Delivered to Milngavie depot in the last few days of 1966, Alexander (Midland) Daimler Fleetline MRF 3 was given an E-suffix registration and so entered service at the start of 1967. It is seen near Canniesburn Toll in Milngavie Road, Bearsden, later that same year en route to Buchanan Street Bus Station in Glasgow via Maryhill.
This was my first bus photo, taken at the age of 11. I hadn't quite worked out where to stand, but the shot provides an interesting vista of the street scene from the 1960s, with minimal traffic. The entrance from the main thoroughfare to Macfarlane Road in the right foreground of the picture has been blocked off for many years now. Gray Drive, on the other side of the main road, is now blocked off at the far end in Drymen Road, but in those days was available as a short-cut between Drymen Road and Milngavie Road.
Route 11 was the principal service from Glasgow to Milngavie via Maryhill and Canniesburn, and was later renumbered 110, causing some confusion with Route 10 which ran (and still runs) from Glasgow to Balfron (and in those days on to Stirling).
The arrival of the Fleetlines heralded the end of the large fleet of Leyland Titan PD1s operated from Milngavie.
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Milngavie's 1948 Leyland Titan PD1 MRA 27 at the Kessington terminus of route 11A in 1967, shortly before the bus was withdrawn. The terminus has long gone from this point: vehicles used to turn by driving into the entrance to Kessington Farm (to the right of the picture) and then reversing into the position occupied by the bus in the photo. The farm buildings are little changed to this day, but the view is now dominated by the buildings of Boclair Academy at the top of the hill in the background.
This batch of PD1s had a mixture of post-war styled lower deck and wartime utility upper deck, which fitted together rather strangely. Deliveries from MRA 31 onwards had post-war designs to both decks. The bus in the picture has had its upper-deck front windows reglazed with rubber gaskets.
The 11A, Glasgow to Kessington Road (Inveroran Drive) via Maryhill and Canniesburn was my local route, with buses running past my bedroom window.
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The 1951 and 1953 batches of Alexander PD2s were scattered throughout the "Empire". Stepps' MRB 155 sits at the corner of Killermont Street and Germiston Street, Glasgow, in 1967.
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Milngavie's Leyland Tiger PS1 MPA 151 of 1950 has strayed onto the normally double-decked service 28 from Duntocher to Glasgow via Anniesland. It is photographed in the layover area behind Buchanan Street Bus Station in 1968. The buildings in the background, which appear in many photos of this period, are the remains of Buchanan Street Railway Station, the site of which is now occupied largely by the buildings of Glasgow Caledonian University.
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Alexander (Midland) Tiger Cub MPD 209 photographed in 1968 at the Tours stance alongside Parliamentary Road in Glasgow. This batch, known as the "Ford Anglia" Tiger Cubs, were famously unique, the moulds used to produce them being destroyed in a fire at Alexander's coachbuilders before any more bodies could be built.
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