New Photo

This brilliant shot of m/o 1379 came to me from David Wilson recently, but was taken by David Taylor in about 1960 at Burwood depot in the inner west of Sydney, on Parramatta Road.
At this stage 1379 was in use as a driver trainer, as was m/o 1244, behind it to the right. These two would probably have been the oldest buses in the fleet, and were kept for training new recruits to handle the few Government Transport buses still with crash gearboxes. By 1960 the majority of the fleet consisted of double deckers with preselector or synchromesh gearboxes, and underfloor-engined single deckers also with preselector transmissions.
But at Brookvale, on the Northern Beaches routes, there were still the Albions, with crash boxes, so for some strange reason Burwood drivers had to learn the techniques of the crash box.
The bus to the left is a Leyland model OPD2, dating from about 1950. The two old girls date from the mid-1930s.