Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Historic Photo! Chicago Motor Coach Comapny General Motors 40 foot TDH series transit bus # 577 heading southbound on Michigan Avenue. Chicago Illinois. 1950.

I found this great historic Chicago photograph at My Link page Northern California Bus Fans to the right of Your computer screen.

A popular style of everyday transit bus, was the General Motors TDH Series buses from the 1940's and 50's era. These classic buses, are refered to as "Old Look" GM's by many bus fans.

The Chicago Transit Authority was formed in 1945, but did not begin operations until October 1st, 1947. By this time, the money had been raised to purchase the Chicago Surface Lines Company, and the Chicago Rapid Transit Company. In the year of 1952, the CTA purchased the Chicago Motor Coach Company through merger, hastening the demise of the electric city streetcar lines in Chicago.

The Chicago Motor Coach Company in postwar times, was a big time user of the old look General Motors buses. This bus shown here CMC # 577 heading southbound on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago Illinois, shows the elaborate multi pattern and multi colored paint scheme. Two tone green with cream colored roof and red lettering above the small standee windows.

Prior to the takeover in 1952 by the Chicago Transit Authority, this elaborate and difficult to maintain color scheme, was replaced by a much simpler green and cream color sceme, with a red color seperation stripe.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

During the early 60's this bus operated regularly on Addison St. This is the Largest bus of this design and was built exclusively for Chicago

Anonymous said...

The bus is in front of the Auditorium Building (architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler), now the home of Roosevelt University.