Bus Photos

Archives
- 🗝️ Catalog
- Bus Photos
- Book Library
- Crown Coach Corporate Archives
- Transit Operators in California and Beyond
- Manufacturers & Builders Files
- Various Digitized Archive Records
- PBM Paddle Newsletter Archives

Bus Photographs

The Pacific Bus Museum has an extensive collection of photographs and negatives from the Crown Corporation. Additionally we have lots of other, non-Crown, photographs spread among our Robert Burrows Operation/Builder files and other Archives.

This lookup was initially built to only search Crown Photos, but it is being expanded… bear with us as we get this all working properly.

The Crown and other photos are not all organized/numbered in the same ways, so we are still working out how best to catalog/index/digitize and share these. This lookup tool was based on the Crown Dick Whittington and Warren Bowen ###-###-## image numbering system.

Bus Photo Archives – Lookup

This page provides a searchable lookup of our Bus Photos.

Recent Photo Additions

Rainbow Tours Fleet 9/1977
Bowen – 100-434-1 Rainbow Tours Fleet 9/1977-mark Posted: April 3, 2025 at 1:09 pm
US Army White Sands
Bowen – 100-429-1 US Army White Sands right front 7/21/1977-mark Posted: April 3, 2025 at 12:57 pm
Mescalero Apache Tribe
Bowen – 100-410-2 Mescalero Apache right front 12/1974-mark Posted: April 3, 2025 at 12:44 pm
AudioVoice Intercom / AM Radio
AudioVoice Intercom 8/10/1964 Posted: March 8, 2025 at 6:42 am
1961 Flxible
Bowen – 100-161-1 Flxible 1961 Posted: March 8, 2025 at 6:34 am
Roesch Lines #412 1962
Roesch Lines #412 1962 Posted: March 8, 2025 at 6:20 am
GMC TD-3602 San Mateo Burlingame Transit
A. C. Byod( Byrd?) – MC.997.06 GMC TD-3602 San Mateo Burlingame Transit 2/1/1955 Posted: March 7, 2025 at 11:56 am
Emergency Marker Lights
Whittington – 98-68-2 Emergency Marker Lights Posted: February 24, 2025 at 3:37 pm
Boise Winnemucca Fleet and Repairs
Various collections of Boise Winnemucca fleet and subsequent repairs Posted: January 26, 2025 at 12:16 pm
Simi Valley USD Fleet
Simi Valley USD Fleet 1968 (LM C16) Posted: January 26, 2025 at 8:29 am
Moses Lake School District Fleet
Moses Lake School District Fleet Posted: January 26, 2025 at 8:23 am
Lompoc Unified fleet
Lompoc Unified fleet June 1972 (LM C13-P14) Posted: January 26, 2025 at 8:13 am
4-Bus Crown Fleet
Crown Fleet Posted: January 26, 2025 at 8:11 am
Los Angeles City School Fleet
Los Angeles City School Fleet 1938 Posted: January 26, 2025 at 7:59 am
Mercer Island School District Fleet
Mercer Island School District Fleet Posted: January 26, 2025 at 7:53 am
Moses Lake School District Fleet
Moses Lake School District Fleet 10/1964 Posted: January 26, 2025 at 7:45 am
San Jose Unified Bus Fleet and staff
(This) fleet is San Jose Unified, about 1957, when they bought 3 new buses. The earliest 2 came over from Almaden Union Elementary SD’s fleet. This angle gives a little more idea of what is on the right hand side. There’s a circa-1947 Gillig and several conventional buses, some as far back as WWII era. – Tom Shafer Posted: January 26, 2025 at 7:35 am
Atomic Energy Commission Hi-Level
Various black and white photos and color negatives of these deck-and-a-half coaches Posted: January 25, 2025 at 12:39 pm
A.C. Brill – Extended Land Cruiser
This neat little artifact is quite the enigma. Who can decipher all the little clues to help us figure out what we are looking at? * Which photographer used id MC.999.10 * Who is Brad Watts> * Why is there a Brill in the Crown archives? * Who is artist DS? Posted: January 25, 2025 at 8:06 am
Crown Super II
This series of 2×2 color slides of the Crown Super II is a gorgeous set of photos taken from every imaginable angle. This collection was in the Crown Archives, but the collector and photographer are unknown. Posted: January 25, 2025 at 7:47 am

Crown Photo Series-ID Numbering System

The photographer Crown used for several decades to document their products and innovations was Dick Whittington. Somewhere between the 1950s and 1960s their longtime employee Warren Bowen started his own photo studio in Los Angeles. He took the Crown account with him. When Warren retired in the 1980s, he gave Louk Markham his Crown photos and negatives archives. Louk then donated these to The Pacific Bus Museum in February 2024.

Louk Markham described the photograph numbering system this way.

Let’s look at these two photos as samples:

Warren Bowen 511-28-3

Dick Whittington 06.120.1

First, both Warren Bowen and Dick Whittington used a similar ###-##-## format.

99% of Bowen’s Crown photos are in the 100-##-## format (100 is likely Bowen’s customer number for Crown)
- So, this Bowen photos numbered 511-##-## is interesting and unique

The second set of digits in the ###-##-## format was the roll or job number. The final digits were the photo-number on the roll.

So the format is Job#-Roll#-Photo#
So the 511-28-3 above is roll #28 photo #3

However, Dick Whittington generally wrote his numbers with dots and may have reversed the Job/Roll #’s: Roll#.Job#.Photo#

So, it is likely the Whittington photo above, numbered 06.120.1 is the 6th roll and the first photo

Photographer: [room]-[cabinet]-[drawer]-[folder]-[nickname] Series ID: Series Label/Customer: Coach Type: Coach/Charter, Fire Truck, Highway Post Office (HPO), Medical/Ambulance, Mobile Library/Book Mobile, Police/Prison, School Bus, Transit, TV/Film Truck, Other	Photo ID: ###-###-## or ###.###.## Photo Date: Location ID: [room]-[cabinet]-[drawer]-[folder]-[nickname]