Car Life

[Kenneth Josephson]

"Fred W. Schneider III" wrote:

>   Consider the
> repair shop you don't need.  Here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we have an
> unusual transit authority.  Red Rose reengined all of the 1970 Fageol's
> once before they finally put them out to pasture.  Conestoga
> Transportation Company had NO money all through the 1960s to reengine a
> bus but they did buy some nice used coaches.  Red Rose, on the other
> hand, is very unique in its overhaul practices.  Capital Area Transit in
> Harrisburg, which was run by ATA Management (the same people who had it
> has a private company), is still running scads of fishbowl GMs in the
> rush hour because they may be the only other public agency in
> Pennsylvania to maintain buses.  For the most part, we don't need
> overhaul shops anymore because we don't do much more than safety
> maintenance, i.e. brakes, steering, light bulbs. We need a body shop to
> rebuild those that are used for target practice.

My next comments are further off topic and out of the scope of Western Pennsylvania, but
after purchasing a fleet of Flxibles in 1977, a fleet of RTS coahes in 1981 and some
European built coaches in 1982 that were all failures as far as reliability went,
Milwaukee County Transit System purchased rebuild kits from General Motors at $20,000 a
pop and overhauled over one hundred of its newest (1966 & 1967) TDH 5301 diesel coaches.
It's been over fifteen years (five beyond Federal funding retirement requirements) and
only now are those buses being retired in earnest. There were over sixty still in use
last July and they are mixed in service with the newest of coaches on the the system,
still front line service providers. I wonder if their smaller V-6 power plants and lack
of air conditioning made them better rebuild candidates due to their relative simplicity.

I do believe it is fair to state if the PCCs and (in those few unique circumstances where
trolley coach operation remained feisible) trolley coaches still in service during the
mid 1960s did not have that reserve of longevity within them, there may have been no
surface traction operations left anywhere in North America by the 1970.

By the way, I wonder how long the Skybus cars would have lasted with proper maintenance
on the South Hills lines? Ken J.