SCOTLAND
Sixty years ago, on May 15, 1961, the Scottish Bus Group turned the three divisions of W Alexander & Sons, its largest subsidiary with 1,937 vehicles, into separate subsidiary companies. The largest of these, with 967 vehicles and 16 depots, was W Alexander & Sons (Midland), and a consequence of its formation was the disappearance of the operator whose double-decker Ken Cameron photographed in Dundas Street bus station in Glasgow on 9 October 1957. This was David Lawson, a company Alexander’s acquired in 1936 but kept as a separate entity, operating local services and coach tours (the latter branded as Land Cruises) from its depot in Milton Road, Kirkintilloch, which was the legal address on the nearside of the 89 vehicles it owned in 1961. While Alexander’s livery was blue and cream, the Lawson’s fleet was painted in the dark and red and cream also used by Alexander’s on former municipal routes in Perth and Kirkcaldy. The Kirkintilloch depot became one of the Midland company’s 16, the Lawson’s name was soon dropped and the fleet repainted blue and cream. The Lawson company was renamed Clydeside Omnibuses, a dormant entity believed either to be a vehicle for the division of Western …
