What was DARTS?

DARTS was formed by a group of Dundee Type 2 bashers in 1984. The general idea was to humiliate class 37s (T's) and our class 37 bashing friends! Contrary to popular belief the puking salmon was not taken from the Motherwell depot logo, the salmon was a Tay salmon and was from a logo introduced for Tayway rail and bus services around Dundee circa 1983, some of the Dundee units carried the branding "Tayrail", with the non puking salmon long before the depot symbols were introduced. The split box 37 was a deliberate choice as it represented the most hated of all 37s, the dreadful Eastfield vacuum only, steam heat effort in the form of 37017 that always worked Queen street to Perth and Dundee services that were booked for a 27. When we finally got rid of 017, 37090 replaced it as the vacuum only 37s had few other uses from Eastfield depot. The puke, well that's just how we felt!

We produced a few newsletters, which are reproduced here for your enjoyment, along with a few cartoons featuring story lines that were relevant at the time. Our class 37 bashing chums attempted their own newsletter effort and called themselves aTTic, which was the Anti Tip Top Insect Club and  a poor effort it was too! Fortunately (unfortunately for them) their first and last newsletter was intercepted and our own version written and distributed before theirs, these efforts also being reproduced here.

One of the other 27 bashers, Smirnov, as he was known, had his own version of witty articles and stories under the "Hellfire Club" banner, hopefully some of these will appear one day too.

It was all a good laugh at the time, we all got on well and none of it was taken personally, so look at the material in the archive and have a chuckle!