8. On 20 June 1912, routes 8 and 25 exchanged their eastern branches at Bank, with route 25 taking over what has become its traditional route from Seven Kings to Victoria. By the end of the World War I, route 25 was working daily between Seven Kings Garage and Victoria, with a Sunday 25A route from Chadwell Heath to Victoria. During the 1920s, London's bus transport expanded rapidly, and route 25 soon had gained 25B, 25C and 25D suffixed routes.

A scale model of a 25 bus as operated by the London General Omnibus Company from the 1910s is displayed at the Science Museum in London.

On 1 December 1924, many routes in the group were renumbered, with 25A becoming 125, 25B changing to 26, 25C to 126 and the 25D becoming route 145. This situation remained until 3 October 1934, when the newly constituted London Passenger Transport Board instituted its own numbering system, which generally re-instated the situation previous to December 1924, apart for route 145, which by then had developed into a self-contained route, thereby keeping its route number. Each route ran every 6 minutes on Mondays to Fridays, providing 40 buses per hour on the common sections; the routes were operated from garages in Seven Kings, Forest Gate, Upton Park and Hammersmith on route 25.

From 4 September 1982, the route was revised to run in two overlapping sections, Ilford to Victoria and Becontree Heath to Aldgate; the latter section being renumbered 225, albeit running to Limehouse instead of Aldgate. Both routes were AEC Routemaster operated, however Route 225 was created purely as a means of converting the eastern end of what was route 25 to one man operation which took place under the next programme of changes on 23 April 1983 using Leyland Titans from Seven Kings and West Ham garages.

On 16 January 1988, route 25 (now Ilford to Victoria) was converted to one man operation. This rendered the use of route number 225 superfluous and consequently the whole service was renumbered back to 25, albeit still running in overlapping sections.

The route was allocated to the East London division of London Buses in April 1989. On 18 July 1992 the route was curtailed at Oxford Circus, with the section to Victoria becoming part of route 8.

On 20 March 1993, the route was withdrawn from Becontree Heath and curtailed at Ilford Hainault Street and also Saturday and Sunday services were diverted via Cannon Street.^{[citation needed]}