Western SMT was formed in 1932, when the Scottish General Transport Company (which operated buses in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire) merged with Midland Bus Services, which operated from the south-west of Glasgow as far as Ayr, Stranraer and Dumfries. From 1949 to 1991 Western SMT was state-owned, first as part of the British Transport Commission and then as part of the Scottish Bus Group. In the run-up to deregulation the company was split into two with the northern half of its operations transferred. A management buy-out returned the company to the private sector but then in 1996 Western SMT was absorbed by Stagecoach and an era had ended.
In this book David Devoy, long an enthusiast for Western SMT, looks back at the company’s buses and coaches, which were once such a familiar sight in rural south-west Scotland, in industrial Clydeside and on long-distance services on the motorways.
