Where the ghosts roll on wheels Once, Scotland had many car factories. Now it has Motoring Memories, writes Ross Finlay, tracking the traces

This weekend Tim will be showing some interested parties his plans for the exhibition area, and anyone wanting to join in should phone him on 01555 666001.

If Alexandria is now secure, other examples of car factories from the days of the original Scottish industry are dwindling in number. There is no trace left of the ex-bicycle works in Bridgeton which Argyll occupied before moving to Alexandria, and where John Brimlow restarted Argyll production after World War I.

Albion Automotive is going strong at South Street in Scotstoun, using buildings where Albion lorries were built, but the earlier factory where cars were produced to 1913 has been cleared away.

A few years ago there were still some buildings on the site of the original Arrol-Johnston works in the east end of Glasgow. Now only grass-covered rubble survives of the Yate Street factory which the company abandoned after a disastrous fire in May 1901.

It moved to a redundant thread mill in Paisley owned by the Coats family who had an interest in the car works. But Underwood Mills has also been demolished in favour of housing. From Paisley, Arrol-Johnston moved again to Heathhall outside Dumfries, where what was one of the first ferro-concrete factory buildings in the country survives in the hands of Gates Rubber.

Sir Malcolm Campbell's Bluebird land speed record car was rebuilt here in 1928, by which time the car company had merged into Arrol-Aster.

In Dumfries itself, the old North British Ironworks where the Drummond was built stands empty in Annan Road, having served recently as a council yard. The Dalbeattie works which produced the little Skeoch cyclecar in the early Twenties is still part of a garage business, and Newton Stewart is the place to track down the Murchie cars (which have escaped many researchers) built in the first decade of the century.

One substantial car factory still standing is the former Galloway works at Tongland. This Arrol-Johnston subsidiary was established during World War I to build the company's aero engines - work done mostly by women, who were encouraged to join in by articles in Engineering, The Lady, Lady's Pictorial and The Gentlewoman.

Arrol-Johnston eventually pulled Galloway production back to Heathhall. The factory at Tongland was later an artificial silk works and is now - with the windows bricked up - occupied by Galloway Eggs.

Galloway and Arrol-Johnston were both part of the Beardmore empire, which in the Twenties also built vehicles under its own name: thousands of taxis in the old Underwood works, large cars in Coatbridge, and light cars at Temple in Glasgow.

The Beardmore Light Car Works were in Fulton Street. Modern houses in Hilton Terrace stand on the site where Beardmore, under Alex Francis, built sports cars like the one which upset the English hill-climbing establishment by taking the record at Shelsle y Walsh.

Elsewhere in Glasgow, Finnieston Street was once a hive of vehicle-building industry. Albion started there before moving to Scotstoun. Kelvin cars were built there too, and Carlaws, long-time Austin agents, also put together a few lorries under their own name.

Gilchrist in Giffnock and Govan, Atholl in Craigton, ABC in Bridgeton, Central in Bothwell Street, Kennedy, Ailsa, Rob Roy, Scotia and St Vincent were among the other Glasgow makes whose factory sites should be pin-pointed.

I would be grateful for any help about that, in Glasgow or anywhere else.

A fact not often encountered in biographies of Sir Harry Lauder is that he helped to finance the Scotsman car company of 1922, in Glasgow's Wigton Street. Although it still appears on maps of the city, across the canal from Port Dundas, Wigton Street effectively no longer exists, smothered as it is by rubble and part-occupied by a travellers' site.

If the colossal expense of its lavish factory in Alexandria was one of the contributing factors to Argyll's constant financial troubles, something similar happened in Edinburgh......

William Peck, the city astronomer (and, although the council had no idea of this, also the astrologer of an occult society) gathered finance to start the Madelvic company in 1898. He spent far too much of it on a factory in Granton, which survives - still with the original villa-style offices - within the United Wire Company works.

Madelvics were electric ``horseless carriages'' and they were by no means quick, which made the provision of a 600-yard test track round the factory perimeter (as shown on contemporary Ordnance Survey plans of Granton) somewhat superfluous.

The short-lived company went into liquidation before the old century finished, but the Granton works were taken up by other vehicle companies such as Stirling, Kingsburgh and Caledonian.

Stirling was originally a Hamilton coachbuilding firm, which as early as 1897 diversified into cars. John Stirling imported rolling chassis from the Continent, fitted his own bodywork, and soon had a flourishing business. Stirling's Motor Carriages Ltd opened the first car showrooms in Glasgow (at 504-508 Sauchiehall Street); is claimed to have been the first motor company in Britain to pay dividends to shareholders; and may have provoked Scotland's first car accident.

In February 1897 the first Stirling car, having returned from an exhibition in Birmingham, was being pushed - not driven - from Hamilton Central railway station to the works in Campbell Street. The last few yards were downhill, and Stirling's employees decided to let the car freewheel. Some children cavorted around it, and an eight year-old girl was run over, fortunately with only minor injuries.

Naturally, the incident was reported in the local Hamilton Advertiser, which is quite appropriate, considering that the paper's present-day offices are in the self-same Stirling works.