The General Braemar Tour ; six postcard views of the tour, 3d : booklet issued by the Scottish General Omnibus Co. Ltd., Stirling : nd. [c.1925] : 4

I've recently been very kindly gifted a fine item of ephemera relating to the Scottish General Omnibus Company Limited in the form of a booklet of six black and white photographs of locations on the Company's Braemar coach tour that has four colour cover plates. You rarely see much for the Scottish General so this is of particular interest.

 

The Scottish General appears to have been formed by the British Electric Traction concern in 1913, possibly to assist in developing road transport to supplement their tramway operation in the area. It may also have been one of the post-WW1 transport companies that made much use of both demobbed military staff versed in the maintenance of motor vehicles as well as the surplus sales of such vehicles to the civilian market. By the mid-1920 the company, whose managing director appears to be one D. Hays, had expanded from their original route which is shown as running from Bridge of Allan to Bannockburn via Stirling and St. Ninians. The company are also noted, in Commercial Motor for 1 April 1924, as running extensive motor coach tours such as this one to Braemar.

 

By the late 1920s the motor bus business was a crowded field and was expanding at a time of considerable technological development in vehicles - both of which required capital investment. From 1929/30 the main line railways, seeing that bus operation was a threat that buying into may help contain or generate additional profits for them, started to buy into existing bus companies. In Scotland this rapidly coalesced around the Edinburgh based Scottish Motor Traction Co. Ltd. who used the railways financial muscle to acquire, as subsidiaries, various other major concerns such as the Falkirk based W. Alexander & Sons, who also built bus bodies and still do to this day. W.. Alexander's acquired the Scottish General on behalf of SMT in 1929 and this added routes, vehicles and garages both in Central Scotland and, through an associated concern, up towards Aberdeen giving Alexander's a considerable operating area.

 

As can be seen from this booklet the SGOC had depots in Larbert, Stirling, Dunfermline and Crieff. I note these more 'central' Scottish locations as it appears that the SGOC, upon acquisition, was renamed as Western SMT and formed the basis of that subsidiary that was to develop an extensive operating territory in the counties to the south west of Glasgow. The use and renaming of existing companies was not unusual as it was a simpler way of setting up and operation and using its administration rather than setting up another concern.

 

Anyhow, the artworks are signed as by "D.M.R." and use scenery and hunour to market and advertise the General's tours that also seem to have included passing a blacksmith!

Done