In 1985 the BBC made a documentary about the number 31 bus route called To the World's End. (It's still on iPlayer).
In 2026 TfL have just launched a bus route that really does go To the World's End, London-speaking.
It's a new Superloop route to the back of beyond, which in this case is two stops beyond Rainham.
Route SL12: Gants Hill - Rainham Ferry Lane South Length of journey: 13 miles, 50 minutes
London's newest bus route is really three in one. First it's a limited stop version of route 66, speeding along the A12. Then it's a much needed north-south link across Havering, speedily linking Romford, Elm Park and Rainham. And then it's a break into virgin territory to serve no houses whatsoever, just an industrial estate by the Thames estuary, which is the headscratchy bit. Let's take each part separately.
Part 1 - The Limited Stop 66
If you get your kicks on route 66, which is already a speedy radial route, you can now get them faster on the SL12. The six mile dash starts outside Gants Hill station, stopping just five times on the way to Romford compared to 18 aboard the 66. At present both run every 12 minutes, which seems generous on a corridor that's already well bussed. Gants Hill isn't the most useful of terminuses but you can easily change between the SL2 and SL12 here, adding an extra limb to London's existing Superloop network. For Central line interchange Newbury Park is your best bet.
n.b. The bus shelter at Gants Hill has an almost brand-new spider map, but because it's dated 1st August 2026 it doesn't include the SL12 and I Wouldn't Have Done That.
n.b. The bus shelter at Gants Hill doesn't have a roundel on top, whereas most of the other shelters along the route do.
n.b. The first five miles of the SL12 follow the A12, so there is some accidental logic to the numbering system here.
As usual when a Superloop route launches, some passengers haven't taken on board the 'express' concept. It even says LIMITED STOP on the front blind but not everyone notices. Thus on my journey someone dinged the bell just after leaving Padnall Road expecting to get off almost immediately, but was instead swept ahead two miles to the Romford outskirts. As the doors closed another passenger then dinged, stood up and watched four stops go by before finally escaping in the town centre. She had a long chat with the driver before alighting and seemed to be appeased.
Part 2 - The Much-Needed North-South Link
Many outer London boroughs have good radial transport links but nothing decent orbitally, a deficit the Superloop is designed to mitigate. Havering has always been particularly tough to cross north to south, the only railway connection being the Liberty line, runtiest of the Overground family. The SL12 thus provides an invaluable new service by connecting the Elizabeth line to the District line and c2c, previously only doable slowly and indirect. Initial loadings look good, especially on the hyperleap between Romford and Elm Park which would previously have been 10 stops on the 252.
n.b. The new buses smell new, also they have USB ports at every seat.
n.b. If you're sitting at the front on the top deck there's no STOP button in sight, only one out of reach at the top of the stairs. (In fact the nearest button is on the back of your seat, furthest from the aisle, but nobody's going to see it there.)
n.b. Elm Park remains quite flaggy, whereas most other London suburbs have taken down their threadbare red crosses.
From Elm Park to Rainham the corridor of housing is quite narrow so three routes already follow the same route south for almost two miles. The SL12 now adds a fourth which is perhaps over-frequent overkill. I suspect whoever assembled the original SL12 consultation had never been to Rainham because they failed to include a stop in the town centre, but thankfully everyone screamed and buses do now call at the key Tesco interchange. The leader of Havering Council remains unimpressed that adjacent development areas like Beam Park have been missed, thus is already lobbying for "a second Superloop to reach those parts missed by the current service", but populists do tend to want the moon on a stick.
Part 3 - To The World's End
Within Greater London there are only two places where you can draw a circle with diameter two miles and not hit a TfL bus route, or at least there were. One is the middle of Richmond Park and the other was the Ferry Lane trading estate south of Rainham, a remote industrial stripe amid the marshes by the Thames estuary. It's long been TfL's aim to fill this latter gap, saving estate employees a lengthy walk, but never previously justifiable in terms of cost. In 2019 an exceptionally detailed study of Bus Services in London Riverside East considered multiple imaginative scenarios and concluded that the only potentially feasible option was a peak hours shuttle from Rainham station, no more than six buses a day. Instead the Mayor has sent brand new double deckers running five times an hour, a decision you could describe as questionable.
n.b. The first SL12 of the day departs at 5am, the last arrives at 1.15am.
n.b. The SL12 terminates here even at the weekend when nobody's working.
n.b. The only reason this isn't absolutely bonkers is that the bus company's garage is just round the corner off Ferry Lane, so the vehicles would have to run empty anyway.
After leaving Rainham Tesco the SL12 ducks under the railway and enters the top end of the industrial estate. The first stop is called Rainham Station South Side, although it's a bit of a hike to a train so not the friendliest of interchanges. We've entered a world of big sheds and open marshes, one you probably only recognise if you've walked the last leg of the London Loop. The A13 scythes through on a concrete viaduct, chopping the estate in half, the SL12 terminating on the other side between a huge distribution warehouse and a scrap metal yard. The contrast with the Gants Hill roundabout, indeed with any other Superloop route, is extreme. Let's hope the employees who actually work here find the SL12 useful.
n.b. The south side of the estate is a long thin loop of road that's over a mile long. And yet the SL12 only stops at the very top end, exiting by doing a full anti-clockwise circuit, so anyone employed at the tip faces a ten minute walk to catch a bus that goes straight past their workplace. In the consultation 11 people requested an additional stop on Ferry Lane but this was not taken forward.
Part 4 - Beyond the SL12
Now that London's bus network has a new remote terminus, what might you discover if you come here?
A five minute walk through the estate brings you to the edge of the Thames estuary, hidden behind a thick concrete wall to help keep potential floodwater at bay. Stand atop the embankment and you can see the incinerator at Belvedere and the town of Erith, also perhaps a number of large ships and small boats sailing by. A plaque on the wall confirms this as the landing point for the Pilgrim Ferry, an estuary crossing operational between the 12th and 19th centuries, initially aimed at those making a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Should TfL ever chooses to reinstate the ferry, the SL12 is perfectly poised to make the connection.
Havering Council have recently spent money making this liminal stripe a tad more attractive for workers taking a fag break, courtesy of the Rainham Riverside Public Realm Improvement Project. They've added proper steps, garden seating, several bright yellow bins and a substantial metal pergola lookout, all with informative signage. Best not imagine the smell when this was the site of a factory manufacturing fertiliser from fish carcasses. I particularly liked The Museum of Garden Escapes, a raised bed of non-native self-seeded plants laid out on the footprint of the former Three Crowns pub. Full marks, at least compared to how it used to look.
The estate ends at a wall of silos belonging to the Tilda rice factory, this being the furthest south the SL12 gets. Follow the squished riverside path past their private jetty and you emerge onto an undefended stretch of estuary and, at least at low tide, a spread of mudflats. The chief attraction here is a fleet of concrete barges constructed during the war when building materials were scarce, and used on D-Day as part of the Mulberry harbours. A decade later they were dumped here in the Thames as protection from the great flood of 1953 and here they remain, sunk into a beach at a variety of angles, slowly not-rusting away.
A short distance away, anchored eight metres down into the riverbed, is a twisted mass of galvanised steel in humanoid form. This is The Diver, a submersible artwork installed in the year 2000 by artist John Kaufman and dedicated to his grandfather who used to be a diver in the old London Docks. Come at low tide and the entire sculpture standsproud above water level, but as the Thames slowly rises the diver starts to vanish, until at certain spring tides each year the top of the helmet is fully submerged. Previously to get here would have been a 40 minute hike from Rainham station but now it's only 20 minutes from a Superloop bus stop far more convenient for the middle of nowhere, at The World's End.
