Chronicles of an Albion Double Decker Bus.

Albion CX 19 - 1892

June 1946.

A bus chassis numbered 60023A was shipped from the Albion Motors works in South Street, Glasgow by the simple expedient of driving it one block to the Clyde River docks.
The driver sat on a temporary wooden seat behind the steering wheel.

It came with many other Albion chasses to Sydney and again was driven to the Clyde Engineering works at Granville in Sydney's west.

There it received a double decker bus body to the design of the NSW Department of Government Transport. By October 1947 it was at last ready to enter service, at Manly Depot (the building still stands and is now a Harris Farm Fruit Market).

By 1952 a large new depot was built at Brookvale a couple of miles up Pittwater Road.

1892 and most of the 150-odd Albions went there and worked on routes covering all the beach suburbs from Palm Beach in the north and to Wynyard in the City. A few went to Willoughby Depot and in October 1963 about 40 including our 1892 went to Pagewood depot in the south, near Mascot airport to relieve a shortage there.

All buses got a major overhaul (body and mechanicals) every 4-5 years. 1892 got its final one in October 1966.

By early 1969 they all went back to Brookvale and the pundits tell me 1892 was the last to leave!

Towards the end of 1970, a rear engine mounting cracked and our bus-to-be was withdrawn. The DGT wasn't going to spend big time and money fixing it because all Albions were to be withdrawn in December 1970 anyway, after 23 years' work!

So our Albion probably made it to 23 years' service by a short radiator filler cap and after just short of one million miles.
They were all sold off by tender to country operators who found they made great school buses, fill them with 80 kids and just the driver!

Some went as caravans and some as sheds to farmers, and ours went to a church group, only a few kms up the road in Forestville, I think one of the parishioners had an "in" at Brookvale and was told this was a good one, if you replaced the cracked rear engine mount. This they did and got a good bus for parish outings. After only a year it must have seemed a bit of a burden and it was advertised in the Herald: "Albion double decker bus $600, phone Joe at Our Lady of Mercy Church".

I just happened to be looking on the off-chance (something I did because it had been a long held dream to own one), and a deal was done within days. It turned up at Turramurra in January 1972, only to bog down in the front garden soggy from days of rain.