About Fun Fleet Bus #3013

Now this bus was in interesting one. These were used in suburban service, mainly on the San Bernardino line. This was the reason for the manual transmissions. Later it was decided to put automatic transmission in these buses (#s 3000-3014),

  but #3013 was held out and used to train mechanics on stick shift vehicles.  It was assigned to Division 9 where it sat, hardly used, for several years. It was next transferred to Division 11 where they prepped buses for sale. Instead, #3013 was put into a refurbishing program along with the other 14 buses.

Now I know this was a wild idea, but we considered stealing #3013 to save it from being rehabbed. Even some of my friends at RTD wanted me to take it. So much so that they filled it with fuel on the chance I'd "liberate" it. I came to my senses, though, and kissed it goodbye.

Later I visited South Park shops where it was being rebuilt. At the time, GM was not producing VS-2 transmissions, so they considered using V730s. Much too much work, however, so they bought 15 V730s... but all were installed in Flexibles #7485-7499. The VS-2 transmission, along with the flywheels and ring assemblies, were then used in buses #3000-3014.

Like most buses that go through the pain of a "rebuilding program", these buses would never be the same, good but not the best. George Powell didn't like the GM marker lights and converted them to the Flexible type. I bought the bus in that terrible fully-painted scheme and all the beautiful seats were done in ugly brown. Oh well, transit people don't always have taste. 

I really loved Fun Fleet Bus #3013 as it had way less mileage than the other 14. It was super-fast and we loved having it in the collection for more than 20 years. And we REALLY loved driving it back to New York where it lives today.