Cambus to Stagecoach East: A Fleet History, 1984–2020

By David Beddall

Formed in 1984, following the decision by the National Bus Company to divide the Eastern Counties Omnibus Company Ltd into smaller parts, Cambus Holdings became responsible for operating services in Cambridgeshire and West Suffolk. A management buy-out took place in 1986, followed by the formation of Viscount Travel in 1989, followed by acquisition of Premier Travel in 1990. The company expanded into other geographical areas including Milton Keynes and parts of Buckinghamshire, before being taken over by Stagecoach Holdings in 1996. The new owners added Go West Travel to the Cambus operations, trading as Norfolk Green, in recent times the company has ceased operating in the King's Lynn area, this taking place in 2018.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781526781017

David Beddall

The author's interest in buses and coaches began at age 7\. Growing up in Kempston, just outside Bedford, United Counties was his local bus company. Spending most Saturdays at Bedford bus station noting the comings and goings of the United Counties fleet, this grew his interest further. Twenty-three years later, his interest in buses has expanded to the whole of the United Kingdom, in particular London and of course Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire.

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INTRODUCTION

The National Bus Company took the decision in the early 1980s to split up its large bus operations, into smaller, more attractive divisions which would make them easier to sell at the time of deregulation. The Eastern Counties Omnibus Company Limited was no exception to this rule. On 9 September 1984, the Company was split into a number of smaller operations, the Eastern area retaining the Eastern Counties fleet name, covering the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. The express coaching operations were put under the control of the newly formed Ambassador Travel (Eastern Counties) Limited. The Western part of the Eastern Counties territory was placed under the control of the newly formed Cambus Limited. The main operating area of this new Company was the county of Cambridgeshire. The Newmarket and Haverhill areas of Suffolk, which are located close to the Cambridgeshire border, were also encompassed by this new operator, as well as routes reaching the Royston area of Hertfordshire. Cambus Ltd operated from garages in Cambridge, Peterborough, Ely, March and Newmarket, with numerous outstations attached to them. Head office for the company was initially placed with United Counties at their Bedford Road, Northampton address. The opening fleet consisted of 170 vehicles, the majority being of the Bristol/ECW manufacture, as was typical of a National Bus Company fleet. In addition, some Willowbrook bodied Leyland Leopard coaches and Leyland National saloons were also operated.

The familiar red livery of Eastern Counties gave way to a pale blue and cream livery, with white fleet names. Vehicles initially retained their former Eastern Counties fleet numbers before the new Company introduced a new numbering system in December 1984.

Burwell was the first of the original outstations to close its doors, this taking place during January 1985. The fleet and services were transferred to nearby Newmarket. The same month saw the original Cambus garage located on Hills Road, Cambridge put up for sale. It closed on 31 August 1985 and was replaced by a new facility on the Cowley Road Industrial Estate, located to the north-west of Cambridge. Although this new garage was opened early on in the history of Cambus, the registered office for the company moved around. The first registered office was located in Ely, this being on a temporary basis. It was soon relocated to Coldhams Lane, Cambridge. This too was a temporary arrangement, and a new office was set up at 74 to 76 Newmarket Road, Cambridge in April 1985. This lasted for just under a year, when in March 1986, the registered office moved to 79 Thorpe Road, Norwich. The final location was, as mentioned above, the Cambridge garage located at 100 Cowley Road, this taking place during January 1991. This has remained the location of Cambridge’s garage, and is still used today by Stagecoach East. Cowley Road is also the location of the current head office of Stagecoach East.

As was mentioned above, the main coaching arm of Eastern Counties passed to a new company called Ambassador Travel Limited. On 1 December 1985, the Cambridge, Newmarket and Peterborough operations passed to the control of Cambus Limited, adding a number of vehicles to the fleet.

March 1985 saw the closure of another outstation, this being the one at St Ives. After this date six buses were outstationed at the United Counties garage in Huntingdon. This arrangement lasted until 27 May 1987 when a new open-air outstation was established on the Needingworth Road Industrial Estate, St Ives.

Ownership of Cambus Limited passed from the National Bus Company to the company’s management. This took place on the 8 December 1986. The original livery of Cambridge blue and cream was retained until September 1989 when it was replaced by a new variant. The cream was replaced by white, and the bands at the rear of the vehicles were removed.

During 1987, the fleet began to carry local fleet names in addition to the main Cambus ones. Naturally, Cambridge based vehicles carried ‘Cambridge & District’ names. Those allocated to Newmarket were adorned with ‘Newmarket & District’, whilst ‘Fenland & District’ names were carried by vehicles allocated to March and Ely. This was changed in January 1989 to ‘Peterborough & District’. This latter title was also applied to vehicles allocated to Peterborough. The names could be found just above the main Cambus fleet name.

10 September 1989 saw the Cambus operation split into two operating Companies. Peterborough and March garages, along with outstations in Rowland, Market Deeping, Oundle and Wisbech, passed to the new Viscount Bus and Coach Company Limited, which took on 113 vehicles from Cambus. A livery of white, with a yellow skirt was applied to the fleet. Buses were given fleet names ‘Viscount Buses’, with fleet numbers carrying ‘B’ prefixes. Coaches were given the fleet name Viscount Travel, with the vehicles carrying ‘T’ prefixes to their fleet numbers. Finally, the minibus fleet were named ‘Viscount Shuttle’, and the letter ‘S’ was added before the rolling stock number. Cambus Holdings still owned the Viscount operation.

Cambus originally put in a bid to take control of Cambridge-based Premier Travel Services Ltd in December 1987. The deal was rejected after an alternative offer was placed by the Premier Travel management and Parkdale Holdings Ltd, who owned West Yorkshire at that time. However, in May 1990 Cambus Limited was successful in acquiring the business of Premier Travel. At that time, the vehicles, stage services, school services and contract work all passed to Cambus. Whilst the deal was finalised, the services operated as ‘on hire to Cambus’, this ending in July 1990. The National Express contracts operated by Cambus passed to the control of Premier Travel at the same time. The stage carriage work operated by Premier Travel was predominantly centred on the Royston area of Hertfordshire. In February 1991, all but one of these services, the Buntingford to Royston service, passed to C.G. Myall and Sons of Bassingbourn.

1991 saw a number of Cambus’ outstations close their doors as a result of service changes. An extensive restructure of Cambridgeshire County Council supported services, as well as those operated commercially, in the Ely and Newmarket areas resulted in the closure of Hardwick and Newport outstations, along with reduced staffing at Newmarket. A month later, Ely garage was closed as a garage in its own right. It was replaced by an open-air facility at Lancaster Way Business Park which became an outstation of Cambridge. Sutton outstation closed in December, being replaced by one in Mepal. Outstations in Bassingbourn, Fowlmere, Haverhill, Longstowe, Royston, Sawston, Soham and St Ives remained operational until the end of 1991. Many of these had an exclusive allocation of Bristol VRTs.

The operating area of Cambus Holdings Ltd expanded during 1992 with the acquisition of four operators. First was the business of Millers of Foxton, which was taken over by Cambus Holdings on 13 February. Forty-two vehicles were added to the fleet, the service buses being allocated to Cambus whilst the coaches were added to the Premier Travel operation, although they were initially kept as a separate entity. The addition of these vehicles brought the Cambus fleet total to over 300 vehicles. The original registrations for services operated by Millers were cancelled on 27 April 1992, being replaced by a new operators’ licence, this being Cambus t/a Millerbus. The fleet livery of red and cream was retained, and a number of Cambus vehicles received this livery, replacing older inherited rolling stock.

The second acquisition took place in December 1992 when the business of Generalouter Limited was acquired by Cambus Holdings Ltd. This incorporated three operators based in the Milton Keynes area of Buckinghamshire. These were Milton Keynes Citybus, Buckinghamshire Road Car and E & T Johnson Coaches Limited of Hanslope. Milton Keynes Citybus, as the name may suggest, were responsible for the running of local services in the town. Buckinghamshire Road Car operated a number of rural services to other parts of Buckinghamshire and neighbouring Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire. E & T Johnson operated a number of local area services in Milton Keynes and Bletchley, along with a service to Northampton. The contracts for the Milton Keynes Community Transport services were also included in this sale, the vehicles being owned by the council themselves. Milton Keynes Citybus can trace its roots back to the division of the United Counties Omnibus Company in January 1986, when it became its own company under the control of the National Bus Company.

It was decided that from July 1993, Buckinghamshire Road Car would become the dominant operator. A garage at Fen Farm, Wavendon was reopened, having previously been occupied by the company. It had been improved and could now accommodate double-deckers as well as minibuses. However, operation from this location was short lived, the fleet moving to the main garage at Winterhill, Milton Keynes in December 1993. The E & T Johnson operation, along with a number of duties operated by Milton Keynes Citybus, were transferred across to Buckinghamshire Road Car. These changes saw a need for forty-five vehicles by this latter operator. To cover this, the fleet of double-deckers operated by Milton Keynes Citybus were transferred, the rest being covered by the absorption of the Johnson fleet. At this time, the latter operator had outstations in Brackley, Buckingham, Leighton Buzzard and Northampton, with one vehicle being allocated to each. The Buckingham outstation was first to close in September 1995, followed by Leighton Buzzard and Northampton in October. The vehicles were transferred to the main Winterhill, Milton Keynes site.

The Milton Keynes Citybus names on the building were replaced by ones for Buckinghamshire Road Car. The two separate operators were retained until February 1995, after which time the Milton Keynes Citybus fleet transferred to the licence of Buckinghamshire Road Car. The Citybus name was retained for the local fleet, whilst the Road Car name was retained for the rural operations. However, on 15 May 1995 a new name was introduced, this being MK Metro Limited. The Buckinghamshire Road Car operators’ licence was initially retained, before being altered to the new operator’s name.

Perth-based Stagecoach Holdings Ltd purchased the operations of Cambus Holdings Limited on 7 December 1995. Stagecoach already owned United Counties, whose operating area covered Northamptonshire, north Bedfordshire and Huntingdon. The fleet names Stagecoach Cambus, Stagecoach Viscount and Stagecoach Milton Keynes were adopted by the new company. The acquisition brought with it the infamous white based livery with orange, red and blue stripes.

However, the acquisition came to the attention of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The Commission made the ruling that Stagecoach’s operating area in this part of the country was too big, and the decision was made that they had to sell two garages. United Counties’ Huntingdon garage and Cambus’ Milton Keynes garage were those chosen. These were purchased by Julian Peddle, who already had bus interests around the country. The sale was completed in April 1997, at which time the MK Metro fleet name was retained for the Milton Keynes operation, whilst Huntingdon took on the new name of Premier Buses.

March 1997 saw a new outstation open in Ramsey. It was placed under the control of Stagecoach Viscount’s Peterborough garage.

Between the summer of 1997 and December 2000 there were very few significant changes that took place concerning the day to day running of the business. January 2001 saw the Stagecoach Group relaunch its UK Bus operations. A new livery known as the ‘beach ball’ was introduced, along with new local identities. Cambus became known as Stagecoach in Cambridge whilst Viscount was renamed Stagecoach in Peterborough, the original operators’ licences being retained. These two Companies were merged with United Counties to form the new Stagecoach East operation, with headquarters being placed at Rothersthorpe Avenue, Northampton. The amalgamation of these three operating companies under the Stagecoach East heading saw a number of transfers between them, these being covered in the main body of text. To make transfers easier, the Stagecoach East operation was renumbered into a single series in May 2002, removing all duplicate fleet numbers. This gave way to another new numbering system in January 2003, when Stagecoach introduced a national numbering system. Vehicles were numbered into a five-digit series, and these became the ‘number for life’ carried by the vehicle. Double-deckers were numbered in a series between 10000 and 19999; full-size singles-decks in the 20000-29999 series; midibuses 30000-39999. The smaller minibus fleet were numbered between 40000 and 49999, whilst coaches were numbered 50000 plus. Vehicles that were loaned to the Stagecoach Group were numbered in the 80000 series.

Another outstation closed on 30 January 2005. This was the Market Deeping outstation which was attached to the Viscount operation.

Stagecoach purchased the business of Cambridge Blue and City Sightseeing Cambridge in December 2006 from Ensign Bus, Purfleet. The deal included the Sightseeing Tour of Cambridge, along with service 007 which operated between the rail station and city centre. A number of the Cambridge Blue fleet was initially taken into stock on a short-term basis before being replaced by other rolling stock. An enclosed garage facility was also taken on by Stagecoach on Lancaster Way, Ely. The Cambus outstation in the city moved to this new location. The 007 later ceased operation, the Cambridge City Sightseeing Tour being retained.

The Stagecoach East operation was expanded further on 31 March 2008 when the business of Cavalier Contracts Limited, Long Sutton was acquired by Stagecoach Holdings. This included two main garages, one at Long Sutton, the other being the former United Counties garage in Huntingdon. This added a number of locations to the Cambus operational area including Alconbury, Buckden, Ellington, Fenstanton, Foxton, Godmanchester, Grafham, Great Paxton, Kettering, Kimbolton, King’s Lynn, Ramsey, Southoe, Spalding, Spaldwick, St Ives, Swavesey, Thrapston, Whittlesey and Wyton. This new operation became known as Stagecoach in the Fens, with an initial legal address at Daw Bank, Stockport.

Just over a year later, in June 2009, the garage at Stukeley Road, Huntingdon was closed and sold for redevelopment. A temporary base was established in St Ives before a more permanent garage was set up at the former Whippet Coaches site next to the A14 in Fenstanton.

The control of United Counties’ Bedford garage passed to Cambus in August 2010. This brought with it outstations in Biggleswade and Rushden, the latter moving to Wymington, which in turn closed and the operation moved to Bedford. However, buses allocated to Bedford ran on the United Counties operators’ licence until March 2013 when it officially transferred to the Cambus licence. At the same time, the Viscount and Stagecoach in the Fens operators’ licences were surrendered and transferred onto the main Cambus licence.

December 2013 saw the Stagecoach East operating area expand into Norfolk after the operation of Norfolk Green was acquired by Stagecoach. The main garage was located in King’s Lynn, with numerous outstations in Norfolk and south Lincolnshire, with the Company operating a city service in Ely. As well as local services in King’s Lynn, Norfolk Green operated the Coasthopper service between King’s Lynn and Cromer. It ran along the North Norfolk coast, taking in towns and villages such as Hunstanton, Wells-next-the-Sea and Sheringham to name but a few. Other services operated to nearby towns and villages, with an express service operating into Norwich. A revised livery was initially worn by the fleet before Stagecoach decided to repaint the fleet into corporate livery. Operation lasted until April 2018 when King’s Lynn was closed. The fleet was redistributed around Stagecoach East, with a number of the newer rolling stock being transferred to Bedford to update the fleet there. It was at this time that Bedford was experiencing engineering issues and the transferred vehicles were much needed. A number of the older Optare Solos were withdrawn, some being refurbished and sent to other Stagecoach operations.

The withdrawal of service 26 (Cambridge-Royston) saw the closure of the Royston outstation on 29 July 2018.

The Long Sutton outstation passed from Stagecoach East to Stagecoach East Midlands on 27 October 2019. Several vehicles passed between the two operators. In the same month, the outstations at Newmarket and Biggleswade were also closed.

30 January 2020 saw Stagecoach relaunch itself again. A number of different new liveries were launched at the same time along with a new logo. Red was dropped from vehicles (apart from London), with the vehicles being predominantly white with the addition of green, blue and yellow. The coaching fleet and long-distance service buses gained an all-orange livery.

2020 was certainly a year that no one could have predicted. The global COVID-19 pandemic certainly changed the world, and how things were done. It had a huge impact on all aspects of life, and many businesses suffered. The introduction of a national lockdown in March 2020 saw society basically shut down, with businesses asking workers, where possible, to work from home. Schools were closed to the majority of students. Restrictions were also placed on travel, with the rail and bus networks going down to a near skeleton service, with demand dropping very low. A number of buses around the country were taken out of service and placed into store for several months. The bus industry continued, gaining financial support from the government to operate essential services to help key workers, such as transport workers, shop workers, NHS staff, those who worked in schools, to be able to get to work. However, the coach industry suffered as they were unable to operate tours and holidays. A number of companies ceased operations, including Shearings and National Holidays.

Like other operators, Stagecoach East