Dr. D.B. “Doc” Rushing
© Copyright, 2026, Duncan Bryant Rushing
The following material is a copy of a section from one of my other pages — “Growing Up at Greyhound” — which is also chapter 2 of my (forthcoming) autobiography, which I call Wheels, Water, Words, Wings, and Engines.
Southern Coach Lines
and Nashville Transit Company
In 1940, the same year in which I was born, rubber-tired motor coaches began to replace steel-wheeled streetcars in Nashville. The buses of the Nashville Coach Company (NCC), gasoline-powered, began to displace the electric streetcars of the Tennessee Electric Power (Tepco) Company. [In 1922 the Tepco had replaced the Nashville Electric Railway and Light Company.] The first bus (a Twin Coach 41-G) headed out on the Hillsboro line in August -40, and the last streetcar (a Birney safety car) pulled in from the Radnor line in February -41.
Public transit had begun in Nashville with horse-drawn railcars in 1865 and had continued with electric trolley cars in 1889, thus making Nashville one of the early North American cities to have electric streetcars.
However, the last street-railway extension took place in 1920, and the last new trolley cars arrived in -27.
After that, as the needs and wishes of the growing populace required more transit service between the streetcar lines and beyond the ends of them, the Tepco responded to the new demands by forming a motor-coach subsidiary, named as the Tennessee Transportation Company (TTC), to operate 11 Yellow Coach long-nose transit buses of the Type Z on five new routes, starting in 1927. The first bus lines were Bordeaux, Dickerson Pike, Granny White, Inglewood, and Sunset Park. More coaches followed.
During the period of 1937-40 there developed a strong public sentiment which sought the replacement of the old streetcars by new motor coaches, accompanied by much legal and political wrangling and much pro-bus agitation by the two newspapers (the Banner and the Tennessean).
In 1940 the state Public-utility Commission (PUC) ordered the Tepco to substitute buses in the place of the trolley cars.
Then the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal agency, in a separate move bought the Tepco electric-power operations in Nashville, thus causing a liquidation of the Tepco firm.
During the winding up of the Tepco and the TTC (the bus subsidiary of the Tepco), those two companies provided the capital for the formation of a new corporation, named as the Nashville Coach Company (NCC), to operate the new city-bus system, which replaced the old bus service of the TTC.
The NCC promptly placed orders for 154 new gasoline-powered coaches from three builders – Twin (for 20 of the model 27-G and 30 of the 41-G, all with Hercules engines), White (for 48 of the model 788), and Yellow (for 56 of the model TG-3602). The Twins became numbered as 601-620 and 801-830 respectively, the Whites as 901-948, and the Yellows as 701-756. [TG-3602 means transit-gasoline, 36 seats, the second model in the series.]
Each new car arrived in a striped color scheme with curves, green and cream with silver on the roof, decidedly Art Deco, often called the Omnibus, Chicago, or Fifth Avenue livery, named for the large firms which used it in Chicago and New York City. [The Omnibus Corporation was the holding company which owned those two carriers.]
Later the stripes became somewhat simpler as the coaches became repainted in due course, and about 1950 the design became rather stark – solid cream over solid green divided along a straight line at the belt line.
The Tepco had operated also the city-transit system in Chattanooga.
In 1941 a new company, named as the Southern Coach Lines (SCL), came into existence, and the SCL bought both the NCC, in Nashville, and the leftover Tepco bus system in Chattanooga, which became known as the Nashville Division and the Chattanooga Division of the SCL.
[During the changes from the Tepco to the NCC and to the SCL, one of the players in the legal and financial moves, through his Equitable Securities Corporation, was Brownlee Currey Sr., a large figure in Nashville, who in 1948, through his Beneficial Finance Company, also provided much of the funding for the formation of the Transcontinental Bus System (the expanding Continental Trailways) by M.E. Moore, in Dallas. He had a nephew by the name of Fred Currey, who later became an assistant to Moore, then, by questionable means, displaced Moore as the CEO of the Continental Trailways (later renamed as the Trailways, Inc., the TWI), and later yet bought not only the Greyhound bus operations (known as the second Greyhound Lines, Inc., the second GLI) but also the TWI, and then completely ruined both Greyhound and Trailways (not just TWI but also the entire National Trailways Bus System). More about Fred Currey, his activities, and his GLI Holding Company is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]
In 1941 the Southern Coach Lines moved to Nashville a number of pieces of used equipment from Chattanooga, including 12 cute little 20-seat 1932 Twin Coach (model 19) shuttle buses (numbered discontinuously as 101 and upward), locally known as cracker boxes, for feeder lines. [One of those cracker boxes survived until about 1960, as a truck for the company painters who periodically roamed around the town, painting the markings on pavement and on utility poles to designate the bus stops. About 1956, at the age of 16, I wrote to the manager and asked to buy that one remaining little car, but he rebuffed me.]
For a short time, starting in 1941, the SCL in Nashville ran also 17 used copies of the revolutionary Twin Coach model 40, which the Fageol brothers had introduced in 1927. [Above, in the section entitled “The Equipment in 1943,” I describe that innovative design.] All of those in Nashville were built during 1928-30. Seven of them had previously served on the international shuttle through the tunnel below the Detroit River between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
The SCL in 1942 and -43 placed in Nashville 30 more new Twin Coaches of the slightly restyled and updated (and more attractive, especially on the nose) model 41-G (numbered discontinuously as 856 and upward) – and later transferred them to Chattanooga.
In 1946 the SCL bought 40 more new Whites – 15 of the model 798 (numbered curiously as 1-15) and 25 of the 788-2 (numbered as 951-975, after the 788s, 901-948), each of the last 25 of which had a White Hydrotorque transmission (a two-speed gearbox, coupled to a torque converter, manually shifted by an electric toggle switch in the sidewall at the driver’s left hand). The latter group had at SCL the first transmissions of any type other than manual three-speed gearboxes.
The SCL in 1947 got 15 handsome new ACF-Brill C-44 coaches (numbered as 501-515), built at the Vultee aircraft plant at Berry Field in Nashville (with serial numbers 002-016, right after one demonstrator). They had Hall-Scott under-floor gasoline engines and manual three-speed gearboxes. [Above, in the section entitled “New Buses!,” I describe the production there.]
In 1949 the SCL received 10 new small Brill C-31 coaches (numbered as 551-560) of a new model, not branded as ACF-Brill, just plain Brill – because in 1946 the parent ACF owner had sold The Brill Corporation to Convair (the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation) – about 30 feet long, with 33 seats, a manual three-speed gearbox, and an International gasoline engine in the tail (rather than a Hall-Scott engine under the floor) – to start replacing the aging Twin 27-G shuttle buses on the feeder lines.
The city in 1953 created the Nashville Transit Authority, and the new Nashville Transit Company (NTC) replaced the Nashville Division of the SCL.
During that same year, 1953, the NTC placed an order for its first diesel-powered equipment, 30 copies of the GM TDH-4512 (numbered as 401-430) with air suspension, GM 6-71 engines, and GM hydraulic automatic transmissions. The first 15 arrived in December 1953, and the others followed in April -54. [TDH-4512 means transit-diesel-hydraulic (hydraulic automatic transmission), 45 seats, the 12th model in the series.]
The GM cars introduced an attractive new livery (quite typical of the 1950s, a standard color scheme available from the T&C plant in Pontiac), in red and cream, which later became applied also to the older coaches as they became repainted in due course. [That new livery duplicated the one then used on the coaches of the main city-bus carrier in Detroit.]
The ACF-Brill C-44 coaches (received in 1947) were equipped with factory-installed standard turn signals, as were the Brill C-31s (in -49) and all the new GM diesel coaches (starting in -53).
Shortly after the first of the GM coaches arrived, the NTC carried out a massive program to install aftermarket turn signals on all the older buses which had lacked them. [Turn signals had not yet become standard items on GM cars and light trucks until the 1953 model year, although they had become standard on YC (pre-GM) parlor coaches in -37.]
Late in 1954 the NTC received 15 more new GM diesel coaches (numbered as 301-315), shorter ones (32 feet long), model TDH-3714 – transit-diesel-hydraulic, 37 seats – with GM 4-71 engines (with four cylinders rather than six). The purposes of the smaller cars were to eliminate the shuttle buses on the feeder lines (by placing the new cars on light routes running all the way downtown) and to replace some of the aging Yellow Coaches (especially on the Shelby Street line across the weight-restricted Shelby Street bridge).
In the spring of 1955 the NTC bought several old 33-foot Greyhound suburban cars, 11 of the GM TD-4007 (built in -45) – transit-diesel, nominally 40 seats (although those particular cars used a 37-seat variant arrangement, using forward-facing suburban-type plush deep-cushion seats), the seventh model in the series – with GM 6-71 engines and GM hydraulic automatic transmissions – from the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines, used previously in local commuter service, originally in the bus subsidiary of the Cincinnati and Lake Erie (C&LE) Railway, in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio – numbered as G-7129 through -7139 (originally as 180 through 190), renumbered at the NTC as 351-361.
[One humorous touch is that – although all those cars had become repainted into the new red-and-cream livery before they moved from Dayton to Nashville – one of them rolled into town with a non-matching blue-and-white wheel (the left-rear-outside one) – apparently because the tire or wheel in that position had become found to be bad just before shipment – and then became replaced with a tire and a wheel (from the stock on hand at the Greyhound shop in Dayton) – or maybe because of a tire failure while en route from Dayton to Nashville – still painted in the standard Greyhound colors. Eventually, some months later, that anomalous wheel became repainted into red and cream.]
The NTC conducted two unsuccessful experiments with diesel power by using engines other than GM, using Fageol-Leyland engines (that is, Leyland engines from England marketed through the Fageol-Twin firm, in Kent, Ohio).
In the first of those two steps, early in 1955 the NTC replaced the original White gasoline engines with Leyland diesel engines in several White coaches, starting with number 12, then 15, then three more of the model 798. The first two of them bore their original numbers for a short while after the repowering, then they became renumbered in the group of 976-980, along with the three other 798s, which also became renumbered during the modification, right after the 788-2s (numbered as 951-975). Next the NTC likewise replaced the engines in several (about five, I think) of the 788-2s, each of which retained its previous number in the group of 951-975. Each of the modified 798s also got a Spicer hydraulic automatic transmission (replacing its original White three-speed manual gearbox), but each of the modified 788-2s retained its original White Hydrotorque transmission.
In the second of those two steps, late in 1955 the NTC bought five new Southern 40-seat 35-foot cars (numbered as 201-205) with under-floor Fageol-Leyland engines and Spicer hydraulic automatic transmissions. [The styling of the Southern coaches represented an obvious attempt to imitate the styling of the current Twin Coach models (except the six-piece Twin windscreen design).] They ran mostly on the Glendale, Granny White, and Eighth Avenue South lines; they ran also for a while late in the 1950s on my Porter Road line. They had several neat features (including foot switches for the turn signals, at the driver’s left foot, the first such switches at the NTC), but overall the Southern cars did not measure up well in comparison with the GM Coaches. A few of the drivers liked them, but not many of them cared for them.
The Southern coaches and the Leyland engines were generally regarded as unfortunate and unsuccessful experiments.
Wisely, then, the NTC resumed its purchases of new GM products. It bought 15 more of the TDH-4512 (numbered as 431-445) in 1956, 20 more (numbered as 446-465) in -58, and 10 more (numbered as 466-475) in -59.
The interiors of the TDH-4512 were quite attractive. The first group (401-430) used a single light shade of green paint (slightly bluish) on the inside of the shell and a single dark shade of green on the upholstery. The second group (431-445) used a dazzling two-tone treatment, light lime green over medium metallic green, for both the paint and the upholstery. The third group (446-465) used a nice but uninspired combination of beige over medium-dark brown. The last group (466-475) really hit the spot and got it exactly right – two gorgeous shades of blue, sky blue over ocean blue.
The TDH-3714s (301-315) and the old TD-4007s (351-361), along with the Southern coaches (201-205), used the same interior treatment as the first group of the -4512s (401-430).
Starting in 1954, as the old gasoline-powered coaches became repainted in due course, they got both the new red-and-cream exterior livery and the same interior treatment as on the first group of the -4512s (401-430).
The first GM Fishbowls (thus called because of the picture windows and the huge convex windscreens) arrived in Nashville during the summer of 1960, 10 copies (numbered as 701-710) of the striking new model TDH-4517, with the new Detroit 6V-71 (V-6) engines, GM hydraulic automatic transmissions, air suspension, and air-conditioning, which was a popular feature on the Fishbowls (and the first such factory-installed system available aboard a city-transit or suburban coach). The picture windows used the shape of a forward-leaning parallelogram with gracefully rounded corners (similar to the design used on the Highway Traveler PD-4104 and the Scenicruiser PD-4501). Because of the extensive use of the fluted bright siding, the Fishbowls introduced a simple outside color scheme, a white roof over cream without red (except on the NTC logo, as before). [The numbering of the new Fishbowls (701-710) represented a touch of whimsy or irony, which may or may not have been intentional, for the Yellow TG-3602 buses (among the original equipment of the Nashville Coach Company in 1940) had been numbered in the 700 series – that is, the new GM Coaches of a new model bore the same numbers as the first 10 of the Yellow Coaches (GM products of a previous era).]
[In 1958 the brand name of those diesel engines (products of the Detroit Diesel Engine Division of the GM Corporation) had become changed from GM to Detroit; the name of the Detroit Division distinguished it and its products from the Cleveland Diesel Engine Division and its products, which were much larger engines, intended for railway locomotives, submarines, and stationary and other maritime applications, including many towboats built by the Nashville Bridge Company, where I worked (as a draftsman in the Marine Department) during my summer and Christmas vacations while a student at Vanderbilt University.]
In 1946 the new Whites (15 of the model 798 and 25 of the 788-2) introduced in Nashville the use of split two-section destination roll signs (black on the large section and red on the small one), whereas all the older coaches used one-section black destination signs.
In 1947 the ACF-Brill C-44s continued the use of split two-section destination signs, although on the C-44s each of the two sections had a black background (rather than red for the smaller section).
In the new arrangement a relatively wide curtain with a black background on the curb side of the front of the coach showed the name of the route or line, such as Porter Road or “special” or “garage” or other use or destination, and a relatively narrow curtain with a red background on the street side of the front of the coach showed “local” or “express” or the branch or extension of the line, such as Eastland. Here’s a real example:
In 1940, the same year in which I was born, rubber-tired motor coaches began to replace steel-wheeled streetcars in Nashville. The buses of the Nashville Coach Company (NCC), gasoline-powered, began to displace the electric streetcars of the Tennessee Electric Power (Tepco) Company. [In 1922 the Tepco had replaced the Nashville Electric Railway and Light Company.] The first bus (a Twin Coach 41-G) headed out on the Hillsboro line in August -40, and the last streetcar (a Birney safety car) pulled in from the Radnor line in February -41.
Public transit had begun in Nashville with horse-drawn railcars in 1865 and had continued with electric trolley cars in 1889, thus making Nashville one of the early North American cities to have electric streetcars.
However, the last street-railway extension took place in 1920, and the last new trolley cars arrived in -27.
After that, as the needs and wishes of the growing populace required more transit service between the streetcar lines and beyond the ends of them, the Tepco responded to the new demands by forming a motor-coach subsidiary, named as the Tennessee Transportation Company (TTC), to operate 11 Yellow Coach long-nose transit buses of the Type Z on five new routes, starting in 1927. The first bus lines were Bordeaux, Dickerson Pike, Granny White, Inglewood, and Sunset Park. More coaches followed.
During the period of 1937-40 there developed a strong public sentiment which sought the replacement of the old streetcars by new motor coaches, accompanied by much legal and political wrangling and much pro-bus agitation by the two newspapers (the Banner and the Tennessean).
In 1940 the state Public-utility Commission (PUC) ordered the Tepco to substitute buses in the place of the trolley cars.
Then the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal agency, in a separate move bought the Tepco electric-power operations in Nashville, thus causing a liquidation of the Tepco firm.
During the winding up of the Tepco and the TTC (the bus subsidiary of the Tepco), those two companies provided the capital for the formation of a new corporation, named as the Nashville Coach Company (NCC), to operate the new city-bus system, which replaced the old bus service of the TTC.
The NCC promptly placed orders for 154 new gasoline-powered coaches from three builders – Twin (for 20 of the model 27-G and 30 of the 41-G, all with Hercules engines), White (for 48 of the model 788), and Yellow (for 56 of the model TG-3602). The Twins became numbered as 601-620 and 801-830 respectively, the Whites as 901-948, and the Yellows as 701-756. [TG-3602 means transit-gasoline, 36 seats, the second model in the series.]
Each new car arrived in a striped color scheme with curves, green and cream with silver on the roof, decidedly Art Deco, often called the Omnibus, Chicago, or Fifth Avenue livery, named for the large firms which used it in Chicago and New York City. [The Omnibus Corporation was the holding company which owned those two carriers.]
Later the stripes became somewhat simpler as the coaches became repainted in due course, and about 1950 the design became rather stark – solid cream over solid green divided along a straight line at the belt line.
The Tepco had operated also the city-transit system in Chattanooga.
In 1941 a new company, named as the Southern Coach Lines (SCL), came into existence, and the SCL bought both the NCC, in Nashville, and the leftover Tepco bus system in Chattanooga, which became known as the Nashville Division and the Chattanooga Division of the SCL.
[During the changes from the Tepco to the NCC and to the SCL, one of the players in the legal and financial moves, through his Equitable Securities Corporation, was Brownlee Currey Sr., a large figure in Nashville, who in 1948, through his Beneficial Finance Company, also provided much of the funding for the formation of the Transcontinental Bus System (the expanding Continental Trailways) by M.E. Moore, in Dallas. He had a nephew by the name of Fred Currey, who later became an assistant to Moore, then, by questionable means, displaced Moore as the CEO of the Continental Trailways (later renamed as the Trailways, Inc., the TWI), and later yet bought not only the Greyhound bus operations (known as the second Greyhound Lines, Inc., the second GLI) but also the TWI, and then completely ruined both Greyhound and Trailways (not just TWI but also the entire National Trailways Bus System). More about Fred Currey, his activities, and his GLI Holding Company is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]
In 1941 the Southern Coach Lines moved to Nashville a number of pieces of used equipment from Chattanooga, including 12 cute little 20-seat 1932 Twin Coach (model 19) shuttle buses (numbered discontinuously as 101 and upward), locally known as cracker boxes, for feeder lines. [One of those cracker boxes survived until about 1960, as a truck for the company painters who periodically roamed around the town, painting the markings on pavement and on utility poles to designate the bus stops. About 1956, at the age of 16, I wrote to the manager and asked to buy that one remaining little car, but he rebuffed me.]
For a short time, starting in 1941, the SCL in Nashville ran also 17 used copies of the revolutionary Twin Coach model 40, which the Fageol brothers had introduced in 1927. [Above, in the section entitled “The Equipment in 1943,” I describe that innovative design.] All of those in Nashville were built during 1928-30. Seven of them had previously served on the international shuttle through the tunnel below the Detroit River between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
The SCL in 1942 and -43 placed in Nashville 30 more new Twin Coaches of the slightly restyled and updated (and more attractive, especially on the nose) model 41-G (numbered discontinuously as 856 and upward) – and later transferred them to Chattanooga.
In 1946 the SCL bought 40 more new Whites – 15 of the model 798 (numbered curiously as 1-15) and 25 of the 788-2 (numbered as 951-975, after the 788s, 901-948), each of the last 25 of which had a White Hydrotorque transmission (a two-speed gearbox, coupled to a torque converter, manually shifted by an electric toggle switch in the sidewall at the driver’s left hand). The latter group had at SCL the first transmissions of any type other than manual three-speed gearboxes.
The SCL in 1947 got 15 handsome new ACF-Brill C-44 coaches (numbered as 501-515), built at the Vultee aircraft plant at Berry Field in Nashville (with serial numbers 002-016, right after one demonstrator). They had Hall-Scott under-floor gasoline engines and manual three-speed gearboxes. [Above, in the section entitled “New Buses!,” I describe the production there.]
In 1949 the SCL received 10 new small Brill C-31 coaches (numbered as 551-560) of a new model, not branded as ACF-Brill, just plain Brill – because in 1946 the parent ACF owner had sold The Brill Corporation to Convair (the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation) – about 30 feet long, with 33 seats, a manual three-speed gearbox, and an International gasoline engine in the tail (rather than a Hall-Scott engine under the floor) – to start replacing the aging Twin 27-G shuttle buses on the feeder lines.
The city in 1953 created the Nashville Transit Authority, and the new Nashville Transit Company (NTC) replaced the Nashville Division of the SCL.
During that same year, 1953, the NTC placed an order for its first diesel-powered equipment, 30 copies of the GM TDH-4512 (numbered as 401-430) with air suspension, GM 6-71 engines, and GM hydraulic automatic transmissions. The first 15 arrived in December 1953, and the others followed in April -54. [TDH-4512 means transit-diesel-hydraulic (hydraulic automatic transmission), 45 seats, the 12th model in the series.]
The GM cars introduced an attractive new livery (quite typical of the 1950s, a standard color scheme available from the T&C plant in Pontiac), in red and cream, which later became applied also to the older coaches as they became repainted in due course. [That new livery duplicated the one then used on the coaches of the main city-bus carrier in Detroit.]
The ACF-Brill C-44 coaches (received in 1947) were equipped with factory-installed standard turn signals, as were the Brill C-31s (in -49) and all the new GM diesel coaches (starting in -53).
Shortly after the first of the GM coaches arrived, the NTC carried out a massive program to install aftermarket turn signals on all the older buses which had lacked them. [Turn signals had not yet become standard items on GM cars and light trucks until the 1953 model year, although they had become standard on YC (pre-GM) parlor coaches in -37.]
Late in 1954 the NTC received 15 more new GM diesel coaches (numbered as 301-315), shorter ones (32 feet long), model TDH-3714 – transit-diesel-hydraulic, 37 seats – with GM 4-71 engines (with four cylinders rather than six). The purposes of the smaller cars were to eliminate the shuttle buses on the feeder lines (by placing the new cars on light routes running all the way downtown) and to replace some of the aging Yellow Coaches (especially on the Shelby Street line across the weight-restricted Shelby Street bridge).
In the spring of 1955 the NTC bought several old 33-foot Greyhound suburban cars, 11 of the GM TD-4007 (built in -45) – transit-diesel, nominally 40 seats (although those particular cars used a 37-seat variant arrangement, using forward-facing suburban-type plush deep-cushion seats), the seventh model in the series – with GM 6-71 engines and GM hydraulic automatic transmissions – from the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines, used previously in local commuter service, originally in the bus subsidiary of the Cincinnati and Lake Erie (C&LE) Railway, in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio – numbered as G-7129 through -7139 (originally as 180 through 190), renumbered at the NTC as 351-361.
[One humorous touch is that – although all those cars had become repainted into the new red-and-cream livery before they moved from Dayton to Nashville – one of them rolled into town with a non-matching blue-and-white wheel (the left-rear-outside one) – apparently because the tire or wheel in that position had become found to be bad just before shipment – and then became replaced with a tire and a wheel (from the stock on hand at the Greyhound shop in Dayton) – or maybe because of a tire failure while en route from Dayton to Nashville – still painted in the standard Greyhound colors. Eventually, some months later, that anomalous wheel became repainted into red and cream.]
The NTC conducted two unsuccessful experiments with diesel power by using engines other than GM, using Fageol-Leyland engines (that is, Leyland engines from England marketed through the Fageol-Twin firm, in Kent, Ohio).
In the first of those two steps, early in 1955 the NTC replaced the original White gasoline engines with Leyland diesel engines in several White coaches, starting with number 12, then 15, then three more of the model 798. The first two of them bore their original numbers for a short while after the repowering, then they became renumbered in the group of 976-980, along with the three other 798s, which also became renumbered during the modification, right after the 788-2s (numbered as 951-975). Next the NTC likewise replaced the engines in several (about five, I think) of the 788-2s, each of which retained its previous number in the group of 951-975. Each of the modified 798s also got a Spicer hydraulic automatic transmission (replacing its original White three-speed manual gearbox), but each of the modified 788-2s retained its original White Hydrotorque transmission.
In the second of those two steps, late in 1955 the NTC bought five new Southern 40-seat 35-foot cars (numbered as 201-205) with under-floor Fageol-Leyland engines and Spicer hydraulic automatic transmissions. [The styling of the Southern coaches represented an obvious attempt to imitate the styling of the current Twin Coach models (except the six-piece Twin windscreen design).] They ran mostly on the Glendale, Granny White, and Eighth Avenue South lines; they ran also for a while late in the 1950s on my Porter Road line. They had several neat features (including foot switches for the turn signals, at the driver’s left foot, the first such switches at the NTC), but overall the Southern cars did not measure up well in comparison with the GM Coaches. A few of the drivers liked them, but not many of them cared for them.
The Southern coaches and the Leyland engines were generally regarded as unfortunate and unsuccessful experiments.
Wisely, then, the NTC resumed its purchases of new GM products. It bought 15 more of the TDH-4512 (numbered as 431-445) in 1956, 20 more (numbered as 446-465) in -58, and 10 more (numbered as 466-475) in -59.
The interiors of the TDH-4512 were quite attractive. The first group (401-430) used a single light shade of green paint (slightly bluish) on the inside of the shell and a single dark shade of green on the upholstery. The second group (431-445) used a dazzling two-tone treatment, light lime green over medium metallic green, for both the paint and the upholstery. The third group (446-465) used a nice but uninspired combination of beige over medium-dark brown. The last group (466-475) really hit the spot and got it exactly right – two gorgeous shades of blue, sky blue over ocean blue.
The TDH-3714s (301-315) and the old TD-4007s (351-361), along with the Southern coaches (201-205), used the same interior treatment as the first group of the -4512s (401-430).
Starting in 1954, as the old gasoline-powered coaches became repainted in due course, they got both the new red-and-cream exterior livery and the same interior treatment as on the first group of the -4512s (401-430).
The first GM Fishbowls (thus called because of the picture windows and the huge convex windscreens) arrived in Nashville during the summer of 1960, 10 copies (numbered as 701-710) of the striking new model TDH-4517, with the new Detroit 6V-71 (V-6) engines, GM hydraulic automatic transmissions, air suspension, and air-conditioning, which was a popular feature on the Fishbowls (and the first such factory-installed system available aboard a city-transit or suburban coach). The picture windows used the shape of a forward-leaning parallelogram with gracefully rounded corners (similar to the design used on the Highway Traveler PD-4104 and the Scenicruiser PD-4501). Because of the extensive use of the fluted bright siding, the Fishbowls introduced a simple outside color scheme, a white roof over cream without red (except on the NTC logo, as before). [The numbering of the new Fishbowls (701-710) represented a touch of whimsy or irony, which may or may not have been intentional, for the Yellow TG-3602 buses (among the original equipment of the Nashville Coach Company in 1940) had been numbered in the 700 series – that is, the new GM Coaches of a new model bore the same numbers as the first 10 of the Yellow Coaches (GM products of a previous era).]
[In 1958 the brand name of those diesel engines (products of the Detroit Diesel Engine Division of the GM Corporation) had become changed from GM to Detroit; the name of the Detroit Division distinguished it and its products from the Cleveland Diesel Engine Division and its products, which were much larger engines, intended for railway locomotives, submarines, and stationary and other maritime applications, including many towboats built by the Nashville Bridge Company, where I worked (as a draftsman in the Marine Department) during my summer and Christmas vacations while a student at Vanderbilt University.]
In 1946 the new Whites (15 of the model 798 and 25 of the 788-2) introduced in Nashville the use of split two-section destination roll signs (black on the large section and red on the small one), whereas all the older coaches used one-section black destination signs.
In 1947 the ACF-Brill C-44s continued the use of split two-section destination signs, although on the C-44s each of the two sections had a black background (rather than red for the smaller section).
In the new arrangement a relatively wide curtain with a black background on the curb side of the front of the coach showed the name of the route or line, such as Porter Road or “special” or “garage” or other use or destination, and a relatively narrow curtain with a red background on the street side of the front of the coach showed “local” or “express” or the branch or extension of the line, such as Eastland. Here’s a real example:
In 1940, the same year in which I was born, rubber-tired motor coaches began to replace steel-wheeled streetcars in Nashville. The buses of the Nashville Coach Company (NCC), gasoline-powered, began to displace the electric streetcars of the Tennessee Electric Power (Tepco) Company. [In 1922 the Tepco had replaced the Nashville Electric Railway and Light Company.] The first bus (a Twin Coach 41-G) headed out on the Hillsboro line in August -40, and the last streetcar (a Birney safety car) pulled in from the Radnor line in February -41.
Public transit had begun in Nashville with horse-drawn railcars in 1865 and had continued with electric trolley cars in 1889, thus making Nashville one of the early North American cities to have electric streetcars.
However, the last street-railway extension took place in 1920, and the last new trolley cars arrived in -27.
After that, as the needs and wishes of the growing populace required more transit service between the streetcar lines and beyond the ends of them, the Tepco responded to the new demands by forming a motor-coach subsidiary, named as the Tennessee Transportation Company (TTC), to operate 11 Yellow Coach long-nose transit buses of the Type Z on five new routes, starting in 1927. The first bus lines were Bordeaux, Dickerson Pike, Granny White, Inglewood, and Sunset Park. More coaches followed.
During the period of 1937-40 there developed a strong public sentiment which sought the replacement of the old streetcars by new motor coaches, accompanied by much legal and political wrangling and much pro-bus agitation by the two newspapers (the Banner and the Tennessean).
In 1940 the state Public-utility Commission (PUC) ordered the Tepco to substitute buses in the place of the trolley cars.
Then the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal agency, in a separate move bought the Tepco electric-power operations in Nashville, thus causing a liquidation of the Tepco firm.
During the winding up of the Tepco and the TTC (the bus subsidiary of the Tepco), those two companies provided the capital for the formation of a new corporation, named as the Nashville Coach Company (NCC), to operate the new city-bus system, which replaced the old bus service of the TTC.
The NCC promptly placed orders for 154 new gasoline-powered coaches from three builders – Twin (for 20 of the model 27-G and 30 of the 41-G, all with Hercules engines), White (for 48 of the model 788), and Yellow (for 56 of the model TG-3602). The Twins became numbered as 601-620 and 801-830 respectively, the Whites as 901-948, and the Yellows as 701-756. [TG-3602 means transit-gasoline, 36 seats, the second model in the series.]
Each new car arrived in a striped color scheme with curves, green and cream with silver on the roof, decidedly Art Deco, often called the Omnibus, Chicago, or Fifth Avenue livery, named for the large firms which used it in Chicago and New York City. [The Omnibus Corporation was the holding company which owned those two carriers.]
Later the stripes became somewhat simpler as the coaches became repainted in due course, and about 1950 the design became rather stark – solid cream over solid green divided along a straight line at the belt line.
The Tepco had operated also the city-transit system in Chattanooga.
In 1941 a new company, named as the Southern Coach Lines (SCL), came into existence, and the SCL bought both the NCC, in Nashville, and the leftover Tepco bus system in Chattanooga, which became known as the Nashville Division and the Chattanooga Division of the SCL.
[During the changes from the Tepco to the NCC and to the SCL, one of the players in the legal and financial moves, through his Equitable Securities Corporation, was Brownlee Currey Sr., a large figure in Nashville, who in 1948, through his Beneficial Finance Company, also provided much of the funding for the formation of the Transcontinental Bus System (the expanding Continental Trailways) by M.E. Moore, in Dallas. He had a nephew by the name of Fred Currey, who later became an assistant to Moore, then, by questionable means, displaced Moore as the CEO of the Continental Trailways (later renamed as the Trailways, Inc., the TWI), and later yet bought not only the Greyhound bus operations (known as the second Greyhound Lines, Inc., the second GLI) but also the TWI, and then completely ruined both Greyhound and Trailways (not just TWI but also the entire National Trailways Bus System). More about Fred Currey, his activities, and his GLI Holding Company is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]
In 1941 the Southern Coach Lines moved to Nashville a number of pieces of used equipment from Chattanooga, including 12 cute little 20-seat 1932 Twin Coach (model 19) shuttle buses (numbered discontinuously as 101 and upward), locally known as cracker boxes, for feeder lines. [One of those cracker boxes survived until about 1960, as a truck for the company painters who periodically roamed around the town, painting the markings on pavement and on utility poles to designate the bus stops. About 1956, at the age of 16, I wrote to the manager and asked to buy that one remaining little car, but he rebuffed me.]
For a short time, starting in 1941, the SCL in Nashville ran also 17 used copies of the revolutionary Twin Coach model 40, which the Fageol brothers had introduced in 1927. [Above, in the section entitled “The Equipment in 1943,” I describe that innovative design.] All of those in Nashville were built during 1928-30. Seven of them had previously served on the international shuttle through the tunnel below the Detroit River between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
The SCL in 1942 and -43 placed in Nashville 30 more new Twin Coaches of the slightly restyled and updated (and more attractive, especially on the nose) model 41-G (numbered discontinuously as 856 and upward) – and later transferred them to Chattanooga.
In 1946 the SCL bought 40 more new Whites – 15 of the model 798 (numbered curiously as 1-15) and 25 of the 788-2 (numbered as 951-975, after the 788s, 901-948), each of the last 25 of which had a White Hydrotorque transmission (a two-speed gearbox, coupled to a torque converter, manually shifted by an electric toggle switch in the sidewall at the driver’s left hand). The latter group had at SCL the first transmissions of any type other than manual three-speed gearboxes.
The SCL in 1947 got 15 handsome new ACF-Brill C-44 coaches (numbered as 501-515), built at the Vultee aircraft plant at Berry Field in Nashville (with serial numbers 002-016, right after one demonstrator). They had Hall-Scott under-floor gasoline engines and manual three-speed gearboxes. [Above, in the section entitled “New Buses!,” I describe the production there.]
In 1949 the SCL received 10 new small Brill C-31 coaches (numbered as 551-560) of a new model, not branded as ACF-Brill, just plain Brill – because in 1946 the parent ACF owner had sold The Brill Corporation to Convair (the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation) – about 30 feet long, with 33 seats, a manual three-speed gearbox, and an International gasoline engine in the tail (rather than a Hall-Scott engine under the floor) – to start replacing the aging Twin 27-G shuttle buses on the feeder lines.
The city in 1953 created the Nashville Transit Authority, and the new Nashville Transit Company (NTC) replaced the Nashville Division of the SCL.
During that same year, 1953, the NTC placed an order for its first diesel-powered equipment, 30 copies of the GM TDH-4512 (numbered as 401-430) with air suspension, GM 6-71 engines, and GM hydraulic automatic transmissions. The first 15 arrived in December 1953, and the others followed in April -54. [TDH-4512 means transit-diesel-hydraulic (hydraulic automatic transmission), 45 seats, the 12th model in the series.]
The GM cars introduced an attractive new livery (quite typical of the 1950s, a standard color scheme available from the T&C plant in Pontiac), in red and cream, which later became applied also to the older coaches as they became repainted in due course. [That new livery duplicated the one then used on the coaches of the main city-bus carrier in Detroit.]
The ACF-Brill C-44 coaches (received in 1947) were equipped with factory-installed standard turn signals, as were the Brill C-31s (in -49) and all the new GM diesel coaches (starting in -53).
Shortly after the first of the GM coaches arrived, the NTC carried out a massive program to install aftermarket turn signals on all the older buses which had lacked them. [Turn signals had not yet become standard items on GM cars and light trucks until the 1953 model year, although they had become standard on YC (pre-GM) parlor coaches in -37.]
Late in 1954 the NTC received 15 more new GM diesel coaches (numbered as 301-315), shorter ones (32 feet long), model TDH-3714 – transit-diesel-hydraulic, 37 seats – with GM 4-71 engines (with four cylinders rather than six). The purposes of the smaller cars were to eliminate the shuttle buses on the feeder lines (by placing the new cars on light routes running all the way downtown) and to replace some of the aging Yellow Coaches (especially on the Shelby Street line across the weight-restricted Shelby Street bridge).
In the spring of 1955 the NTC bought several old 33-foot Greyhound suburban cars, 11 of the GM TD-4007 (built in -45) – transit-diesel, nominally 40 seats (although those particular cars used a 37-seat variant arrangement, using forward-facing suburban-type plush deep-cushion seats), the seventh model in the series – with GM 6-71 engines and GM hydraulic automatic transmissions – from the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines, used previously in local commuter service, originally in the bus subsidiary of the Cincinnati and Lake Erie (C&LE) Railway, in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio – numbered as G-7129 through -7139 (originally as 180 through 190), renumbered at the NTC as 351-361.
[One humorous touch is that – although all those cars had become repainted into the new red-and-cream livery before they moved from Dayton to Nashville – one of them rolled into town with a non-matching blue-and-white wheel (the left-rear-outside one) – apparently because the tire or wheel in that position had become found to be bad just before shipment – and then became replaced with a tire and a wheel (from the stock on hand at the Greyhound shop in Dayton) – or maybe because of a tire failure while en route from Dayton to Nashville – still painted in the standard Greyhound colors. Eventually, some months later, that anomalous wheel became repainted into red and cream.]
The NTC conducted two unsuccessful experiments with diesel power by using engines other than GM, using Fageol-Leyland engines (that is, Leyland engines from England marketed through the Fageol-Twin firm, in Kent, Ohio).
In the first of those two steps, early in 1955 the NTC replaced the original White gasoline engines with Leyland diesel engines in several White coaches, starting with number 12, then 15, then three more of the model 798. The first two of them bore their original numbers for a short while after the repowering, then they became renumbered in the group of 976-980, along with the three other 798s, which also became renumbered during the modification, right after the 788-2s (numbered as 951-975). Next the NTC likewise replaced the engines in several (about five, I think) of the 788-2s, each of which retained its previous number in the group of 951-975. Each of the modified 798s also got a Spicer hydraulic automatic transmission (replacing its original White three-speed manual gearbox), but each of the modified 788-2s retained its original White Hydrotorque transmission.
In the second of those two steps, late in 1955 the NTC bought five new Southern 40-seat 35-foot cars (numbered as 201-205) with under-floor Fageol-Leyland engines and Spicer hydraulic automatic transmissions. [The styling of the Southern coaches represented an obvious attempt to imitate the styling of the current Twin Coach models (except the six-piece Twin windscreen design).] They ran mostly on the Glendale, Granny White, and Eighth Avenue South lines; they ran also for a while late in the 1950s on my Porter Road line. They had several neat features (including foot switches for the turn signals, at the driver’s left foot, the first such switches at the NTC), but overall the Southern cars did not measure up well in comparison with the GM Coaches. A few of the drivers liked them, but not many of them cared for them.
The Southern coaches and the Leyland engines were generally regarded as unfortunate and unsuccessful experiments.
Wisely, then, the NTC resumed its purchases of new GM products. It bought 15 more of the TDH-4512 (numbered as 431-445) in 1956, 20 more (numbered as 446-465) in -58, and 10 more (numbered as 466-475) in -59.
The interiors of the TDH-4512 were quite attractive. The first group (401-430) used a single light shade of green paint (slightly bluish) on the inside of the shell and a single dark shade of green on the upholstery. The second group (431-445) used a dazzling two-tone treatment, light lime green over medium metallic green, for both the paint and the upholstery. The third group (446-465) used a nice but uninspired combination of beige over medium-dark brown. The last group (466-475) really hit the spot and got it exactly right – two gorgeous shades of blue, sky blue over ocean blue.
The TDH-3714s (301-315) and the old TD-4007s (351-361), along with the Southern coaches (201-205), used the same interior treatment as the first group of the -4512s (401-430).
Starting in 1954, as the old gasoline-powered coaches became repainted in due course, they got both the new red-and-cream exterior livery and the same interior treatment as on the first group of the -4512s (401-430).
The first GM Fishbowls (thus called because of the picture windows and the huge convex windscreens) arrived in Nashville during the summer of 1960, 10 copies (numbered as 701-710) of the striking new model TDH-4517, with the new Detroit 6V-71 (V-6) engines, GM hydraulic automatic transmissions, air suspension, and air-conditioning, which was a popular feature on the Fishbowls (and the first such factory-installed system available aboard a city-transit or suburban coach). The picture windows used the shape of a forward-leaning parallelogram with gracefully rounded corners (similar to the design used on the Highway Traveler PD-4104 and the Scenicruiser PD-4501). Because of the extensive use of the fluted bright siding, the Fishbowls introduced a simple outside color scheme, a white roof over cream without red (except on the NTC logo, as before). [The numbering of the new Fishbowls (701-710) represented a touch of whimsy or irony, which may or may not have been intentional, for the Yellow TG-3602 buses (among the original equipment of the Nashville Coach Company in 1940) had been numbered in the 700 series – that is, the new GM Coaches of a new model bore the same numbers as the first 10 of the Yellow Coaches (GM products of a previous era).]
[In 1958 the brand name of those diesel engines (products of the Detroit Diesel Engine Division of the GM Corporation) had become changed from GM to Detroit; the name of the Detroit Division distinguished it and its products from the Cleveland Diesel Engine Division and its products, which were much larger engines, intended for railway locomotives, submarines, and stationary and other maritime applications, including many towboats built by the Nashville Bridge Company, where I worked (as a draftsman in the Marine Department) during my summer and Christmas vacations while a student at Vanderbilt University.]
In 1946 the new Whites (15 of the model 798 and 25 of the 788-2) introduced in Nashville the use of split two-section destination roll signs (black on the large section and red on the small one), whereas all the older coaches used one-section black destination signs.
In 1947 the ACF-Brill C-44s continued the use of split two-section destination signs, although on the C-44s each of the two sections had a black background (rather than red for the smaller section).
In the new arrangement a relatively wide curtain with a black background on the curb side of the front of the coach showed the name of the route or line, such as Porter Road or “special” or “garage” or other use or destination, and a relatively narrow curtain with a red background on the street side of the front of the coach showed “local” or “express” or the branch or extension of the line, such as Eastland. Here’s a real example:
In 1940, the same year in which I was born, rubber-tired motor coaches began to replace steel-wheeled streetcars in Nashville. The buses of the Nashville Coach Company (NCC), gasoline-powered, began to displace the electric streetcars of the Tennessee Electric Power (Tepco) Company. [In 1922 the Tepco had replaced the Nashville Electric Railway and Light Company.] The first bus (a Twin Coach 41-G) headed out on the Hillsboro line in August -40, and the last streetcar (a Birney safety car) pulled in from the Radnor line in February -41.
Public transit had begun in Nashville with horse-drawn railcars in 1865 and had continued with electric trolley cars in 1889, thus making Nashville one of the early North American cities to have electric streetcars.
However, the last street-railway extension took place in 1920, and the last new trolley cars arrived in -27.
After that, as the needs and wishes of the growing populace required more transit service between the streetcar lines and beyond the ends of them, the Tepco responded to the new demands by forming a motor-coach subsidiary, named as the Tennessee Transportation Company (TTC), to operate 11 Yellow Coach long-nose transit buses of the Type Z on five new routes, starting in 1927. The first bus lines were Bordeaux, Dickerson Pike, Granny White, Inglewood, and Sunset Park. More coaches followed.
During the period of 1937-40 there developed a strong public sentiment which sought the replacement of the old streetcars by new motor coaches, accompanied by much legal and political wrangling and much pro-bus agitation by the two newspapers (the Banner and the Tennessean).
In 1940 the state Public-utility Commission (PUC) ordered the Tepco to substitute buses in the place of the trolley cars.
Then the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal agency, in a separate move bought the Tepco electric-power operations in Nashville, thus causing a liquidation of the Tepco firm.
During the winding up of the Tepco and the TTC (the bus subsidiary of the Tepco), those two companies provided the capital for the formation of a new corporation, named as the Nashville Coach Company (NCC), to operate the new city-bus system, which replaced the old bus service of the TTC.
The NCC promptly placed orders for 154 new gasoline-powered coaches from three builders – Twin (for 20 of the model 27-G and 30 of the 41-G, all with Hercules engines), White (for 48 of the model 788), and Yellow (for 56 of the model TG-3602). The Twins became numbered as 601-620 and 801-830 respectively, the Whites as 901-948, and the Yellows as 701-756. [TG-3602 means transit-gasoline, 36 seats, the second model in the series.]
Each new car arrived in a striped color scheme with curves, green and cream with silver on the roof, decidedly Art Deco, often called the Omnibus, Chicago, or Fifth Avenue livery, named for the large firms which used it in Chicago and New York City. [The Omnibus Corporation was the holding company which owned those two carriers.]
Later the stripes became somewhat simpler as the coaches became repainted in due course, and about 1950 the design became rather stark – solid cream over solid green divided along a straight line at the belt line.
The Tepco had operated also the city-transit system in Chattanooga.
In 1941 a new company, named as the Southern Coach Lines (SCL), came into existence, and the SCL bought both the NCC, in Nashville, and the leftover Tepco bus system in Chattanooga, which became known as the Nashville Division and the Chattanooga Division of the SCL.
[During the changes from the Tepco to the NCC and to the SCL, one of the players in the legal and financial moves, through his Equitable Securities Corporation, was Brownlee Currey Sr., a large figure in Nashville, who in 1948, through his Beneficial Finance Company, also provided much of the funding for the formation of the Transcontinental Bus System (the expanding Continental Trailways) by M.E. Moore, in Dallas. He had a nephew by the name of Fred Currey, who later became an assistant to Moore, then, by questionable means, displaced Moore as the CEO of the Continental Trailways (later renamed as the Trailways, Inc., the TWI), and later yet bought not only the Greyhound bus operations (known as the second Greyhound Lines, Inc., the second GLI) but also the TWI, and then completely ruined both Greyhound and Trailways (not just TWI but also the entire National Trailways Bus System). More about Fred Currey, his activities, and his GLI Holding Company is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]
In 1941 the Southern Coach Lines moved to Nashville a number of pieces of used equipment from Chattanooga, including 12 cute little 20-seat 1932 Twin Coach (model 19) shuttle buses (numbered discontinuously as 101 and upward), locally known as cracker boxes, for feeder lines. [One of those cracker boxes survived until about 1960, as a truck for the company painters who periodically roamed around the town, painting the markings on pavement and on utility poles to designate the bus stops. About 1956, at the age of 16, I wrote to the manager and asked to buy that one remaining little car, but he rebuffed me.]
For a short time, starting in 1941, the SCL in Nashville ran also 17 used copies of the revolutionary Twin Coach model 40, which the Fageol brothers had introduced in 1927. [Above, in the section entitled “The Equipment in 1943,” I describe that innovative design.] All of those in Nashville were built during 1928-30. Seven of them had previously served on the international shuttle through the tunnel below the Detroit River between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
The SCL in 1942 and -43 placed in Nashville 30 more new Twin Coaches of the slightly restyled and updated (and more attractive, especially on the nose) model 41-G (numbered discontinuously as 856 and upward) – and later transferred them to Chattanooga.
In 1946 the SCL bought 40 more new Whites – 15 of the model 798 (numbered curiously as 1-15) and 25 of the 788-2 (numbered as 951-975, after the 788s, 901-948), each of the last 25 of which had a White Hydrotorque transmission (a two-speed gearbox, coupled to a torque converter, manually shifted by an electric toggle switch in the sidewall at the driver’s left hand). The latter group had at SCL the first transmissions of any type other than manual three-speed gearboxes.
The SCL in 1947 got 15 handsome new ACF-Brill C-44 coaches (numbered as 501-515), built at the Vultee aircraft plant at Berry Field in Nashville (with serial numbers 002-016, right after one demonstrator). They had Hall-Scott under-floor gasoline engines and manual three-speed gearboxes. [Above, in the section entitled “New Buses!,” I describe the production there.]
In 1949 the SCL received 10 new small Brill C-31 coaches (numbered as 551-560) of a new model, not branded as ACF-Brill, just plain Brill – because in 1946 the parent ACF owner had sold The Brill Corporation to Convair (the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation) – about 30 feet long, with 33 seats, a manual three-speed gearbox, and an International gasoline engine in the tail (rather than a Hall-Scott engine under the floor) – to start replacing the aging Twin 27-G shuttle buses on the feeder lines.
The city in 1953 created the Nashville Transit Authority, and the new Nashville Transit Company (NTC) replaced the Nashville Division of the SCL.
During that same year, 1953, the NTC placed an order for its first diesel-powered equipment, 30 copies of the GM TDH-4512 (numbered as 401-430) with air suspension, GM 6-71 engines, and GM hydraulic automatic transmissions. The first 15 arrived in December 1953, and the others followed in April -54. [TDH-4512 means transit-diesel-hydraulic (hydraulic automatic transmission), 45 seats, the 12th model in the series.]
The GM cars introduced an attractive new livery (quite typical of the 1950s, a standard color scheme available from the T&C plant in Pontiac), in red and cream, which later became applied also to the older coaches as they became repainted in due course. [That new livery duplicated the one then used on the coaches of the main city-bus carrier in Detroit.]
The ACF-Brill C-44 coaches (received in 1947) were equipped with factory-installed standard turn signals, as were the Brill C-31s (in -49) and all the new GM diesel coaches (starting in -53).
Shortly after the first of the GM coaches arrived, the NTC carried out a massive program to install aftermarket turn signals on all the older buses which had lacked them. [Turn signals had not yet become standard items on GM cars and light trucks until the 1953 model year, although they had become standard on YC (pre-GM) parlor coaches in -37.]
Late in 1954 the NTC received 15 more new GM diesel coaches (numbered as 301-315), shorter ones (32 feet long), model TDH-3714 – transit-diesel-hydraulic, 37 seats – with GM 4-71 engines (with four cylinders rather than six). The purposes of the smaller cars were to eliminate the shuttle buses on the feeder lines (by placing the new cars on light routes running all the way downtown) and to replace some of the aging Yellow Coaches (especially on the Shelby Street line across the weight-restricted Shelby Street bridge).
In the spring of 1955 the NTC bought several old 33-foot Greyhound suburban cars, 11 of the GM TD-4007 (built in -45) – transit-diesel, nominally 40 seats (although those particular cars used a 37-seat variant arrangement, using forward-facing suburban-type plush deep-cushion seats), the seventh model in the series – with GM 6-71 engines and GM hydraulic automatic transmissions – from the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines, used previously in local commuter service, originally in the bus subsidiary of the Cincinnati and Lake Erie (C&LE) Railway, in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio – numbered as G-7129 through -7139 (originally as 180 through 190), renumbered at the NTC as 351-361.
[One humorous touch is that – although all those cars had become repainted into the new red-and-cream livery before they moved from Dayton to Nashville – one of them rolled into town with a non-matching blue-and-white wheel (the left-rear-outside one) – apparently because the tire or wheel in that position had become found to be bad just before shipment – and then became replaced with a tire and a wheel (from the stock on hand at the Greyhound shop in Dayton) – or maybe because of a tire failure while en route from Dayton to Nashville – still painted in the standard Greyhound colors. Eventually, some months later, that anomalous wheel became repainted into red and cream.]
The NTC conducted two unsuccessful experiments with diesel power by using engines other than GM, using Fageol-Leyland engines (that is, Leyland engines from England marketed through the Fageol-Twin firm, in Kent, Ohio).
In the first of those two steps, early in 1955 the NTC replaced the original White gasoline engines with Leyland diesel engines in several White coaches, starting with number 12, then 15, then three more of the model 798. The first two of them bore their original numbers for a short while after the repowering, then they became renumbered in the group of 976-980, along with the three other 798s, which also became renumbered during the modification, right after the 788-2s (numbered as 951-975). Next the NTC likewise replaced the engines in several (about five, I think) of the 788-2s, each of which retained its previous number in the group of 951-975. Each of the modified 798s also got a Spicer hydraulic automatic transmission (replacing its original White three-speed manual gearbox), but each of the modified 788-2s retained its original White Hydrotorque transmission.
In the second of those two steps, late in 1955 the NTC bought five new Southern 40-seat 35-foot cars (numbered as 201-205) with under-floor Fageol-Leyland engines and Spicer hydraulic automatic transmissions. [The styling of the Southern coaches represented an obvious attempt to imitate the styling of the current Twin Coach models (except the six-piece Twin windscreen design).] They ran mostly on the Glendale, Granny White, and Eighth Avenue South lines; they ran also for a while late in the 1950s on my Porter Road line. They had several neat features (including foot switches for the turn signals, at the driver’s left foot, the first such switches at the NTC), but overall the Southern cars did not measure up well in comparison with the GM Coaches. A few of the drivers liked them, but not many of them cared for them.
The Southern coaches and the Leyland engines were generally regarded as unfortunate and unsuccessful experiments.
Wisely, then, the NTC resumed its purchases of new GM products. It bought 15 more of the TDH-4512 (numbered as 431-445) in 1956, 20 more (numbered as 446-465) in -58, and 10 more (numbered as 466-475) in -59.
The interiors of the TDH-4512 were quite attractive. The first group (401-430) used a single light shade of green paint (slightly bluish) on the inside of the shell and a single dark shade of green on the upholstery. The second group (431-445) used a dazzling two-tone treatment, light lime green over medium metallic green, for both the paint and the upholstery. The third group (446-465) used a nice but uninspired combination of beige over medium-dark brown. The last group (466-475) really hit the spot and got it exactly right – two gorgeous shades of blue, sky blue over ocean blue.
The TDH-3714s (301-315) and the old TD-4007s (351-361), along with the Southern coaches (201-205), used the same interior treatment as the first group of the -4512s (401-430).
Starting in 1954, as the old gasoline-powered coaches became repainted in due course, they got both the new red-and-cream exterior livery and the same interior treatment as on the first group of the -4512s (401-430).
The first GM Fishbowls (thus called because of the picture windows and the huge convex windscreens) arrived in Nashville during the summer of 1960, 10 copies (numbered as 701-710) of the striking new model TDH-4517, with the new Detroit 6V-71 (V-6) engines, GM hydraulic automatic transmissions, air suspension, and air-conditioning, which was a popular feature on the Fishbowls (and the first such factory-installed system available aboard a city-transit or suburban coach). The picture windows used the shape of a forward-leaning parallelogram with gracefully rounded corners (similar to the design used on the Highway Traveler PD-4104 and the Scenicruiser PD-4501). Because of the extensive use of the fluted bright siding, the Fishbowls introduced a simple outside color scheme, a white roof over cream without red (except on the NTC logo, as before). [The numbering of the new Fishbowls (701-710) represented a touch of whimsy or irony, which may or may not have been intentional, for the Yellow TG-3602 buses (among the original equipment of the Nashville Coach Company in 1940) had been numbered in the 700 series – that is, the new GM Coaches of a new model bore the same numbers as the first 10 of the Yellow Coaches (GM products of a previous era).]
[In 1958 the brand name of those diesel engines (products of the Detroit Diesel Engine Division of the GM Corporation) had become changed from GM to Detroit; the name of the Detroit Division distinguished it and its products from the Cleveland Diesel Engine Division and its products, which were much larger engines, intended for railway locomotives, submarines, and stationary and other maritime applications, including many towboats built by the Nashville Bridge Company, where I worked (as a draftsman in the Marine Department) during my summer and Christmas vacations while a student at Vanderbilt University.]
In 1946 the new Whites (15 of the model 798 and 25 of the 788-2) introduced in Nashville the use of split two-section destination roll signs (black on the large section and red on the small one), whereas all the older coaches used one-section black destination signs.
In 1947 the ACF-Brill C-44s continued the use of split two-section destination signs, although on the C-44s each of the two sections had a black background (rather than red for the smaller section).
In the new arrangement a relatively wide curtain with a black background on the curb side of the front of the coach showed the name of the route or line, such as Porter Road or “special” or “garage” or other use or destination, and a relatively narrow curtain with a red background on the street side of the front of the coach showed “local” or “express” or the branch or extension of the line, such as Eastland. Here’s a real example:
In 1953 and -54 the first group of the GM TDH-4512 (numbered as 401-430) also had two-section signs, but they included an unusual twist, an anomalous (almost bizarre) twist: The name of the route or line appeared on a black background on the smaller section on the street side of the front of the coach, and the name of the branch or extension of the route (or “local” or “express”) appeared on a red background on the wider section on the curb side of the front of the coach. Here’s another real example:
That was backward. It presented an awkward and impractical appearance. I never heard or read an explanation of that. I’ve wondered whether it resulted from a miscommunication between the NTC and the staff at the plant of the T&C Division, in Pontiac, or whether some misguided person at the NTC had just tried to do something different, maybe for a lack of a better way to amuse himself. I’ve also never known of that weird combination to be used on any other coach anywhere else. Fortunately, that screwball aberration never recurred in Nashville.
However, another anomaly (although not an objectionable one) occurred aboard the 15 copies of the TDH-3714 (numbered as 301-315): All those coaches had black steering wheels and black turn-signal switches, whereas all the other Yellow and GM Coaches – the TG-3602, the TDH-4512, the used TD-4007, the TDH-4517, and the used -4507 and -4509 (which I describe below in this section) – all of those coaches which served in Nashville before I left home and left town (after I graduated from Vanderbilt, in 1961) – all of those had the familiar (almost signature) tan steering wheels and tan turn-signal switches (except that the TG-3602s did not originally have turn signals at all) – which Yellow Coach had introduced on its parlor and city-transit coaches in 1940, and which GM Coach continued consistently on its parlor models through the PD-4103 and on its transit and suburban models through the early Fishbowls midway in the -60s. Starting in 1953, three parlor models got black steering wheels and black turn-signal switches (the PD-4104, the Scenicruiser PD-4501, and the PD-4106). The Buffalo PD-4107 in -66 introduced white steering wheels of a different type, which began to appear also on transit and suburban models about the same time. But I do not recall having seen black steering wheels or black turn-signal switches on any other GM transit or suburban coach anywhere else (in Nashville or otherwise) – not on the TDH-37 or the TDH-45 series. The sales literature did not list those black items as options. What happened? I still don’t know. Maybe a shortage of the tan ones when the Nashville TDH-3714s came down the assembly line? That’s my best guess.
During 1954-61, while I attended David Lipscomb High School (DLHS) and Vanderbilt University (VU), I routinely commuted on the city buses of the NTC – between my home and downtown on the Porter Road line, between downtown and DLHS on the Belmont and Granny White lines, and between downtown and VU on the West End, Belle Meade, and Hillsboro lines.
Throughout those years I intently watched all the happenings in the city-bus operations, I learned much about them, and I became acquainted with most of the drivers to one extent or another. A few of them allowed me to ride around town with them.
Several of the drivers have stood out in my memories.
W.K. Porter was probably the oldest driver at the NTC and probably the number-1 man at the top of the seniority list. [He lived in a brick house on the north side of Eastland Avenue, near the Eastwood Christian Church and on the Porter Road line.] He consistently worked on the first shift, starting about 5 a.m., on the Porter Road line. I often rode with him for several years, while I commuted to Lipscomb and Vanderbilt. Despite his obvious advanced age (and his complete lack of teeth), he still did a remarkably good job of handling the buses with extreme smoothness and expertise.
Tommy Stamps was the most cheerful and outgoing of them all – and the most favored one among many of the older lady passengers.
Paul Evins and Edgar “Eddie” Angell showed by far the highest degree of smoothness, expertise, graciousness, friendliness, congeniality, and professionalism. They both stood well above all the others. I always greatly enjoyed riding with either of them. While in elementary school and afterward I rode with Paul many times on the Porter Road line; while in high school I rode with him a number of times on the Granny White line.
Late one afternoon in February 1960, during the start of a surprise snowstorm, after the city streets had already become quite messy, one of my special girlfriends (Carol Ann Smith) and I rode with Paul on the Hillsboro line on our way back home across town after our college classes. As always, Paul did a super job of moving his TDH-4512 amid the snow and ice. [Paul lived on Halcyon Avenue, between the Glendale and Granny White lines.]
Many times during 1954-61 I rode with Eddie on the Porter Road line on my way back home after classes. [Eddie was the father of Nick Angell, one of my schoolmates, one grade behind me at Inglewood School, and another son several more grades behind me; Eddie and his family lived on Porter Avenue, between Porter Road and Riverside Drive, near our school.]
Riding with either Paul or Eddie was always a special treat. They consistently did everything well and right. I do not recall any instance in which either ever committed a mistake of judgment or other glitch.
One afternoon in February 1956, during my junior year in high school, after several hours of another surprise snowstorm, while riding back home on a city bus after classes at DLHS, I pulled off a large success – for the benefit of the driver, the company, and a busload of kids. The coach was a White 788 (numbered in the group of 901-948) on a routine special trip inbound on the Granny White line for the use of the DLHS students. A regular trip on the Granny White line, using a GM TDH-3714 (numbered in the group of 301-315), was about 20 minutes ahead of us. As we headed north on the Granny White Pike, we crossed Woodmont Boulevard, Noelton Avenue, and Clifton Lane, then we descended a short downgrade toward Battlefield Drive, at the bottom. Beyond that awaited an upgrade, a moderate one across a train track of the Tennessee Central (TC) Railway (which now provides the route of I-440 in that part of town), then a sharper grade toward Gale Lane at the top. As we eased down the first grade, we saw that the -3714 ahead of us had slid completely off the snowy steep upgrade, to the right into the ditch on the east side of the pavement. We reached the bottom, crossed the TC train track, then started creeping up the steeper grade. Only a few feet beyond the -3714, the drive wheels of our bus lost traction and started spinning on the icy snow, then started sliding to the left, not quite off the pavement but almost into the ditch on the west side of the road, although the nose of our bus remained well on the road. The efforts of our driver availed naught. Then came my shining moment. I approached the driver and proposed a solution. He seemed doubtful, but he had nothing to lose. I mustered all the boys on the bus and took them outside and to the rear. I positioned the boys on the left side at the tail. On my signal the driver shifted into first gear and engaged the clutch but did not depress the accelerator. As I had expected, the slow turning of the rear wheels did not produce any motion, but it did cause the rear of the bus to skate on a thin layer of water between the drive tires and the surface of the icy snow – water produced by the heat of the friction between the snow and the slowly turning tires. Then, with the tires skating on the water, we boys pushed sideward at the tail of the bus, back into the center of the road. That really worked! After we put the bus back in a straight line in the center of the road, then we started pushing the tail of the bus straight ahead and straight upward, all the way to Gale Lane, at the top. That too really worked! The driver stopped again, we boys reboarded the bus, and we all continued to downtown without further incident. That little trick of mine was not bad for a kid who had not quite reached the age of 16!
After the introduction of the factory-installed air-conditioning aboard the new Fishbowls, in 1960, the riders, the drivers, and the managers all liked that feature well enough that the NTC installed aftermarket cooling machines aboard 15 of the newer TDH-4512s. In 1961 the 10 newest of them (466-475) got rooftop systems from Thermo-King, then in -62 five of the next newest (461-465) got under-floor systems from Thermo-Equipment. As those cars gained their new coolers, they became renumbered as 601-615.
The NTC needed to finish retiring the old gasoline-powered buses, and the managers had a preference to do so with GM diesel coaches; unfortunately, though, the declining ridership did not produce enough revenue to enable the company, which was still a privately owned one, to buy more new equipment.
Therefore the NTC began a program of buying secondhand somewhat recent-model GM coaches from publicly owned systems, which had begun buying large quantities of new GM Fishbowls (with federal-grant money) – 15 of the TDH-4507 (built in 1947-48, renumbered as 501-515) from Cincinnati in -60-61, eight of the TDH-4509 (built in -51, renumbered as 801-808) from Indianapolis in -62, 20 of the TDH-4509 (built in -49-50, renumbered as 811-830) from Memphis in -65, 11 of the TDH-4512 (built in -54, renumbered as 461-471, using numbers previously vacated by the -4512s modified in 1961-62 with the aftermarket air conditioners and renumbered as 601-615) from Miami in -67, plus a single TDH-4512 (built in -56, renumbered as 472) from the Louisiana Transit Company, a suburban operation in New Orleans, in -67.
Using federal grants, which became available late in the 1960s, the NTC bought its first new equipment since 1960 – 10 35-foot GM Fishbowls in 1967, 10 more in -68, and 10 more in -69, all numbered as 711-740, right after the first 10 Fishbowls, in -60 (numbered as 701-710).
In July 1973, using a federal grant of 4.5 million dollars, the Metro government, created in -63, acting through its Metro Transit Authority (MTA), also created in -63, bought the assets of the NTC and began operating the system. Thus Nashville became the last large city in the Volunteer State to lose its private city-bus carrier to public ownership. [Memphis had converted in 1961, Knoxville had done so in -67, and Chattanooga in January -73.]
The MTA soon placed an order for 100 AM General 35-foot 41-seat coaches from the upstart (and short-lived, 1974-78) bus-building subsidiary of the American Motors (AM) Corporation (AMC). The coaches (numbered as 800-899) arrived in 1974-75, from a plant in Mishawaka, Indiana, used later for the production of Humvees and other military vehicles.
After that further unsuccessful experiment the MTA again returned to GM, buying 20 of the 40-foot version of a new RTS model (the replacement for the Fishbowl design), numbered as 900-919, which arrived early in 1979. [Those were the first buses longer than 35 feet at the TTC, NCC, SCL, NTC, or MTA.]
In 1983 the MTA received its first articulated (tractor-trailer) coaches, 15 German MAN 72-seat coaches with MAN diesel engines (numbered as 101-115). [MAN is the abbreviation of Maschinenfabrik Augsburg–Nürnberg (Machine Factory Augsburg–Nuremberg).]
By then I had lived away from Nashville so long, and I had become involved with so many other activities, that my attention had become diluted and diverted in other directions, and I lost contact with the MTA and its story.
Other Bus Companies in Nashville
The Ladd Motor Coach Lines, using the nickname of the Tennessee Trailblazers, connected Nashville with several towns to the southwest – Fairview, Centerville, Hohenwald, Waynesboro, Savannah, and Selmer – and, for a while, via Waynesboro to Corinth, Mississippi, and to Florence, Alabama – running a small fleet of dented and rumpled Flxible Clippers plus a few Pony Cruisers (even smaller than the Clippers).
W.C. Owen, of Ashland City, ran a one-man and one-bus local operation, the Owen Bus Line, using a nice looking, nicely maintained Flxible Clipper 29BR with a Buick engine, making usually about three or four round trips each day between Nashville and Ashland City, the seat of Cheatham County, about 19 miles away to the northwest on state road 12 (Hyde’s Ferry Pike) on the “back” way to Clarksville (the alternative to US-41A, the direct route to Clarksville, along which the SEGL ran through Clarksville and Hopkinsville to Evansville).
Mr. Owen had started his business with a sedan in 1918, then he graduated to an International truck chassis with a 21-seat bus body, then other small buses, and eventually his neat little 29-seat Flxible Clipper.
He retired about 1955, and he sold or leased his company and his one bus to the Ladd Motor Coach Lines, the Tennessee Trailblazers, which also owned and operated several Flxible coaches. [He was said to have driven about two million miles before he parked his last bus the last time.]
In the spring of 1956, in my junior year at David Lipscomb HS (DLHS), Ellie McDowell and I – along with about 20 other kids and one chaperone (our librarian, Miss Mary Frances Bynum, who later married Marshall Gunselman, the older brother of Darrell Gunselman, one of my classmates at DLHS) – rode on the former-Owen bus (then in the service of the Tennessee Trailblazers but still marked for the Owen Bus Line) – on a charter trip to Cookeville and to the Tennessee Polytechnic Institute (TPI), later renamed as the Tennessee Tech University (TTU) – where my sister, Priscilla, in 1971 earned her BS degree (in secretarial science) – and where I in -80 earned my MBA degree – a trip for the Library Club (of which I was the president) at the DLHS, to attend an annual state convention of high-school library clubs. [Predictably, I engaged in much shop talk with the driver while Ellie and I rode right behind the door.]
The Franklin Interurban Bus Company ran between Nashville and Franklin on two routes, along the Franklin Pike (US-31) and the Hillsboro Pike (US-431), using mostly a group of 30-33-foot White suburban cars. That firm also provided short-turn service from downtown Nashville to Green Hills (on the Hillsboro Pike) and to Crieve Hall and South Meade (just off the Franklin Pike) until 1962, when the Nashville Transit Company took over those last two more local lines.
The Franklin Interurban Bus Company, created in 1941, was an outgrowth of an electric rail carrier, first named as the Nashville Interurban Railway Company, later renamed as the Nashville-Franklin Railway, which had run during 1909-43 along a single line paralleling the Franklin Pike.
During the 1950s, as the Whites continued to age, and as the company sought to do more tours and charters, the firm bought several used buses, first two or three FitzJohn Falcons (from the Central Trailways), then at least one Beck Mainliner (from the Crescent Trailways, originally from the Lewisburg Bus Lines) and at least one GM Henry J PD-4103 with painted smooth sides (from the Southeastern Greyhound Lines). The Fitzes became repainted to match the Whites, using mostly navy blue with gray and white. The Beck(s) and the Henry J(s) became repainted in tan and white. On the Henry J(s) the tan simply replaced the blue in the standard Greyhound livery (following the original stripes and curves), and on the sides the words Interurban Lines appeared in the same style, the same size, and the same places of the lettering which had previously said “Greyhound Lines.”
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Posted at 00:00 EDT, Xday, 00 July 2026.
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