From the archives of the Ayrshire Post

25 YEARS AGO

Dodds of Troon, the West of Scotland company with the green livery bus and coach fleet, has reassumed working family ownership following a successful management buyout.

It means 130 jobs will be secured. The 83- year- old company, which has a 60- vehicle fleet, is now wholly owned by cousins James and Douglas Dodds, with Norma Dodds as Administration Director.

Representing the fourth family generation, James said: “My great grandfather started it in 1910 as a blacksmith’s shop.”

50 YEARS AGO

A Patna engineer who dropped lighted paper through the window of an Ayr house occupied by a 65- year- old woman was jailed for six months by Sheriff G S Reid at Ayr. Robert Murdoch McEwan, 30, a railway engineer working at Killoch Colliery and living at Jellieston Crescent, admitted an indictment charge of setting fire to the house in Wellington Street.

When charged he said: “I can remember breaking the window accidentally, but that’s all I can remember.” An agent said he was at an Ayr pub and had a “fair amount to drink.”

100 YEARS AGO

A fine specimen of the Blue Shark was captured in the salmon nets of Mr Bruce at the Duhorn shore at Ballantrae on Monday.

The monster, which measure 6ft 5 ins and weighed several hundred- weights, wrought sad havoc with the nets in his endeavour to free himself.

The capture was conveyed to the grounds of Laggan House on Wednesday. But having become “high” in the interval, he had to be removed a respectable distance from the centre of the fete. Any potentialities he had as a side show were thus lost.