Scottish buses : a colour portfolio

With a highly fragmented bus industry, even though the major cities were dominated by the big four municipal operators and much else was controlled by the subsidlarles of the Scottish Bus Group, Scotland still managed to provide the bus enthusiast with an almost infinite variety of bus type and livery.

Part of this was the result of the very strong tradition of independent operators in places like Ayrshire, but also the fact that, whereas in England and Wales the National Bus Company imposed a rigid corporate style, in Scotland the SBG allowed the constituent companies to retain much of their Individual identity.

Thus it was possible to see, for example, green buses from Lowland Scottish and yellow buses from Alexander Northern.

In towns and cities like Dundee and Edinburgh it was possible to see vehicles from the local municipal fleet alongside many of the different SBG liveries as well as those from noted independent operators - standing on a major thoroughfare in any of these places you could see a huge variety of different coloured vehicles. Following on from his earlier and hugely successful volume in the 'Heyday' series covering Scottish bus operations, Gavin Booth now provides a further exploration into the great variety of bus types and liveries to be found in Scotland over the past 30 years.

Although covering predominantly the era prior to deregulation and privatisation, the book also examines the changes wrought in Scotland as a result of reforms from the mid-1970s onwards, when names like Stagecoach came to the fore, taking advantage of changed circumstances to launch new services.

As with the earlier 'Heyday' volume, the book includes over 80 vivid colour photographs showing bus operations in Scotland.