You've probably heard of train spotters; no, not the movie, I mean the guys who actually sit by railway lines and watch for trains because that happens to be their particular obsession. Well, it's not just trains. Apparently some people feel the same way about buses and thus we have a website dedicated to "Australian Bus Fleet Lists". On that site you can find an abundance of information about buses present and past.

I already knew what this bus was; they were a familiar sight in Sydney in the 1950s to early 1980s. The Leyland double-decker bus formed the backbone of most of the bus routes in Sydney but didn't go under low bridges; therefore they were mostly in the eastern and southern suburbs. By checking the registration number I found that this one was, at the time that I took this shot, operated by Captain Fell's Hobart tour bus company. It is a Leyland Titan OPD2/1 which was manufactured at Clyde (at that time an industrial suburb in Sydney, when we still had industrial suburbs in Sydney) in 1950. It was operated by the government bus service (which had too many names to mention here over the years) under registration MO2490. At that time, the red parts of the body would have been green, but the cream, and the brown of the roof are both reflective of that era. It had been sold into private hands by around 1981 from what I can see, and eventually made its way south to Hobart.

However if you go to Hobart now, you won't see it anymore. Roughly a year after the shot was taken it was sold to a coach company in Dural, near Sydney New South Wales. Are they still running it? I have no idea. But I can't imagine it would be easy to maintain a 67-year-old vehicle in roadworthy condition, much less in condition to carry passengers.

In any case, when I saw it sitting here it took me back to a time that had passed 40 years earlier. And now, this photo takes you to a time which itself has passed and will never return.