David Devoy: 7 books

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...

Strathclyde Buses can trace its roots back to the tram services provided by Glasgow Corporation, which started running buses in 1924 as a more cost-effective way of reaching the new, large council housing schemes on the outskirts of the city. Operating within the city of Glasgow and to locations such...

Western SMT was formed in 1932, when the Scottish General Transport Company (which operated buses in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire) merged with Midland Bus Services, which operated from the south-west of Glasgow as far as Ayr, Stranraer and Dumfries. From 1949 to 1991 Western SMT was state-owned, first...

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...

Kelvin Central Buses came together as a result of a merger between Kelvin Scottish and Central Scottish, both companies created by the Scottish Bus Group in 1985 as it prepared for deregulation in 1989. In 1991 ownership of Kelvin Scottish passed to its management and employees; the company began...

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...

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...