Grace's Guide
British Industrial History
Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 146,020 pages of information and 231,556 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.
Tartan Arrow
From Graces Guide
Road hauliers
1953 Company established as road freight hauliers.
1964 Shares in Tartan Arrow Service were to be traded on the Stock Exchange[1]
1965 Having developed the concept of running dedicated freight trains to handle the company's freight between London and Glasgow, the company signed an agreemnt with British Rail[2] but this met resistance from the rail unions[3]
1966 The Transport Holding Co acquired 75 percent of the shares in the company
1967 Complete nationalisation of the company, which helped diffuse industrial action against some of the company's operations, particularly the new train service planned between London and Glasgow; the company had started sending its freight by road rather than by Condor and Liner trains in response to the industrial action[4]. The Tartan Arrow rail service started regular week-day operation in July.