It is our intention to update this section with a detailed look at each depot later in the year. We’ll also add the ability to make comments so that everyone can share their personal stories about the depots they worked in etc. Watch this space.
Serving South West Scotland
With an operating area covering as far north as the Island of Islay and as far south as Carlisle in Cumbria it’s easy to understand why Western required a lot of depots to house its fleet of buses operating across its network.
It’s probably also a good time to explain how Western identified which buses were allocated to each specific depot. Western SMT originally introduced an official fleet numbering system back in 1949 which adopted a simple numbering scheme prefixed by two letters, the first denoting the vehicle allocation and the second identifying the vehicle type. This system was continued by Western Scottish, on its creation in June 1985, and year letter codes were also added above the fleet number to indicate the age of the vehicle, e.g. “B” was 1960, “C2” was 1972 and “C9” was 1979 etc.
Western’s vehicle ‘depot allocation’ codes were as follows:
A – Ayr depot (including sub-depot at Girvan)
C – Cumnock depot (including sub-depot at Sanquar)
D – Dumfries depot (including sub-depots at Annan, Kirkcudbright, Lockerbie & Penpont)
E – Carlisle depot (including sub-depots at Langholm & Longtown) (1977 – 1987)
G – Greenock depot
I – Inchinnan depot
J – Johnstone depot (including sub-depot at Largs)
K – Kilmarnock depot
L – London Fleet coaches (from 1986)
M – Newton Mearns (including sub-depot at Ardrishaig) (Thornliebank from 1968)
N – Ardrossan depot
N – Arran (from 1994)
O – Cowal (from 1994, but not carried on vehicles)
P – Paisley depot (from 1977, previously J)
R – Rothesay depot
S – Stranraer depot (including sub-depots at Wigtown, Whithorn & Port William) (from 1977, previously D)
T – Ardrossan (from 1995 for the A1 fleet, but not carried on vehicles)
Y – Islay Depot