Western Buses Limited (T/A Megabus) Volvo B11RLET/Plaxton Panorama

The buses of Scotland – Megabus

 

Seen here leaving Glasgow’s Buchanan Bus Station is 50411 (YX69LCA), a Plaxton Panaroma named “Aberdeen Angus” and coincidentally on a service to Aberdeen, albeit a Scottish Citylink service. Last weekend there (W/C 21/12/25) saw the last Anglo-Scottish services, the M20 and M11, to London and the ending of the final Megabus services in England. Most of the services that used to run in England and Wales were culled last year The only Megabus – if you want to call it that - now running in England is the Falcon service between Bristol and Plymouth, which has its own dedicated branding.

 

Megabus was formed by Stagecoach on 4 August 2003 when the initial service between Oxford and London began operating. These were joined by services in what is known as the ‘The Golden Triangle’ in Scotland, with routes between Glasgow to Perth/Dundee and a Glasgow to Edinburgh service. I know technically it’s not a triangle but routes from Edinburgh to Perth/Dundee would also follow, creating the triangle or squaring the circle if you prefer.

 

Megabus was a pioneer in the use of online booking – remember this is 2003 and fairly early in the internet age – and used an airline style model of demand pricing, whereby the earlier you booked, the greater the availability and theoretically the lower the price. The closer to the journey, the price went up. Seats were reservable and were advertised from as low as a pound plus booking fees. It also used off-terminal locations such as boggo-standard bus stops rather than a dedicated bus station. These maybe lacked the facilities of a bus station but didn’t charge a departure fee and kept costs down.

 

An all over blue livery was chosen with yellow Megabus fleet names and website address. Also used was ‘Sid the driver’ logo, a rather portly, friendly looking driver complete with cap, shirt, and tie to emphasise the friendliness of the service. Vehicles used were initially Leyland Olympians with Alexander RH-bodies cascaded from Stagecoach’s Hong Kong operations when it owned Citybus over there. Also used initially on the Scottish services were some very unusual Dennis Dragons/Condors (the name varied depending on which Hong Kong operator got them) with very rare in the UK Duple Mestec bodies and which were tri-axle vehicles. Stagecoach had bought some for Kenya Bus when it owned that business but these were then cascaded back to the UK for its Megabus routes. They were upgraded with better seats and luggage capacity and had their tropical opening windows replaced with standard UK-bus windows, a lot better for a chilly Scotland. However the Dennis’s proved to be woefully underpowered for motorway running and these were replaced by more ex-Hong Kong Olympians and Volvo Citybuses with coach seats from Stagecoach’s Western Buses operation. The Dennis’s then went onto MagicBus routes in Greater Manchester.

 

The concept was proven and Stagecoach began to expand Megabus. During November 2003 services between Leeds – Manchester – Liverpool were begun but these proved short lived and were cancelled by October 2004. On 28 June 2004, routes from London to Milton Keynes, Leicester, Chesterfield, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow were added and within two months these were followed by the expansion of the Scottish routes to include Aberdeen and Inverness. Stagecoach West then lost the contract to run the National Express route between London, Cheltenham and Gloucester, prompting it to introduce competing Megabus services from 5 September 2004.

 

On 6 September 2004, Stagecoach took over the M8 Motivator between Glasgow and Edinburgh set up by Owen of Chapelhall. This saw it cancel the Megabus service between these two cities and sell a limited number of seats on the Motivator service instead. This saw it upgrade this service using cascaded Man/Jonckheere double-decker coaches cascaded from the Oxford Tube. At the around the same time, it cancelled the Oxford – London service, selling again a limited number of seats on the Oxford Tube service it ran between the two cities.

From 18 April 2005, Nottingham, Worthing and Winchester were added to the network by slight extensions/modifications to existing routes, but rationalisation of the rest of the network took place, with some early morning and late evening services were withdrawn. From 13 June 2005, the Liverpool to London service called additionally at Stoke-on-Trent and a new service was introduced between Coventry and London. However, the London-Cardiff-Swansea service was withdrawn between Cardiff and Swansea.

 

The creation of a joint venture between Scottish Citylink and Megabus led to a co-ordination of services in Scotland. On 21 November 2005, the 900 Motivator service was replaced by an enhanced Citylink service. However, the facility to buy seats through the Megabus website was retained. The next week, most of the faster Citylink services between Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth and Glasgow, and Inverness, Perth and Edinburgh were replaced by a more frequent, combined Megabus/Citylink service.

 

Following the loss of National Express contracts at Rugby depot, on 5 December 2005, the London to Birmingham service was increased in frequency to every two hours. However, an

additional stop was introduced at the outskirts of Coventry, with the withdrawal of the direct once a day Megabus service to Coventry city centre. One journey a day in each direction was extended to Wolverhampton. The stops in the south of Birmingham were no longer served. Further changes on this day were the doubling of the London to Nottingham service to twice a day with one journey extended to Chesterfield, which regained its Megabus service lost in April 2005, and the introduction of a new once a day service from London to Norwich.

 

From 16 February 2006, a slower Citylink service between Dundee, Perth and Glasgow became available to book through the Megabus website, restoring Perth bus station to the Megabus network. The same day of the Citylink service modifications, the London to Manchester route was extended to Preston, with certain journeys extended further to Blackpool and Lancaster. This coincided with the loss of National Express work at Preston depot. The extensions to Blackpool and Lancaster were short lived, and were withdrawn in February 2006, citing low passenger numbers.

 

A number of changes to routes were made on 27 March 2006. A new direct service was introduced between Ferrytoll Park and Ride just outside Dunfermline, Edinburgh and London via Newcastle and Sheffield. Together with changes to the Leeds to London services meant that changes at Tibshelf services were no longer needed. In addition, many routes had timetable changes. In particular, the London to Southampton and London to Portsmouth routes became feeders to the London to Bournemouth service, meaning that passengers were required to change at Winchester. Some London to Bristol journeys were extended to Cwmbran. The London to Norwich service was withdrawn on 14 May 2006, as were the services from London to Wolverhampton and Chesterfield, while the London to Cheltenham service introduced an extra stop at Reading Coachway on 20 November 2006.

 

Early in February 2007, it was announced that the service between London, Milton Keynes, Leicester and Nottingham would be withdrawn on 11 March 2007. These services would later be restored weekdays and Saturdays following the acquisition of the East Midlands Trains franchise by Stagecoach, to and from London by Megatrain. From 21 May 2007, services between London and Leeds were extended to include Middlesbrough, Sunderland and Newcastle. Services from Green Line Coach Station moved to Victoria Coach Station in a deal with Transport For London on 1 October 2007.

 

A quick word about Megatrain. It was sold through the Megabus website and had feeder coaches – branded as a Megabus Plus – which would feed into the rail network. So the coach would collect you from somewhere and drop you off at a train station and then you’d get the train for the rest of the journey. It was used where Stagecoach had the rail franchise and was primarily its South West Trains and East Midlands Train operations. With Stagecoach losing its rail franchises in the UK, it ended Megatrain and Megabus Plus operations.

 

Also started was a sleeper coach service between Scotland and London in 2011. Sleeper coaches were not uncommon in parts of Europe but it was a new concept in the UK. These initially used Volvo B10MA articulated coaches with Plaxton Premiere and Jonckheere Mistral bodywork and were adapted from their previous lives as commuter coaches. As such they weren’t really the best suited for such operations but Stagecoach has never been afraid of innovating. The services were greatly improved with the purchase of dedicated Van Hool Astromegas with convertible seating which changed into beds. These coaches, branded as MegabusGold, were impressive vehicles and would work overnight as sleeper coaches, be converted into normal coaches and used on Citylink Gold services between Aberdeen/Inverness – Glasgow during the day. However the sleeper services ended in 2017 and the coaches went on Citylink Gold services, only for these to end as a result of pandemic.

 

Megabus also expanded overseas with operations in the USA and continental Europe, including services from London to various European destinations. Stagecoach owned Coach USA and used this to launch Megabus in the States. Starting initially in the mid-west it expanded across the continental USA and became a major operator there. It also expanded into Canda and by 2014 it was carrying 40 million passengers per year. However in 2019, it sold it’s North American operations and although these still run in North America, they are no longer run as part of Stagecoach. Despite also expanding Megabus in Europe to countries such as Belgium, Spain, Italy, France and Germany between 2012 – 2015, it sold it’s Megabus Europe operations to fast expanding FLiXBUS.

 

Turning quickly to the vehicles operated by Megabus, as mentioned initially these were double-deck Olympians as mentioned, with the odd Stagecoach standard coach sometimes substituting. Initially Neoplan Skyliners replaced the Olympians, which given the type’s history with Stagecoach wasn’t a surprise. Some of the Man/Jonckheere buses used by the Oxford Tube were also cascaded onto Megabus work. Then Stagecoach got Plaxton to develop a tri-axle version of its Panther coach on Volvo B12BT chassis. These were a real statement of intent by Stagecoach. These were followed by more Van Hool Astromegas and then it got Plaxton again to develop a new design for Megabus, this time the Plaxton Elite-I on Volvo B11RLT chassis. These unusual coaches featured an early attempt at accessibility, with a wheelchair space next to the driver and a front overhang with seats continuing above the driver. As seen in the picture, Plaxton Panoramas were then used and with the ending/pausing of Panorama production, Volvo’s integral 9700D double-decker coach, assembled in Finland, has been preferred.

 

The last variant of Megabus was Megasightseeing. This was launched in London in 2018 with through booking from the Megabus website. It ran in London and offered three circular non-stop tours from the Tower of London. Run initially with Dennis/TransBus/Alexander Dennis ALX400/Tridents from Stagecoach’s London fleet in semi-open top configuration these were replaced for the 2019 tourist year by Alexander Dennis Enviro 400s in open-top configuration. The pandemic saw Megasightseeing not appear for 2020 unsurprisingly but in 2021 it came back, albeit this time branded as CitySightseeing London. Megasightseeing was the last new variant of Megabus. One interesting feature of Megasightseeing was that a taped commentary was used with a voice given to the Megabus logo, Sid the Driver. So you could actually hear him for the first time. A model of a Trident/ALX400 in Megasightseeing livery was produced by Northcord and can be sourced if you look hard enough. Megasightseeing was never expanded beyond London.

 

The livery of Megabus hasn’t really changed much and remained pretty static from its launch. However from the mid-2010s, Sid the Driver began to be replaced on some coaches with branding for low fares, still being advertised for a pound plus booking fees. However, this got Stagecoach into bother in 2018 when the Advertising Standards Authority found it had very few seats at that price. This prompted Stagecoach to simply with the pound fares which, meaning that the Authority had actually worked to the detriment of passengers as some fares are better than none. With the launch of the Stagecoach local livery, a variant was designed for Megabus which saw a yellow swoop at the rear and branding to highlight USB access.

 

Sadly, the last few years have seen Megabus slowly decline. As mentioned it sold its overseas operations and closed down Megasightseeing. In 2022, Stagecoach was sold to DWS. As part of the Stagecoach Group’s sale to DWS, it was agreed that Megabus' retail activities (the sale and marketing of tickets) would be sold to Scottish Citylink. An earlier proposed sale of Stagecoach to National Express would have seen Megabus sold in its entirety to ComfortDelGro. Scottish Citylink is a longstanding joint venture between Stagecoach Group and ComfortDelGro, which also took over the Falcon at the same time. Stagecoach would reduce its stake in the joint venture so it was the minority partner. At the time, the contracts to operate Megabus services were still held mainly by Stagecoach subsidiaries but Stagecoach then slowly reduced its involvement Megabus runs. This saw independent operators stepping in, although Stagecoach still ran a significant part of Megabus operations.

 

With increasing competition from FLiXBUS and National Express, Megabus was being squeezed out. It had a cheap and cheerful image but tastes change and FLiXBUS was increasingly replacing it and the new upstart had a better and cleaner image. In October 2024, Megabus announced that it was ceasing all operations in England and Wales apart from The Falcon route and the Anglo-Scottish runs. At the same time, it would sell through tickets to former locations it served by directing customers to the National Express website. Then as mentioned earlier, it withdrew the Anglo Scottish runs this month (December 2025) with little or no fanfare.

 

It’s all quite sad. Megabus was one of the industry pioneers the digital age and to see it go out with barely a whimper is a disappointing end. The Falcon route will no doubt continue, as long as it makes money. But that’s all. One legacy of Megabus will live on though in respect of the M-prefix on certain Scottish Citylink routes. But with no routes to run, coaches in Megabus livery will soon be repainted out of their liveries, probably into Stagecoach coach or Scottish Citylink colours. Very soon little will remain of one of the British Bus Industry’s last major innovations. Megabus. May it Rest in Peace.

Done