You may know the story of Lawrence of Arabia's conquest of the desert by motorcycle, but you may not know the story of NAIRN's conquest of the trans-desert roads with the world's largest bus.
The Nairn Transport Company was a pioneering motor transport company that operated a trans-desert route from Beirut, Haifa and Damascus to Baghdad and back from 1923. Their route became known as "The Nairn Way". The firm continued, in various guises, until 1959.
The "world's largest bus" was a unique model, built by the Nairns for their land service between Baghdad and Damascus. They had opened it in 1923 and it was a real pioneering effort: they literally drove three cars (a Buick, an Oldsmobile and a Lancia) across the desert from Beirut to Baghdad and from there began a regular service that became a pretty large scale one in the 1930s.
The huge bus was designed to provide a first class service on a larger scale than the earlier cars and buses they were using to keep pace with increasingly competitive air services. It was a three-axle Marmon-Herrington all-wheel drive tractor pulling a huge custom-built coach with first and second class accommodation. The trailer was dust-tight and could accommodate up to 40 passengers and over 7,000 pounds of luggage. There was a steward on board who served food from a small galley/kitchen at the front of the trailer, which had a cooker and hot and (iced) cold running water. There was also a toilet on board but I am not sure where exactly. It was probably between the first and second class compartments.
The passenger trailer was connected by telephone to the driver's cab, where two or three drivers were based. There was a small bed in the cab so the drivers could swap during the 15-20 hour drive and they were also armed in case of attack by a desert raider (in the company's history there were several flights but only one fatality). It was eventually sold to the RAF who used it to move personnel during the Second World War and then disappeared.
In 1937 they ordered two 'Pullman' cars as successors to the Marmon-Herrington. These were smaller but faster and featured a revolutionary new technology: air conditioning! They were some of the first vehicles to feature air conditioning on board and probably the most successful: by 1956 each bus had reportedly covered over a million miles on its journeys across the desert.
The company was dissolved in the 1950s, but the highway that today connects Baghdad to Damascus follows the old Nairn Road almost exactly.
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