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A Mystery On 1st Avenue

We were heading back to Brandywine from downtown last weekend (April 30) and spotted these old busses parked along the road. I mentioned that it was certainly unusual to see three 50's-60's style busses. We stopped and checked them out and discovered they were not restored, and in fact, seemed to be working and serving as busses. They were licensed in California.



The first and last were unconventional 6 wheelers, and the middle was a 4-wheeled bus.


Looking like ghosts from the past lined up ready to take kids home from school.


The maker was Crown.  That's a California license, new not a vintage plate. 


Nobody was around when I took these and there were no restaurants nearby.



Dirty and not a restored bus.   




A quick check with Wikipedia found this entry for Crown Coach Company:

Crown Coach was the creator of the original large, flat nose (cab-forward transit style or "Type D"), high capacity school bus. Their first example appeared in 1932. That vehicle still exists today. Beginning as a wagon builder, and shortly thereafter a motorized truck body outfitter, Crown expanded into passenger vehicles which then became its main focus. Working with Tanner Grey Line of Los Angeles, Crown designed the well-known Art Deco coach that eventually led to a school coach using unibody construction, mid-ship underfloor mounted commercial truck engines (often by Detroit Diesel or Cummins; a handful of them had Caterpillar engines) and off-the-shelf Class 8 truck parts, which made them economical to operate. Starting with steel skins, Crown later switched to rust-resistant aluminum panels.







Crown's Supercoach school buses were known for strength and durability, built of 90,000 psi steel, with an expected service life of 20 years. This became a factor contributing to Crown's shutdown in 1991, because competitors produced less expensive buses made of 45,000 psi steel. The service life of the average school bus today is approximately ten years. There are many Crown buses over 20 years old still plying the roads of California, and in private use as converted coaches. Many Crown buses, retired by school districts in the U.S., continue to serve in Mexico as local transit buses, private charters, and even cross-country tour coaches.

So, these busses are probably still in operation but why the California plates?  Why no school insiginia on the sides?  Why no one around to guard the busses?  Why on 1st Avenue where there are no schools?   It is a mystery that we'll likely never solve since the busses were gone the next day.  But for a brief period of time drivers must have been transported back in time when these beasts were all the rage in California taking boomers home from school.  
 


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