The local rail museum I belong to at its last board meeting gave me the job of disposing of two buses from the collection. They are as follows: 1954 FlxTwin FT-35 SP this is an original Wichita Transit Bus that is in fair condition and was operable when stored 6mo ago. The other bus is a 1988 Chance Coach one of the first built by Chance. It was used in Wichita and to our knowledge no other units survived. This bus is in fair condition with a missing right windshield and some glass damage on the left side. It was fully operational when stored 6 mo ago and comes with a large number of spare parts. The Flx is propane powered and the Chance has a 350 Cat Diesel. We would like to see these in a collection and not a scrap yard. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

John Deck
Secretary for the Board
Great Plains Transportation Museum, Inc.
johndeck@cox.net

john,

The Seashore Trolley Museum has a large collection of buses. You might contact them through their web site, as the museum is closed this time of year.

If you Google Bus Museum or some such I am sure there are some places that will come up.

Out here in California we have the Pacific Bus Collectors Association. They are working for a museum, which they do not have yet.

Ted Miles

John, Here in Roanoke, we have the Commonwealth Coach & Trolley Museum. While they don't have a display site, they do have indoor storage and operate their running buses for special events and other non-profits. They seem to do a good job with both fundraising and restoration, and have a good working relationship with the local transit companies. I don't think they have a Flxible in their collection. Their website is www.commonwealthcoach.com . Contact either Bev or B.T. If they aren't interested, I'm sure they can give you some good leads. Regards

An awful lot of trolley/transit museums have buses stashed somewhere awaiting either enough of a collection to display or a place to display them--for example, the Baltimore Streetcar Museum has at least three or four vintage buses in its possession. In addition, there are also a surprising number of bus collectors with private collections, some affiliated with transit museums and some not. I know of one stash in a rural part of central Maryland, with the truly rare stuff stashed and the rest a "bus parts source" junkyard.

The major problem confronting bus disposition such as this is that an increasing number of later buses are so "customized" as opposed to "off-the-shelf" that it gets harder and harder to find parts compatibility.

I advise that you head to your nearest good-sized trolley museum, ask them for the local/regional bus experts, and enlist their help. If I had to place my bets, it's likely the buses you have will either be parted out or taken on as a local project by an individual. (Well, since the Grateful Dead is no more, it's not gonna become a Dead-head-mobile.....)