SVBM secures rare AEC Renown
The Scottish Vintage Bus Museum has filled a significant gap in its already extensive collection of prewar vehicles by purchasing at auction a 1926 AEC Renown 413 new to the Glasgow General Omnibus Company, which traded as GOC.
Metcalfe-bodied 22 (VA 5777) is the only survivor of 65 single-deckers that GOC bought at its inception to establish services linking Glasgow with towns in Lanarkshire. Although Metcalfe was based in Romford, it assembled the bodies for the GOC buses in Hamilton, where GOC was based.
GOC’s choice of vehicle and red and cream livery was influenced by an early association with the London General Omnibus Company, but it soon came under the control of Scottish Motor Traction whose chairman, William Thomson, considered the AECs to be unreliable and expensive to operate.
All were withdrawn by 1932, when GOC was reformed as Central SMT and large numbers of Leylands flowed into the fleet. No.22 survived in various owners’ hands — possibly as a caravan for a time — before passing into preservation in the 1950s.
The SVBM is keen to fill in the blanks in the story of AEC, which resurfaced at a Western SMT open day in 1979 and was then partially restored and pain…
