Fife Independents

Fife is a council area and historic county of Scotland, situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. It is Scotland’s third largest local authority area by population, and has a resident population of just under 367,000, almost a third of whom live in the three principal towns of Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes. It has always been a difficult place to reach and this was especially so before the opening of the Forth and Tay road bridges. Historically most bus services were provided by W. Alexander and Sons after they acquired many small businesses from the 1920s onwards. Independents survived working mainly school and miners contracts, but de-regulation in the 1980’s allowed a few to register stage services. Well-known names have included Rennie’s, Moffat’s, Williamson’s, Allison’s and more recently Bay Travel. We will be looking at the local bus scene from the 1960s through to the present day.