Routes

Expansion

From their base in Bournemouth, and with experience of operating a daily Bournemouth - London express service, Royal Blue expanded rapidly during the late-1920's. By 1929 they had routes right across the South West, operating:

Bournemouth - Bristol;

Bournemouth - Birmingham;

Bournemouth - Ilfracombe;

Bournemouth - London;

Bournemouth - Plymouth;

Bournemouth - Torquay;

London - Weston-Super-Mare;

London - Plymouth.

In 1934 Royal Blue were one of the six founding members of the Associated Motorways consortium, who were based at Cheltenham Coach Station.

Associated Motorways was an early example of a travel brand. It didn't own or run any coaches. Each member operated an agreed mileage of timetabled journeys for AM and took a profit share.

Associated Motorways developed a network of ticket sales agents with through-ticketing between all participating operators services. This made destinations on the Royal Blue network accessible to passengers across most of England & Wales.

Network

For fifty years Royal Blue operated two groups of express coach services:

1). Their own network of routes, operated by their coaches. These radiated out of London Victoria Coach Station to pretty much every city, town and village across Hampshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon & Cornwall. In the 1950's they also introduced a few routes from towns across the Home Counties to the South West, in recognition that travelling into the centre of London and then out again was unnecessary.

2). They also operated coaches on Associated Motorways routes, in partnership with other operators. These mainly radiated out of Cheltenham Coach Station to places across the South West. Some routes were more cross-country in nature e.g. Bournemouth - Oxford - Liverpool.

Promotional items

Through the years Royal Blue promoted their network with maps like this showing the extent of their network across the South West. This poster dates from the 1930's.

Royal Blue produced their own express service timetable books for many years. Here's the front cover of the Summer 1964 edition.

The timetable cover of the Winter 1966 timetable featured this disc design. Was it based on the centre of a vinyl record or an early computer disc?

Royal Blue promoted the destinations they served, with package holiday initiatives - including coach travel & hotel accommodation.

" . . . we might be slower than the train, but we take our passengers where they want to go."

Clem Preece - Traffic Manager, Royal Blue, 1960

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