Better late than never...

In 1928 Portree garage owners and hoteliers, Donald, Angus, Kenneth (Nicholson brothers) along with Donald J Nicholson set up the Portree Motor Coach Company to operate a passenger service to Kyleakin, the island’s ferry terminal.  105 miles up the road, Inverness based Highland Transport, 50% owned by the LMS Railway had designs on operating coach services on, to and from the Isle of Skye, the ‘Majorca’ of its day.  Their connection with Skye was at the LMS railhead at Kyle of Lochalsh on the mainland.  The Portree Coach Company was bought out in 1930.  Highland Transport failed to make the profits they anticipated and for a number of years made losses.  When they investigated the causes they found that many of the staff, 105 miles away from head office and without much supervision were embezzling funds by taking fares and bookings but issuing their own tickets!  Not at all pleased about this, in 1935 Highland Transport sold the business on Skye back to the Nicholsons who promptly named it The Skye Motor Transport Company The Skye Transport Company Ltd.  After WWll the senior Nicholson partner retired and in 1946, the remaining partners, being unwilling to keep the business going, it was sold to the Glasgow based Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society (SCWS) ; they retained the Skye Transport name.  

Like those before it, the SCWS struggled to maintain a profitable operation and in 1958 the business was again sold, this time to MacBraynes a Glasgow based operator with significant bus interests in the Highlands and islands.  KGE541, an Albion FT (Victor) with a Harvey body built in Strathaven in 1952 was the last new vehicle purchased by Skye Transport. 

MacBraynes sent it to Islay for the Portnahaven service. In September 1961, its mail compartment was removed, and its seating capacity increased from 23 to 27 before it moved to South Uist (where interestingly, none of the buses had mail compartments.)  It then moved to Mull in June 1964, its fourth island !!  In 1965 it was withdrawn and went south to be a works bus with a Glasgow building contractor and the story goes it became landfill when its days were over.

I’ve always loved the elusive little Albion.  When I wrote the MacBraynes Book in 1999 I struggled to find any photos of it and it became a mission.  I eventually gathered half a dozen and later decided to build a model of it.  In 2008 a Glasgow modeller brought out a (not great) resin shell for one and I used this as my master.  I chose West Coast Motors livery because it’s the sort of vehicle they might have used if they’d need small buses for island services in the 50’s.  Now 12 years on I’ve decided to rebuild the model again.  It was never very good but I like the diminutive Albion so much it deserves better.  Started the transformation this afternoon.