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Having adorned a black, white and three toned grey stripe livery since January 1981, Western decided to upgrade its entire Seddon T type fleet starting in January 1988.

The Western Scottish depot at Stranraer was well renowned for it’s double decker allocation in the 80’s and 90’s, mainly for schools work to Stranraer Academy and between the Machars and the Douglas Ewart High School in Newton Stewart, the latter operating out of the Stranraer’s outstation at Whithorn.

As well as local and national bus services Western SMT / Western Scottish also operated a hugely successful Private Hire and Extended Tour programme. Coaches or Seddon T Type’s were the preferred vehicle choice for this type of work but Western also fitted the following Alexander Y Type bodied vehicles with “Dual Purpose” coach style seating to ensure enough “back up” vehicles were always in plentiful supply.

After many, many years wearing Western’s attractive red and cream livery, the double deck fleet started to receive a variation of Western’s earlier introduced black, white and two tone grey single deck livery.

The first vehicle to receive the new style livery was Ayr depot’s AR771 XSJ652T and is seen here parked up at Sandgate Bus Station in Ayr.

After a long history of operating double decker buses at Stranraer depot, the beginning of the end for this type began in January 1995 when Dumfries & Galloway Council instructed that the “three to a double seat” regulation on tendered school workings was to be ended and that single deck vehicles were to be the preferred vehicle type throughout the region as from January 5th 1995.

In September 1987 Western Scottish took delivery of it’s last batch of ‘brand new’ Double Deckers. These were to be six Alexander RV bodied Volvo B10MD’s and were to be registered E862-7RCS. As it turned out E862-3RCS were diverted to Fife Scottish as their FRA909-10 (E909-10KSG) and never saw use with Western. The remaining four vehicles were originally numbered V864-7 (E864-7RCS) and had CH45/35F seating.

For many years the Western depot at Dumfries provided repaint and engineering support for the Southern area garages alongside the main works at Kilmarnock. Many of the early Leopard Tow Wagon conversions, DMS dual door conversions and Volvo B10M re-bodying took place here. The paint shops were always kept busy and when a new livery was introduced the Dumfries & Galloway fleet was always quickly out shopped in the latest style.

Parked up at Western’s Dumfries depot on Eastfield Road are a selection of recently delivered Alexander Y type bodied Leyland Leopards. Closest to the camera was DL54 (GCS54V) which received an all-over advert for the Stranraer / Dumfries – London Express services in September 1980.

Western SMT / Western Scottish purchased the Seddon Pennine 7 in large numbers in the 1970/80’s. In total Western purchased 112 Alexander “Y” type bus bodied examples and 90 Alexander “T” type dual purpose coach bodied types. To cover private hire work etc 55 of the Alexander “Y” type examples were also fitted with dual purpose “coach” style seating.

H661UWR was a Dennis Javelin / Plaxton Paramount 3200 C53F purchased new to Wallace Arnold of Leeds in April 1991 to evaluate the Javelin chassis. Following its disposal from Wallace Arnold, Western Scottish purchased the vehicle in January 1992, via Dennis Specialist Vehicles, and received it still wearing its former owners livery, minus fleet names and legal lettering. Western quickly repainted the vehicle into its latest coach livery style (including attractive pearlescent white paint and fleet names), gave it fleet number N111 and allocated it to Western’s coaching unit (L depot codes).

The majority of Western’s Seddon T types received the black, white and grey dual purpose livery but there were rare exceptions to that rule. One such vehicle was Alexander T Type bodied Seddon Pennine 7 S2560 MSJ366P. Delivered new to Western in July 1976, S2560 was originally outshopped in the smart black and white livery with the gold Western scroll fleetnames but in June 1981 she, and sister bus S2559, received advertising liveries for the 21 Glasgow – Glasgow Airport service.