The Ailsa B55 type was particularly popular with the
Scottish Bus Group (SBG): of all the constituent divisions,
Northern and
Lowland were the only ones never to adopt the Ailsa into their fleets. The two most keen SBG subsidiaries were
Fife Scottish and
Eastern Scottish: Fife purchased 74 Ailsas in total, while Eastern bought 40 examples as new (30 of them the Mk III variant with Alexander RV body) and a further 43 second-hand from other operators. Overall, the SBG received 192 Ailsa deliveries from 1975 to 1984. Other customers included
Cardiff Bus, who purchased 36 new with Northern Counties bodywork between 1981 and 1984 as well as acquiring second-hand examples, as well as
National Bus Company subsidiary
Maidstone & District Motor Services for operational trials against the
Bristol VRT and the
Scania Metropolitan; the Ailsas proved unpopular there with both passengers and employees, the latter of whom went on strike in the
summer of 1976 due to poor ventilation inside the bus, and were withdrawn by 1983. Ayrshire independent operator
A1 Service, whose operating area included Ailsa's Irvine factory, also purchased several Ailsa B55s, increasing its fleet, where it could, through the purchase of used vehicles. As part of its Alternative Vehicle Evaluation programme,
London Transport took delivery of three Mark III vehicles in 1984. The programme was intended to evaluate alternative vehicle types for future fleet replacement in
London, which, at that time, was purchasing
Leyland Titans and
MCW Metrobuses. One of these, numbered V3 in the London Transport fleet, was built with an exit door behind the rear axle and a second staircase adjacent. No further orders for new B55s were placed by London Transport, but numerous second-hand examples were purchased from the South Yorkshire and West Midlands PTEs in the late 1980s. A solitary Ailsa chassis was bodied as a single-deck bus by
Marshall for Strathclyde PTE. Later, the same operator created a second single-decker, by converting an Alexander-bodied double-decker, the upper deck of which had been damaged. In all, just over 1,000 B55s were built, 890 of them being bodied by
Walter Alexander. Of the remainder, 64 Ailsas received unusual
Van Hool McArdle bodies built in
Dublin - 62 buses for the South Yorkshire PTE and two for A1 Service, Ayrshire.
Northern Counties bodied some for
Derby Corporation and Cardiff Bus, a total of 35 were also bodied by East Lancs Coachbuilders for Tayside, and a small number were also bodied by Marshall for Strathclyde and Derby Corporation. The last significant number of Ailsas in service in the UK were operated by
Cardiff Bus, who maintained 18 of the type in regular service by 2007 following extensive refurbishment. They were withdrawn on 15 December 2007.
China Motor Bus in Hong Kong received eight Ailsa B55s between 1975 and 1978, although six of these buses were subsequently destroyed by fire, and one B55 was and another B55 was exported to the Philippines for demonstration use with the
Bangkok Mass Transit Authority, later being exported to Singapore as a demonstrator for
Singapore Bus Services and eventually sold to an operator in Hong Kong. In 1981, a 3-axle version, featuring a self-steering rear axle developed from Volvo's
F10 and F12 trucks to aid with manoeuvrability, was developed to meet the demand for 3-axle buses in Asia. A total of three 3-axle Ailsa B55s were built for export, with two sold to China Motor Bus as demonstrators and the third exported to Indonesia. ==References==