page_title: National Bus Company (UK)
section_title: Corporate identity
hierarchical_section_title: National Bus Company (UK) / Corporate identity
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Blue at Weymouth. A coach service for Portsmouth stands in the bus station. The passengers are on board and a couple wait to wave goodbye to a friend but the driver has yet to return. On the left is a line-up of local buses between duties, parked behind a block of houses on King Street. To the right of the coach, the old Brunel built Weymouth Railway Station is visible.
context_page_description: The National Bus Company was a nationalised bus company that operated in England and Wales between 1969 and 1988. NBC did not run buses itself, but was the owner of a number of regional subsidiary bus operating companies.
context_section_description: Following the appointment of Fred Wood as chairman in 1972, NBC introduced corporate images. Henceforth, its coaches were branded as National Travel and painted in unrelieved white, with the NBC logo and the 'NATIONAL' name in alternate red & blue letters. The services were rebranded as National Express soon afterwards. The addition of blue and white stripes appeared in 1978. National Travel was the country's first attempt at a uniformly marketable express network, which superseded Associated Motorways and the plethora of other services provided by individual NBC subsidiaries. The coaches were managed by a few areas and included travel agent booking offices based at major bus stations. A hub and spoke system operated with the main hub at Cheltenham (although this did not serve the North of England very well).
  Around the same time, the company launched a wide number of UK holiday services under the banner "National Holidays". This brand and its travel agent booking offices existed until the mid-1990s, when the coach holiday division closed.
  The National Express overseas travel business was re-launched under the name Eurolines: this brand now operates services from the UK across Europe, booked through the main National Express website.
  In the 1970s all local service buses adopted a uniform design, generally in either leaf green or poppy red, initially with white relief, and bearing the company fleetname in white with the new NBC "double-N" arrow logo. There were, however, exceptions: buses operating in the area of the Tyne & Wear Passenger Transport Executive became yellow in a similar fashion to the PTE's own fleet but to the NBC design; some buses operating within West Yorkshire were liveried in WYPTE verona green and cream; Jones (Aberbeeg) and Midland General both liveried in blue until 1980, and the Northern General subsidiary, Sunderland District, also retained blue for a short period.
caption: Eastern Coach Works bodied Bristol in Weymouth in 1978 in National Express livery
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