A 100-year-old bus has been converted into a First World War "battle bus" which will tour battlefields.

London buses played a vital role in the Great War, with more than 1,000 of them operating on the front lines transporting troops.

The converted bus is a 1914 B-type which has been stripped of adverts and signage and has had its windows boarded up and its body painted in khaki wartime colours.

The conversion work is in its final stages at the London Transport Museum where the bus will be fitted with military headlamps and given a War Department number.

It will be on display in Covent Garden in London on Friday and at the museum's depot at Acton in west London this weekend before it starts a 10-day tour of battlefields across northern France and Belgium on September 18.

Built in Walthamstow in east London, the bus is one of only four surviving B-types. Before the Great War it served on route 9 out of Mortlake garage in south west London and took passengers from Barnes to Liverpool Street. A single ordinary ticket cost 3.5d (about 1.5p).

Its £250,000 conversion has been made possible by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund with additional funding being provided by the London Transport Museum Friends and public donations.

Many of the "battle buses" were driven in France and Belgium by the same men who had driven them through London's streets.

This was the first use of motorised transport in a war and the converted buses would travel in convoys at night, often of over 70 vehicles, to transport troops to the front lines. They would take fresh troops out and return with the sick and wounded, or men leaving the trenches for rest periods.

Tim Shields, project manager of the B-type bus restoration project, said: "The conversion of the B-type 'Battle Bus' and its visit to the Western Front is to commemorate the contribution and sacrifices made by so many transport workers during the First World War."