And its possibly just as well they arnt given some of the postings above about vehicles and staff, very bad for the reputation of arriva bus who have in recent years pulled their finger out, invested in fleats/brands and good customer service and are, parden the pun, going places.
I recall that in Firsts days in charge of Scotrail that they used a subsidiary with I think the catchy title of First rail replacement for some of the short and mid distance work and this was a mixed result in terms of quality. Sometimes you got the same old recks with the same drivers as local first routes, resourced from the local depot. Whilst the buses were bad the fact that local staff were driving variations of their normal routes usually ment the RRBs were reliable and well run.
At other times you got drivers and buses (some of them factory new) from all over the place and at other times they would do something really cool like chuck Volvo Olimpians on motorways which was worth going out for alone. The latter two ways of working had mixed results in terms of performance
for longer distance stuff FSR with or without the help of their bustitution partner subcontracted to coach companies of all shapes and sizes. On Scotrail runs alone Iv had a brand new Scania, a Megabus Panther, a Stagecoach Highland B10m coach and a Parks of hamilton decker to name a few!