Xmarkers turn up everywhere!

**cessna152towser** · 10th October 10, 03:40 PM

After church today I went to Glasgow for the Bridgeton Garage Open Day. Bridgeton Garage is a former Glasgow municipal bus depot now run as a charity. The depot is now home to the city museums department fleet of vintage buses, to private vehicles whose owners rent garage space and to Roads to Recovery, a charity which enables former court customers and drug addicts to rebuild their self esteem for return to work by re-furbishing the old buses. I'd worked my free admission ticket the previous week by helping sweep out the depot so today I was there to enjoy and my x-marks kilt was spotted by fellow x-marker Jimmy from Old Kilpatrick in Dunbartonshire whom I would never have recognised in his unkilted disguise!

Volunteer crew are always needed and I had driven this 1961 Leyland earlier in the year around the quiet streets near the depot. However, with 72 passenger seats it is the biggest bus which I have driven so far, and it has heavy manual steering so I have only driven it without passengers on the quiet streets near the depot and all my volunteer shifts on this bus have been as conductor. Today I left it to the more experienced to take the bus into the city centre and was content to take pictures. More to come shortly.

**cessna152towser** · 10th October 10, 03:56 PM

There were some impressive Yankee trucks on show. This 2007 Peterbilt from Texas makes our 1959 Leyland look so innocent, yet the 59 seat Leyland is a brute to steer.

Big Mac Frankie Boy the Scottish Cowboy, an impressive 1975 Mack Artic unit based in Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, a village from which one of my ancestry lines came from.

A powerful Swedish Volvo tractor unit named in honour of Donald J. Malcolm 1925-2003.

W.H.Malcolm was established in the nineteen forties and their red and two tone blue trucks have been a familiar sight to me throughout my life. Aesthetically, the English built nineteen sixties/seventies Atkinson Borderer has always been one of my favourites.

ex Military Land Rovers.

and lastly the brewer's dray for those who appreciate real ales.

**piperdbh** · 10th October 10, 06:59 PM

Impressive pictures, as always, Alex. You're near my Lockharts in Lanark. I hope they treat you well.

You might want to be careful using the word "Yankee" to describe a truck that came from Texas.

**GMan** · 10th October 10, 07:10 PM

What a great adventure.

**Jimmy** · 11th October 10, 04:59 AM

Alexs,
thanks for the photo of the two of us, it was a pleasure to meet you. I am only sorry that I was not wearing my kilt yesterday, if I had known that I would have bumped into you and my photo on X-MARK unkilited, I would certainly have been kilted - oh the shame of appearing on the forum kiltless!
Anyway your other photos are fab, I will print some of them off and give them to my friend who is a real old transport aficionado
Thanks again.