page_title: Eastern National Omnibus Company
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Eastern National Omnibus Company / Early history
caption_attribution_description: Eastern National 1516 (FWC 439H), a Bristol RE/ECW in Newport Quay, Isle of Wight for the Isle of Wight Bus Museum's October 2010 running day.
context_page_description: Eastern National was a bus company operating in south east England from 1929 to the 1990s.
context_section_description: Eastern National Omnibus Company commenced operating in 1929 as a joint venture between the London and North Eastern Railway, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway and the National Omnibus & Transport Company. The National company had originated in 1909 as the National Steam Car Company, operating steam bus services in London. The London services ceased in 1919, when the company was renamed National Omnibus & Transport Company. The company expanded outside London, first in Essex (1913), where the company bought the bus operations of the Great Eastern Railway around Chelmsford, and later in Bedfordshire (1919), Gloucestershire (1919), Somerset (1920), Dorset (1921), and Devon and Cornwall (1927). The National continued to expand in Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.
  The railways developed networks of feeder bus services in the 1920s, but the legal powers of the railway companies (after 1922 the Big Four) to run bus services were unclear and each promoted private legislation (the Road Powers Acts of 1928) to obtain clarity. One result was that the railways were in future to refrain from taking a controlling interest in bus undertakings. This led the companies to enter into partnerships with the bus companies, including the National.  In 1929 the London and North Eastern Railway, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway and the National formed Eastern National Omnibus Company, to which all three shareholders transferred their bus operations in Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire.
  In 1931, a controlling interest in the National Omnibus was acquired by the Tilling Group. From then on Eastern National was run as a Tilling company, although the railways retained their shares until 1948.
caption: Preserved Eastern Coach Works bodied Bristol RE in October 2010
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