Title: Buses on the Western Isles
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-3981-0454-9
Specification: 235mm x 165mm,96pp, softback
Price: £15.99
This album is mainly about buses on one of the Western Isles — the largest and northernmost one that divides into Lewis and Harris — rather than the entire archipelago that stretches south-westwards through North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra.
Richard Walter is a regular visitor and has observed the many changes to bus and coach operation in communities where 50 years ago the predominant service bus was a Willowbrook-bodied Bedford SB5 and the requirement for coaches was so limited that ideas of purchasing new or nearly new ones would have been banished without cause for a second thought.
Today, low-floor buses – several (like the MCV-bodied Volvo B8RLE on the cover) bought new – are as essential as anywhere on the UK mainland and, at least pre- Covid, regular calls by cruise ships created a requirement for well-equipped coaches for use on day trips, many also bought new.
Pre-1975 when Scottish local government was restructured, Lewis was in the county of Ross & Cromarty, while Harris and the islands to the south were in Invernessshire. All are …