Now I'm not trying to be an advert here and if the admin wishes to remove this, thats fine.

The Works, that bookshop that often has end of line stock has a reprinting and updated version of the rather excellent book The Kingdom of Macbrayne.  Anyone interested in the shipping side might like this book, especially as the drastically reduced price of £5.99.  As well as the original Macbraynes it also covers CalMac and all that happened inbetween with the Scottish Transport group.

It is this book.  Unfortunately the Works doesn't have it on their website, it probably will only be in Scottish stores.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Kingdom-MacBrayne-Donald-Meek/dp/1841586013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339375543&sr=8-1

Anyone interested in this sort of thing could do a lot worse.