Eastern Scottish (inc SMT/ City Sprinter etc) in the 1980/ early 1990s

[DunsBus]

In hindsight they should have given Musselburgh to Lowland, revised Midland to be Stirling Falkirk, Airdrie and Livingston. plus news street, give Kelvin Oban and Balfron. Why did Eastern lose so much? It's clear they wanted competition within SBG and not for the good of passengers.

Ultimately, Lowland did get Musselburgh and Dalkeith when Eastern was all but closed down in 1996. Midland got Westfield and the two Livingston depots.
Oban was punted by Midland as it was remote from the rest of the company's operating area.

Berwick: the bus war seems even stranger in the context of how threadbare the “Town” services now are - I can’t reminder which Lowland Scottish service was the 37 or 38 but they certainly ran a ten minute service to Prior Park to compete with Northumbria’s ten minute B2 - the token “HOPP” Service tries to replace several different routes feels like a rather pathetic consolation prize… The B1 has at least bounced back to half hourly but still not much compared to the combined B1/B6 and whichever of the 37/38 served Highcliffe (once eighteen buses an hour across the Tweed)

Aberdeen : i know that Stagecoach still operate one cross city service with the Aberdeen boundaries (Northfield - Balnagask), as well as some services along many of the main roads into the city, but did Grampian retain any “out of town” presence when the truce happened? Or did Northern/ Bluebird/ Stagecoach essentially “win” (because their territory was greater than in 1986, whilst Grampian/ First retrenched to their traditional boundaries)? That would make it a rare “win” for the ex- SBG companies, compared to how they got on in Inverness/ Perth/ Edinburgh/ Glasgow/ Monklands/ Inverclyde… in fact, did the ex-SBG “win” many battles? They certainly lost a few…

Glasgow: In hindsight, would it have been better if the pre-deregulation changes has meant one SBG company taking the various “Greater Glasgow” depots, and given more focus/ coordination in the skirmishes with Strathclyde? Rather than what we ended up with, operators uncertain whether to expand or defend, extending long established routes into Glasgow into cross city services to try to compete, losing “traditional” territory to the “breadvan bandits” yet not gaining ground in the big city. Meanwhile, Strathclyde were run at one company and able to plan their strategy better

Berwick - 37 was the Prior Park service, 38 was the cross-town Highfields - Highcliffe service. The 38 competed with Northumbria's B6.
When Arriva sold its Berwick operations to Perryman's in 2002, the aftermath of the bus war was cited as one of the reasons for selling up. I remember Arriva had recently (2000) withdrawn Sunday journeys on the Berwick town services as a last-ditch attempt to keep them profitable.

Aberdeen - I don't think Grampian retained any rural services after the "agreement" with Bluebird Northern but it did have the two operations, Kirkpatrick's and Mair's, in Bluebird territory.and that was probably seen by Grampian as enough consolation.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

In hindsight they should have given Musselburgh to Lowland, revised Midland to be Stirling Falkirk, Airdrie and Livingston. plus news street, give Kelvin Oban and Balfron. Why did Eastern lose so much? It's clear they wanted competition within SBG and not for the good of passengers.

Perhaps not so much competition within SBG.

First of all, the splitting of National Bus Co firms had been going on since 1981 and that was partly to break up these monolithic firms to be more commercially agile. Also, if they were too large, they might be able to act uncompetitively in the deregulated market so they wanted to give opportunities to new entrants. However, most simply, it was a means of extracting more from the sales of the Scottish Bus Group.

 

[smtglasgow]

A bit before my time, but was part of the reasoning for the break up to align more closely with the (then) regions. Eastern in 1986 would have been a good fit with Lothian, while Strathtay seems to map onto Tayside.

 

[ajrm]

A bit before my time, but was part of the reasoning for the break up to align more closely with the (then) regions. Eastern in 1986 would have been a good fit with Lothian, while Strathtay seems to map onto Tayside.

Precisely. It made sense to align company boundaries to those of the regional councils which were responsible for transport planning matters.

 

[DunsBus]

Precisely. It made sense to align company boundaries to those of the regional councils which were responsible for transport planning matters.

It also presented the opportunity to put right some anomalies such as Eastern's local services in east Glasgow and the Monklands, Central's presence in Dunbartonshire and Midland running buses in deepest Perthshire.

 

[Simon75]

How many of there depots/outstations are still in use ?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

How many of there depots/outstations are still in use ?

Galashiels, Musselburgh and North Berwick.

 

[DunsBus]

Galashiels, Musselburgh and North Berwick.

North Berwick was - until well into the Lowland era - an outstation before becoming a depot in its own right in 1996.
It was an outstation of Dunbar and has long outlived its parent as that depot was closed at the start of 1992, when its allocation was moved to the ex-Ian Glass premises at Haddington. After a period of being used for overnight parking, it was demolished the following year.

North Berwick depot also has the distinction of being the only tangible remnant of the erstwhile Stark's of Dunbar, bought by Eastern Scottish in 1964.

The former depots at Hawick and Jedburgh (the latter, like North Berwick starting off as an outstation before being upgraded to a depot) are also still extant, twenty-plus years after their closure.

 

[Bus Lightyear]

The Eastern services I remember fondly are the 301-302 which operated from Buchanan or Anderston (can't remember exactly) and they did a tour of the east of Glasgow before ending up at Parkhead Cross.

There was also the 16 from Glasgow to Edinburgh via Coatbridge, Airdrie and Bathgate and the 35 which went via Bellshill, Harthill and Livingston normally operated by Eastern Counties bodied Daimler Fleetlines and Bristols.