flickr.com/photos/1312323… "Come aboard the Maid of the Loch". Isn't this a glorious transport poster? @maidtosail
I love this poster so much I made my own abstract geometric version... 
Another leaflet in the British Rail house format (the CSP was under British Transport Commission/ British Railways Board control until 1968), this one is spectacularly mid century. flickr.com/photos/hughspi…
30 years previously, MacBrayne's (the CSP's competitor on the West Coast) had this amazing leaflet cover, which can only be described as "Shortbread Tin meets Taps Aff" flickr.com/photos/2471884…
What we now know as Caledonian Macbrayne came about as the result of a merger between the Caledonian Steam Packet and David Macbrayne Ltd. in 1973. Macbrayne's shipping was combined with the CSP's to form a single Clyde, West Coast & Hebrides shipping company
David Macbraynes were an all round shipping and transport company for the west coast and islands. They ran scheduled passenger and freight shipping, had the Royal Mail contracts and also ran buses and lorries. They had red funnels and black hulls. flickr.com/photos/3684428…
Their buses had this splendid red / cream and mint green livery, and their logo was a stylised Highlander with targe and broadsword flickr.com/photos/donaldu…
The CSP had its roots in the railways (the name "Caledonian" coming from the Caledonian Railway) and mainly served the Firth of Clyde, providing onwards scheduled and leisure shipping from railheads. Their house colours were black hulls and yellow funnels. flickr.com/photos/2471884…
The CSP's house flag was yellow with a red lion. In the 1960s, under BR control, their ships acquired a modified BR house livery of monastral blue hulls but retained their yellow funnels, now with a red lion added flickr.com/photos/hughspi…
That last photo is the famous "Waverley", which was not built for the CSP but for it's rival the London & North Eastern Railway. The LNER had acquired the North British Railway in 1923 as a result of the "grouping" (the CSP going to the London, Midland Scottish railway)
The LNER kept on the North British house livery of black hulls and red funnels with a white stripe; flickr.com/photos/1312323…
There are of course variations on these liveries, for instance PS "Juno" is seen here with a short lived hybrid scheme of grey hull (from the G&SWR) and a yellow funnel with red band, signifying the merger of Caledonian and G&SWR shipping flickr.com/photos/robertb…
Williamson Buchanan had white funnels, they were merged into the CSP in 1935 flickr.com/photos/4484155…
flickr.com/photos/robertb… The North British Railway had that Black hull / red funnel / white stripe livery that the LNER inherited.
The NB named many of its steamers after books or characters by Sir Walter Scott (Lucy Ashton, Jeanie Deans, Kenilworth, Talisman, Dandy Dinmont...) The LNER kept up this tradition with "Waverley" of course.
The Lucy Ashton, built in 1888, ended her life in a most unusual manner. After WW2 she was stripped down to a bare hull and had four Rolls Royce Derwent gas turbine engines mounted over the old paddle boxes. A very noisy and impractical experiment. flickr.com/photos/scottis…
Another one of those Walter Scott-themed vessels was "Talisman" of 1935. She was unique in having an up-to-date diesel electric transmission (the first such ship in the world). It never caught on, but did find a niche use in tug boats for aircraft carriers flickr.com/photos/9450855…
David Macbraynes was actually owned jointly by the LMS (who owned the CSP) and shipping conglomerate Coast Lines. They had an interesting house flag, which was a blue pennant with overlapping white and (shock! horror!) red saltires. flickr.com/photos/2471884…
Despite being owned by the big boys, Macbraynes had a distinct identity and very active publicity department. They used the slogans "The Royal Route" and "The Road to the Isles" and produced some really nice transport posters flickr.com/photos/2471884…
They were nationalised alongside everything else in 1948 and passed to the control of the British Transport Commission alongside a reconstituted CSP. Their visual identity seems to have been more independent than the CSP though who used stock BR layouts. flickr.com/photos/2471884…
Here's that Macbraynes clansman again flickr.com/photos/2471884…
"Clansman" has since been the name of two Calmac ferries. The current one has a little nod to its Macbraynes heritage, a little clansman painted on the bow visor flickr.com/photos/kaputni…
Anyway, it's safe to say by the early 1970s the promo department had been gutted under the control of the dull bureaucrats at the Scottish Transport Group and they were knocking up the artwork on the office photocopier flickr.com/photos/hughspi…
1972 did put in a little bit more effort with this funky but totally out of place disco-style "SUMMER SAIL 72" masthead flickr.com/photos/hughspi…
That was a short-lived blip though, by the late 1970s things had settled down to this utterly dreary Helvetica template. The weird arrow thing was their then slogan of "The Marine Motorway" as a nod to the new drive-through ferries flickr.com/photos/2471884…
But lets end on a positive, 1938 was quite possibly the peak of Scottish transport poster design; art deco on acid. flickr.com/photos/2471884…
I realise these threads can be hard to follow when they're mainly a bunch of links to pictures on twitter, so here's a handy unrolled version so you can read all about the liveries, flags and posters of Clyde & West Coast shipping threadreaderapp.com/thread/9709710…
