End of the Double N

Who shed a tear last year for the official demise of Britain’s best known coach & bus symbol?

National Express has updated its image. Officially from 3 March 2003, it loses the traditional "Double N" logo (within the industry, oft called the "Flying arse****").

The Double N was the National Bus Company’s attempt to go corporate, to let the world know that it operated buses acorss England & Wales. Of course, buses are rather a local affair, so it was on the coach roads of Britain that the symbol really struck a chord, repalcing a multiplicity of liveries into a standard, strategic transport network, called National Express. It was at a time when the Leyland Leopard dominated express routes, and Plaxton or Duple invariably bodied the coaches.

National Express became the sole registered user of the symbol after privatisation. The Double N lasted 30 years, most of which, remarkably, was in post nationalised bus Britain.