BusTalk

[Hart Bus]

To my dear friend Mr. Linsky (WCA) and everyone else, let me take a few moments of your time for some comments on several of the pictures.

1 - The first picture of the red and cream Mack from the 1950's. To quoted that great epicurean Homer Simpson " Ahhhh Bickford's". I won't say more because that would start another long thread.....

2 - Is it an optical illusion or did bus 505 brush the curb as he made the turn in the late 60's, early 70's ? The time giveaway is that green Dodge or Plymouth just behind him

3 - Amazing how the Mack's lasted into the 1970's. Bus 6034 has a consist of R-38 subways overhead. Sadly those cars are now being reefed as the R-160's pass their acceptance testing.

4 - FACC 2494. The 15 route was my home route as I lived in Sunnyside. However, I was probably too young to remember Macks on either that line or any of the other ones I took with my mom at that time.

I do have a childhood memory of getting on some buses in Manhattan and always running to sit on the rear bench, preferably by the passenger window, since you had to step up one step to sit on them. I guess that step was over the engine. Was that a Mack or some other brand ?

ECA

[Mr. Linsky]

NYO 2629,

Here's your answer (from the 'Mavin' - Vince Syrek of GMOldLookBus).

STS 1754, shown at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, wears the red-roof paint scheme that became standard with the delivery of 1951 Macks 1960-2009. Many of the 1948-1950 vintage STS Macks were repainted to this scheme, as was 1754, and very few received the later blue roof and side stripe scheme discussed earlier in this forum. A few of the 1950-built 1900-1959 series received variations of Fifth Avenue Coach-inspired yellow over red or tan above olive green, but repainting of early post-war Macks had come to a standstill before 1960. Indeed, 1949-built C-45-DT 1808 received a coat of red on its lower body around 1961 that looked like it had been applied with a roller, while, if memory serves, it still sported the aluminum roof and ivory upper body of its 1949 factory paint job.

MaBSTOA certainly decided early on that it would perform only what maintenance was absolutely necessary to the C-45-DTs inherited from STS/ST, retiring 18 of the 193 taken over as uneconomical to repair right away, as opposed to 6 of the 431 square-window GM Old Looks in the 1100-1599 series; the 1962 addition of 150 ex-NYCTA TDH-4510s made up for the loss of pre-war and wartime NYCO Yellows and allowed only for replacement of the worst cases on the STS roster noted above.

I noticed several of the remaining 1951-built 1961-2008 series had been reassigned by MaBSTOA to the Amsterdam Avenue garage, and served the M104/Broadway line in 1962, but I have no idea how many, along with the 1950-built 1900-1959, remained serving in the Bronx. The only 35 foot STS Mack that I knew to have two-tone green paint applied was C-47-DT 2037, which ran that way only a few months before the delivery of Fishbowls 3301-3555 sent the C-45s and C-47s into retirement. I've often wondered if any of the relatively young (less than 9 years old in mid-1963) C-47-DTs wound up on another operator's roster???

Thanks and regards,
Vince

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, NY