London has a 'ghost bus' that carries basically no passengers and only exists for an obscure legal reason

Did you know London in the UK has a ‘ghost bus‘ that carries basically no passengers and only exists for an obscure legal reason?

London has a bus that barely anyone rides – it runs only once a week and follows a route almost nobody actually needs.

Most locals don’t even know it exists, let alone people from out of town.

And the only reason it runs at all is because of a strange loophole in UK rail law.

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This ‘ghost bus’ isn’t haunted

At 11:17 every Wednesday, a lone London bus drives between West Ealing to West Ruislip in London, UK.

It is not timed for commuters, shoppers, or travelers catching connections, and it does not replace a cancelled train either.

It simply makes its short journey, often with more railway enthusiasts than actual passengers on board.

The route mirrors a strange, lost corridor of track between the two now-defunct stations, a small curve that sees almost no genuine demand.

For years, a train ran along the lonely piece of track just once a week, creating one of Britain’s least-used train services.

That train has since disappeared, replaced by this mysterious bus.

Why? Because the track is currently being used to test new battery-electric trains.

Those trials need uninterrupted access, so the token weekly train was pushed aside, but the corridor it ran on could not be abandoned, not without triggering something far more complicated.

What’s the obscure legal reason?

Hidden behind this odd weekly ritual is a loophole in UK rail law.

Officially closing a rail line requires assessments, government consultations, and a lengthy approval process.

Once closed, reopening it later becomes an even bigger bureaucratic headache.

So instead of shutting that forgotten bit of track and going through all the drama of doing it, the operator keeps it open by running the smallest service legally possible.

First, it was a single ghost train, and now it is a single ghost bus with no crowds, no rush, no real purpose, just a box ticked to ensure the line never disappears on paper.

With the UK rail network moving toward nationalization, this system could change.

But until that happens, London’s ghost bus will keep rolling, carrying almost nobody while keeping a barely used railway alive in a strange way.

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