Bus services ran by railway companies

I know this is about buses, but I have put it on a train thread because its about railway companies running buses for their customers.

I know Midland Red buses was party railway owned and the GWR also ran buses rather than build railways to where traffic was sparse

How common was this? did LMS and LNER do it also?

I ask because of the Swallow and Amazons Great Aunt thread - a Kendal - Kirkby Lonsdale bus would have been a nice short cut for her Windermere - Harrogate journey.

The LNER and LMS took shares in the SMT bus company in the 1930s. This operated services right across Central and Southern Scotland as well as in the Dundee and Inverness Areas
These companies were voluntarily nationalised in 1948 along with Walter Alexander &Co.and in time became the Scottish Bus Group
It is thought that certain branch line closures took place because of the bus services (Macmerry,Gullane,Gifford for example)

This is an interesting question.

In the 1920s, the railway companies started to experiment with buses, typically feeders to their stations and services, but quickly realised that this piecemeal way of doing things didn't have the economies of scale or the management focus to make it work. And at the time bus industry regulation was very different to the way it is now, at that time each service had to be licensed by each local authority that a service travelled through - and railways were often given short shrift by local authorities who saw railways as a semi-monopoly.

So instead, as the 1930 Road Traffic Act implementation loomed, the railways chose to buy shares in the bus companies of the three great 'combines', Tilling and BET (England and Wales) and SMT (Scotland). These company shareholdings were typically 49 or 50%, and were intended both to give a return on investment via dividends and to influence the bus company by having one or more railway company nominees on the board. This practice became so widespread that almost all BET, Tilling and SMT companies had at least some railway shareholdings, in fact quite often from more than one company. For example the North Western company of Stockport, serving Cheshire and the Peak District, had both LNER and LMS shareholdings; while the Western National and Southern National companies in the South West were effectively the same undertaking, but the Southern National firm had a SR shareholding and served SR territory; while Western National was part-owned by the GWR and served GWR territory! In fact the only major BET company that didn't have any railway shareholding was Potteries Motor Traction, and I confess I've forgotten off the top of my head why this was the case.

In Yorkshire, some of the local municipal operators had (in the 1920s) started inter-urban services that trod on the foot of the railway companies; the LMS and LNER decided to approach some of the local authorities to form joint committees to own these out-of-town services. This led to the rather eccentric example from Todmorden that you see below which appeared on the sides of the town’s buses until as late as 1971! Click on the thumbnail photo to see full size.

This arrangement lasted all the way to the changes of the 1960s, by which times British Rail held the shares. Tilling and SMT were nationalised in 1947 and BET in the late 1960s. The formation of the National Bus Company and the Scottish Bus Group included the transfer of the railway shares to the government and the era of railway ownership of bus companies ended – until Stagecoach, National Express et al brought a new era of bus companies owning railway firms – sic transit gloria mundi…

Todmorden JOC, HWY 36 (18) by Derek Elston, on Flickr

Ken H said:

I know Midland Red buses was party railway owned and the GWR also ran buses rather than build railways to where traffic was sparse.

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In fact the majority of the mainstream bus companies (not the local Corporation ones but the "country" buses) that lasted into the 1980s had been part-owned by their respective railway companies, who bought shares into almost all of them in the 1920s-30s when they became the various established operators. This was actually seen as more of a financial investment (such bus operations were profitable well into the 1960s) rather than any serious attempt at co-ordination. With the nationalisation of transport in 1948 they ended up in separate organisations.

There was very little evidence of any railway involvement in the bus services, which to casual passengers were nothing to do with one another.

Notably, the onetime National Omnibus company, based in Exeter, was divided up in ownership between the GWR and the SR, and although run as one overall business from one head office the buses were branded as Western National or Southern National, depending on the area of the Westcountry they were in, which led to odd unconnected bits of the two organisations. So we were Western National on the GWR in Taunton, and down in Penzance, while it was Southern National in SR areas in Weymouth and up in Barnstaple and along to Padstow (by Newquay you were back to Western National). There was a big hole in the middle of their operation where Devon General (likewise part-raiway owned but with different other shareholders) did everything around Exeter and Torquay.

There was still an enamel sign "To the National buses" on the main Up platform at Taunton in the mid-1960s, even though they had become Western National more than 30 years before. Apparently it had stayed there all that time. George Behrend mentions it in "Gone With Regret". But it was only the town service buses. The new main bus station had been built in the early 1950s right at the opposite end of the town!

So what jp4712 and taunton are saying is the railways part owned the bus companies, but didnt integrate the buses and trains. So no integrated timetables, no through tickets? And often the bus companies competed with the railway that part owned them!

Or does that vary depending where you are?

Ken H said:

So no integrated timetables, no through tickets?

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Whilst I'm not aware of through tickets being available during the National Bus Company days of Western National/Devon General, the fare manuals indicate that is was possible to travel on parrallel bus/train routes.

It was nuanced, and I preface this by saying that in buses as in railways there's an exception to every rule!

By and large there was no effective coordination, although the terms of the Road Traffic Act 1930 - and especially the interpretation of the law by the regional Traffic Commissioners - made it quite hard to get a licence for specifically competing services. But in practice to some extent yes, the bus companies competed against the railways that part-owned them. That said, there were a lot of useful and pragmatic local agreements to accept the return portion of each other's tickets, but this was a locally-agreed issue between specified points and not a national policy. There was limited service coordination for buses to meet trains, but again this was down to local commonsense - not top-down policy.

Where it got interesting was after the Holidays With Pay Act 1938, when the demand for holiday and excursion traffic exploded only to be dampened by the war; then again after 1946 until TV and package holidays killed the UK seaside resorts in the 1960s. The railways guarded the seaside and excursion traffic with passion, and Traffic Courts to consider new bus company licences were full of railway lawyers fighting applications by bus companies to inaugurate services to Margate, Blackpool, Skegness, Weston and the rest. And yes, some of the bus companies applying for these licences were the ones in which the railways had anything up to a 50% shareholding! Barmy.

Going back to the original question, by the time of Swallows & Amazons there was indeed a Kendal - Kirkby Lonsdale bus service. It was operated by Ribble Motor Services, which was part owned by the LMS. But the likelihood that the Great Aunt could have bought a ticket at Harrogate to include this leg by road transport are vanishingly small.

jp4712 said:

That said, there were a lot of useful and pragmatic local agreements to accept the return portion of each other's tickets, but this was a locally-agreed issue between specified points and not a national policy.

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These got a page in the timetables of both road and rail services. But I never heard of anyone ever using the facility.

There doesn't seem to have been a great deal published about the history of railway bus services - the first comprehensive study of this topic that I'm aware of was 'Railway Motor Buses and Bus Services in the British Isles 1902 - 1933' by John Cummings. This was published by OPC in two volumes in 1978 and 1980; obviously long out of print, for those interested copies may perhaps still be found in second-hand book stores...

Going back further L & Y had it's own bus fleet

http://www.lthlibrary.org.uk/library/PDF-001-1.pdf

In the west country there was a limited degree of non-competition between bus and rail. For instance, there was a Southern National Yeovil-Ilminster service, and a Western National Ilminster-Taunton, but no through ticketing to compete with the railway. Through buses didn't appear until the closure of the line, and the closure of stations between Taunton and Castle Cary. Then two jointly run RRB services ran - 200 via Montacute/Stoke/Martock/Langport, and 264 via Ilchester/Langport, both following the rail line as close as possible rather than direct roads: there was never a direct Taunton-Ilminster-Yeovil National service - though National did run a direct Royal Blue coach service (on which the bus tickets weren't valid).
There was a tendency to integrate terminii - for instance at Yeovil both Town and Pen Mill acted as de facto bus stations although by the 1960's Southern National had abandoned Pen Mill, leaving it to be served by the independent Hutchings & Cornelius. Similarily at Weymouth the railway station was the main bus terminus (with the Southern National depot across the road stabling services for Western National, Hants & Dorset, Wilts & Dorset, Royal Blue, Black & White, Red & White, Greenslades and other group members I've forgotten).
Which brings another question - presumably the railways also had major stakes in those long-distance coach companies which were also part of BET / Tilling, so were competing with themselves on long distance work?

Taunton said:

These got a page in the timetables of both road and rail services. But I never heard of anyone ever using the facility.

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The SR timetable also had a whole table of Motor Omnibus Services in the West of England (table 37 when the main line was 35, but it goes back pre war). It covered sundry North Devon/Cornwall destinations that had never had main line trains, Barnstaple to Lynton, and bits of East Devon/West Dorset. The Seaton and Lyme Regis branches showed late evening and Winter Sunday omnibus (sic) connections covering gaps in the train service.

randyrippley said:

Which brings another question - presumably the railways also had major stakes in those long-distance coach companies which were also part of BET / Tilling, so were competing with themselves on long distance work?

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I don't think the railway companies invested in the bus undertakings particularly to directly interfere with the course of omnibus route development , although I expect that happened a bit by default. It was more as an investment and an opportunity for transfer of unprofitable passenger services. As far as long distance services go, it must be seen in the context of the 1930s - the 'open road' in a road coach was adventurous and glamorous to many [a bit like the view of air travel by ordinary people before the advent of budget airlines]. Rail fares were heavily regulated, and coach fares invariably cheaper - the railway companies were doing a bit of market segmentation and reaping their share of the bus company profits. If they had tried to stifle this competition by their companies, it would have just been developed by others instead. Better close up to your enemy, so to speak!

randyrippley said:

In the west country there was a limited degree of non-competition between bus and rail. For instance, there was a Southern National Yeovil-Ilminster service, and a Western National Ilminster-Taunton, but no through ticketing to compete with the railway. Through buses didn't appear until the closure of the line, and the closure of stations between Taunton and Castle Cary. Then two jointly run RRB services ran - 200 via Montacute/Stoke/Martock/Langport, and 264 via Ilchester/Langport, both following the rail line as close as possible rather than direct roads: there was never a direct Taunton-Ilminster-Yeovil National service - though National did run a direct Royal Blue coach service (on which the bus tickets weren't valid).
There was a tendency to integrate terminii - for instance at Yeovil both Town and Pen Mill acted as de facto bus stations although by the 1960's Southern National had abandoned Pen Mill, leaving it to be served by the independent Hutchings & Cornelius.

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The real truth here, which the bus companies realised, is that there was very little trade between Taunton and Yeovil. The same was true of the rail service; the dozen passengers on a train leaving Yeovil Town would not be the same as the half-dozen alighting at Taunton. And the same was true of the mentioned H&C (always known to us as the "Hot & Cold" buses after their initials on the side), which did Taunton to South Petherton and South Petherton to Yeovil, quite unconnected and they had separate termini in South Petherton village which didn't even touch, you had to walk through the village to get from one to the other. This all reflected the actual demand for local rural services. Anyone with a need to get from one market town to the next, and there weren't many, had bought a car by the early 1930s.

Now that little H&C bus through the villages could actually be full arriving in Taunton, to the extent that they would send out a second bus to duplicate it. But they were going to work, shopping, pubs, or to the cinema. Hardly any would be going to the station to get a train. Incidentally the last bus back of the evening used to wait outside the Odeon cinema in Taunton, if the film was a bit longer than normal they just used to wait. Then when they pulled up in The Parade the landlords of the pubs used to shout out "Petherton bus", and the locals would drink up. The conductress, who worked back and forth between the two buses when they were running duplicated, knew who had come inward, where they drank, and didn't leave anyone behind. Different days.

Taunton said:

.. Different days.

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And not so long ago

I remember the Pennine bus from Austwick to Settle taking a basket of hens as a parcel. Must have been late 1960's

As taunton says, different days.

Wickipedia has an article on GWR bus services, the first to operate was in 1903 from Helston to Lizard point in lieu of building a railway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_road_motor_services

Ken H said:

And not so long ago

I remember the Pennine bus from Austwick to Settle taking a basket of hens as a parcel. Must have been late 1960's

As taunton says, different days.

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I can remember the H&C buses taking parcels, including flowers and car parts (for Vincents of Yeovil, who owned them). Complete exhaust systems for BMC cars weren't unknown.

I’m sure that when I was in Sheffield in the early 70s there were still Joint Ommnibus bus stops.

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/jointly-operated-municipal-services.77052/

To amplify what jp4712 has written, railway companies had been running buses, in connection with their trains, since 1903, but the legal powers under which they did so were unclear. Twenty years later, train services were facing competition as motor vehicles became available after World War I, a trend accelerated by the 1926 General Strike, which helped small entrepreneurs start up bus and coach services and offer an alternative to strike-bound railways and trams. To formalise their position, the Big Four railways obtained parliamentary powers to operate road passenger (and goods) services, despite opposition from the road transport industry, local authorities and organisations such as the National Farmers’ Union.

There is a book in the Venture Publications series, now "remaindered", entitled "Yorkshire Joint Omnibus Committees", which deals with the four JOCs set up in Sheffield, Huddersfield, Halifax and Todmorden (and there was almost a fifth one, in Leeds). Modesty prevents me from mentioning the name of the author!

George Behrend's classic book "Gone With Regret" has a substantial account of the early GWR bus services, which developed into quite a substantial though unconnected network, generally under the control of the local stationmaster, painted GWR brown and cream, and indeed starting from the station approach. This came as nothing out of the ordinary to most stations, which would have one or more GWR lorries for collection and delivery of freight, the drivers were shared, the chassis types were common, and I believe in some cases they had separate freight and passenger bodies which would be exchanged as required. Both types were known as "road motors".

The book has a complete list of routes, with start/end dates, and also a complete fleet list of GWR buses, which Behrend seems to have been an equal enthusiast of. These services were all disposed of to the various area bus companies when the GWR took an interest in them around 1930.

Does the 100 from Totnes to Paignton run by the Dartmouth Railway & River Boat Co count?

341o2 said:

Wickipedia has an article on GWR bus services, the first to operate was in 1903 from Helston to Lizard point in lieu of building a railway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_road_motor_services

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When I was in Penzance a couple of years back I found First Kernow had painted at least one of their vehicles brown and cream to commemorate this. Picture here (courtesy of nwrail.org.uk).

The GWR also experimented with longer-distance services coach services - in 1928-34 , for example, it offered a Cheltenham - Burford - Oxford service with quite luxurious vehicles. Onward rail connections to Paddington, gave a competitive Cheltenham - London timing compared with the somewhat indirect rail route via Gloucester and Swindon . They ended after the GWR decided to cease operating 'road motor' services itself, and concentrated instead on substantial shareholdings in the bus companies that operated in its territory.

vlad said:

When I was in Penzance a couple of years back I found First Kernow had painted at least one of their vehicles brown and cream to commemorate this.

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Not the first time that's been done. Western National did the same back around 1979 for the 75th anniversary with a double decker, which was then the normal type on Helston to Lizard, I recall. In fact 30 seconds on the web found not a photo but a model of it http://www.modelbuszone.co.uk/efe/dd/165/16517.html

I know it was one of the first but the North British Railway Rana bus between North Berwick and Gullane about 1902.
However it was very short lived

If you include tram companies as 'railway companies' then the available examples will be much greater.

Sir Felix Pole said:

The GWR also experimented with longer-distance services coach services - in 1928-34 , for example, it offered a Cheltenham - Burford - Oxford service with quite luxurious vehicles. Onward rail connections to Paddington, gave a competitive Cheltenham - London timing compared with the somewhat indirect rail route via Gloucester and Swindon . They ended after the GWR decided to cease operating 'road motor' services itself, and concentrated instead on substantial shareholdings in the bus companies that operated in its territory.

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Actually the timetable for these buses continued to appear in the WR timetable right into the 1960s, and the buses still ran to the railway stations. It was run by the Bristol bus company from the Cheltenham end. However it took over 4 hours from Paddington to Cheltenham, a good hour longer than the train even with the latter going the long way round through Stroud, so I suspect it principally benefitted the intermediate towns along the road.

https://timetableworld.com/image_viewer.php?id=5&section_id=1271

There was a proposed line running to North Frodingham in East Yorkshire that was never built, the company behind it eventually decided that the act of Parliament only said they had to provide transport not actually build a railway, so instead they started a bus service. Does this count?

The LMS for a short time owned Crosville, the principal bus operator in north/mid Wales, based in Chester.
Over the years, there were plenty of local arrangements between road and rail services in the area, particularly in the summer tourist season.
Places like Holywell were served by bus rather then the branch line.
Crosville went through nationalisation like everyone else, and eventually reappeared after the NBC period as a private concern.
The Welsh operations (not those in England, which went to Stagecoach) ended up with Arriva.
Arriva then won the Wales & Borders rail franchise so it was a case of the poacher turned gamekeeper.
So for 15 years nearly all transport in north Wales has been dominated by Arriva, until the rail franchise passed to Transport for Wales last year (operated by Keolis).
Meanwhile, Arriva itself has been railway-owned for nearly a decade - by Deutsche Bahn, although it seems that might not last much longer.

Another carryover from the early days of railway bus service is union membership. The majority of bus operations around the country had the road crews members of the TGWU (nowadays Unite), a significant part of the "Transport" part of their name. However at the old GWR bus operating points, long after they were sold off to the various bus operations, the crews belonged to the NUR (nowadays RMT), and the joint association with the railway side continues.

Among other things this was responsible for the longstanding antagonism against the West Somerset preserved railway by the rail union from Taunton, as they were concerned about the impact it (non-union of course) could have on the bus service from Taunton to Minehead, leading to its reduction in serviice.

A few other municipal operators had links with railway companies. In 1904, a GWR bus commenced between Wolverhampton Low Level and Bridgnorth. This route was subsequently sold to Wolverhampton Corporation in 1923, as soon as it obtained powers (i.e. to operate outside its boundary).

Walsall Corporation services into Cannock Chase came about as replacements for LNWR bus services which were abandoned in 1917, and an agreement with Midland Red on operating territories was drawn up at the end of World War I. This led to Walsall buses operating as far away as Stafford.