The McKindless bus company started off as a small operation of a few buses, a lorry and two coaches in 1987, and traded under the name of Chartered Coaches. Its aim was to provide school contracts and private hires, but it quickly moved into local bus operation, spurred on by the problems suffered by its larger neighbour Central Scottish. The company would sell its services to Kelvin Central Buses in 1992, but restart again on a larger scale. The company ceased operation of its services ab...

Local bus and tram services in Glasgow were traditionally operated by the Corporation Transport Department, which had a monopoly in the city limits from 1930 onwards. This meant buses of the Scottish Bus Group and others could not pick up passengers once they passed the city boundary, although passengers could be set down. As the city expanded, this agreement only covered the boundaries up to 1938, meaning that any development built after this had to be shared with buses of the Scottish Bu...

This book continues the story of the erstwhile Western SMT company. Stagecoach West Scotland operates in west central and south-west Scotland, in an area bounded by Greenock and Braehead to the north, Hamilton to the east, Carlisle to the south and the Isle of Arran to the west. Frequent express services also reach Glasgow from throughout Ayrshire. Stagecoach West Scotland has operated under various brands; Stagecoach Western is the prevalent brand and is used for the vast majority of bus ...

The Scottish Bus Group decided to bring all of its express coaches, London services and coach tours under the umbrella of Scottish Citylink Coaches. This was to raise standards and use a fleet of luxury coaches to work a unified network. This would raise awareness and unleash a fleet of coaches all in the same livery, echoing what National Express had already created in England. Packed with a wealth of previously unpublished photographs from popular Scottish bus author David Devoy, this bo...

Strathtay Scottish was a product of the state-owned Scottish Bus Group’s attempts to prepare for deregulation and possible privatisation in the mid-1980s. It combined a part of Midland Scottish, based around Perthshire, with a part of Northern Scottish based in Dundee and Angus. The Strathtay management tried to buy the company during the privatisation of the Scottish Bus Group, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The winner was the Yorkshire Traction Company based in Barnsley, and this was i...

Arriva came to have a presence in Scotland as a result of several purchases and mergers, with a management buyout of Clydeside Scottish eventually leading to that company becoming a part of the giant Arriva group. All subsidiary companies of the group were forced to adopt Arriva’s Aquamarine and Cotswold Cream livery, along with the Arriva fleet name; this was coupled with a region-specific strapline of ‘Arriva serving …’ The Scottish operations were detached from the other regions, and th...

Scottish Motor Traction, or SMT, was originally founded in Edinburgh in 1905. In 1932, Central SMT was founded from a network of services that had been controlled by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway which radiated out from Glasgow into Lanarkshire, and from the services of two further major Lanarkshire bus operators. Nationalised in 1948, Central SMT would become part of the Scottish Bus Group until it was broken up in 1985 under deregulation, becoming Central Scottish Omnibuses. The...

David Devoy was first introduced to many of the independent Lanarkshire bus fleets back in the 1960s when he saw many of them on football hires to Glasgow, and on a school trip to visit a railway signal box in Motherwell which produced a street full of Hutchison’s blue AEC service buses. Although the Scottish Bus Group operated the majority of services through their Central SMT and Eastern Scottish subsidiaries, there were various smallscale independent operators such as Hutchison’s of Ove...

Fife, a council area and historic county of Scotland, is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. It has always been a difficult place to reach and this was especially so before the opening of the Forth and Tay road bridges. While historically most bus services were provided by W. Alexander & Sons after they acquired many small businesses from the 1920s onwards, independents survived by working mainly school...

As with everything, the coach industry has changed beyond all recognition over the last few decades. In the past, an operator would purchase a coach and run it for many years to get back their initial investment. More often than not, lightweight chassis were purchased because of the lower purchase price, and these could be changed every few years, keeping a modern look to the fleet. It was always more important in the coach industry to have the latest style. Things began to change in the 1...

Long before Stagecoach, Arriva or First Bus, Ayrshire Independents fought it out with Western SMT on the local and long-distance routes within the county. Ayrshire was unusual in the fact that many small bus operators formed themselves into associations to compete against a much larger company. They not only survived, but prospered for the best part of eighty years. This book shows many of these operators from the 1960s through till the 1990s and looks back at a way of life that has change...

Based in Renfrewshire, Clydeside Scottish was a member of the Scottish Bus Group and was created from the northern part of Western SMT’s area. Covering the Clyde coast from Largs in Ayrshire into Renfrewshire and Glasgow, its distinctive yellow and red buses numbered some 330 on formation of the company in 1985. Soon, the company was operating in Glasgow against Strathclyde Buses, with a fleet of ex-London Routemasters. In 1991, the company became Clydeside 2000, when privatised. Eventuall...