GO AHEAD, the Newcastle-based bus business that has expanded into railways, likes to do things differently.

“We expect graduate trainees to take their driving test and spend time driving buses,” says boss Chris Moyes. “And I have my own buses. I drive them occasionally to keep my licence.”

His own buses? Moyes, one of the founders of Go Ahead plc, doesn’t even blush. He has, apparently, a private collection of no fewer than four vintage buses that he tinkers around with at weekends — one from 1936, an open topper from 1946, a coach from 1961, very useful for family holidays . . .

Go Ahead, whose shares hit an all-time high of £13.84 last week before closing at £13.75 on Friday, valuing the company at £698m, has clearly treated its founders well. Moyes replaced his friend Martin Ballinger as chief executive this month, after 21 years of working together — a partnership that has left both men multimillionaires. Other shareholders aren’t doing too badly, either.

“At least last week’s share- price surge shows I haven’t put anyone off,” jokes Moyes, weighing up the pros and cons of his first month in charge. “But it’s going to be hard to keep that up.”

He puts the price surge down to “a couple of complimentary brokers’ notes”. Others point out that £1.2 billion-turnover Go Ahead, for so long seen as the dullest of the big five transport groups (the others are Arriva, First, National Express and Stagecoach), now looks more attractive by comparison. With a tight team at the top and a singular expansion strategy underneath — emphasising local services in the southeast of Britain, with few foreign adventures — it appears to be gaining ground while its competitors falter.

Yet ride with its bus companies, including London Central, London General, Metrobus, Brighton & Hove, and Oxford, or its rail interests — Southern and Thameslink — and you might be hard pushed to know it exists, such is Go Ahead’s reluctance to brand its own name on subsidiaries.

Next year it is favourite to win the integrated Kent rail franchise, up for grabs after being removed from Connex 17 months ago. If it snatches that, allowing it to consolidate the key southeast commuter routes, its reticence will be fully stretched.

However, nothing is guaranteed in the rail business. “There are huge problems with the Kent franchise,” nods Moyes, “but they are like the ones we tackle on the Brighton line, and I think we’re winning there.”

It will have a head start if the regulators favour the concentration of services at main terminals in the hands of one operator — part of the reason why Go Ahead lost its Paddington-based Thames Trains franchise to First this year. The group, which has put together its bid for Kent with SNCF, the French rail operator, already runs trains through to Victoria, Charing Cross, and London Bridge. The logic for more looks appealing.

Sitting in a borrowed meeting room at the Confederation of Passenger Transport in London, Moyes explains the permutations with quietly confident poise. Chunky, balding and a bit rumpled at the edges, he appears beneath the sharp suit as unglossy as 55-year-old plc bosses get. When he mentions later that he has a blue Aston Martin DB7 in his garage — to add to those vintage buses — it all seems rather incongruous.

But then a lot of things about Go Ahead are not what you would expect. Created out of bus privatisation in 1986 — when it ran Newcastle’s buses — bought out by management in 1987 and floated in 1994, it has determinedly followed its own course. Diversifications into rail, car parks and aviation services have been added, and a fair degree of local autonomy handed out. It still makes most of its money from buses (which account for less than a third of turnover but more than half its operating profit) but hopes to ramp up its rail side in time.

Compared with rivals, however, it has long looked “behind the curve”, as one analyst puts it, simply because it hasn’t grown as fast as others. That excessive caution prompted a takeover bid four years ago from the French state-owned C3D group, offering a final 800p a share, which was rebuffed.