Refurbished Omnitrans Bus Gives Ride into Past
By Andrew Silva, San Bernardino County Sun, Calif.
Oct. 22–SAN BERNARDINO — John Rippel wrestled with the shift lever on the 48-year-old bus as the transmission made that familiar grinding sound before popping into gear.
The 28 bus aficionados on board Saturday just smiled, happy to get a chance to ride on Old Blue, a 1958 bus meticulously restored by employees at Omnitrans.
“It’s fun because it’s kind of a blast from the past,” said Rippel, 62, who’s retired from Omnitrans and now gets to drive Old Blue in parades and special events. “It takes six arms to turn. The small windows. Just the appearance. It gives you the feeling of being in an old vehicle.”
Rippel took members of the Pacific Bus Museum on a driving tour of an old Omnitrans route. The transit agency, founded in 1976, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
“The air conditioning is on,” he told his passengers, pointing to the open windows.
The museum group has 20 vintage buses, from as far back as 1931 up to 1981, said Ron Medaglia, president of the club, based in Northern California. The group hopes to get a building eventually to display their old vehicles.
Bus fans are just like those enamored with trains or ships or old cars.
“It’s a big piece of machinery. It has sounds that accompany it. We believe this is a piece of history,” Medaglia said.
Omnitrans got the bus in 1999 because it wanted a vintage bus for its 25th anniversary in 2001.
Purchased from a collector in New Jersey for $2,500 and shipped out on a flat-bed truck at a cost of $3,568, it was not in good shape when it arrived.
“It was this ugly old green color,” Rippel said.
With hard work from Omnitrans’ maintenance crews and donations from vendors, it’s now a shiny blue and white.
The museum group had heard about the restoration, and all it took was a phone call to Omnitrans’ marketing department for the trip to San Bernardino to be arranged.
Andrew Novak, 28, of Downey has been fascinated by transportation his entire life and is something of a historian of transit.
“They did a nice job restoring it,” he said, as others in the group toured the maintenance bays and the natural gas refueling equipment at Omnitrans’ headquarters on Fifth Street.
He explained that Old Blue is part of a General Motors model line built especially for California because buses had to be lighter to meet the state’s tougher weight restrictions.
Scott Richards, 41, of Riverside owns a company that provides buses and police cars to movie crews.
He saw the bus in New Jersey and had kind of followed the restoration, he said. He was grateful Omnitrans made it available.
“Not many of these around,” he said. “It’s very nice.”
Dick Shelley, 63, of Modesto, who drove buses for 30 years, said he was thrilled to be on Old Blue.
“Since I was a kid, I always liked buses. Big boys’ toys,” he said. “It’s just gorgeous.”
PACIFIC BUS MUSEUM:
Regional Transit Service: www.rts-regionaltransitservice.com
Rapid Transit Press: www.rapidtransit-press.com
Omnitrans’ story of Old Blue: www.omnitrans.org/about/fleet_old-blue.shtml
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Copyright (c) 2006, San Bernardino County Sun, Calif.
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