In a move set to be followed across the land, First has adapted one of its newest and largest depots to accommodate a rapidly growing fleet of battery-electric vehicles. ALAN MILLAR has been to see the infrastructure that has been installed and learns how its skilled engineers are being trained to work with zero-emission technology
Anew feature has appeared on the urban landmark that is First Glasgow’s Caledonia depot, which sits either side of the M74 around a mile to the south of the city centre on a 12acre site previously occupied by a Freightliner railway container depot.
Looking at first glance like tombstones erected in memory of soon-to-be-extinct internal combustion engine technology, these white boxes are the charging points to power the steadily growing fleet of battery-electric double-and single-deckers being introduced to Scotland’s largest bus fleet.
They line the sides of several of the outdoor parking lanes that hold Caledonia’s allocation of 355 buses, areas that in this part of the world are called lyes, a Scots term for railway sidings or roadside laybys. It also was how Glasgow Corporation’s transport department — First Glasgow’s direct ancestor — described the linear sections of its tram depots. Sixty years after the last trams ran and six years after the last former tram depot closed, lyes live on at First’s bus depots in the city.
