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Crown Coach Corporate Archives

Crown Coach Corporate Archives

7/22/1968 Photo Copy of a drawing showing an arial view of the Crown Factory

Crown Corp Photographs

The Pacific Bus Museum’s Archives contain Louk Markham‘s collection of Crown photographs obtained from the Crown Corp. These archives contain photographs taken by Warren Bowen, Dick Whittington other photographers.

Crown used these professional photographers to document coach deliveries, chassis/engine configurations, engineering designs, and many unique and unusual details. Most of the pre-1950’s photos are by Dick Whittingtion and the latter ones are by his protege Warren Bowen. When Warren retired in the 1980s, he gave Louk Markham his Crown photos and negatives archives.

Louk acquired additional Crown photos from Larry Sherrill who was an instructor at the CDE Driver Instructor Academy. The combined Larry Sherrill & Louk Markham collections were numbered SM##. Louk then donated these to The Pacific Bus Museum in February 2024.

Besides housing the original physical photo/slide/negative collections, we also have digitized and made many of these photos available online for our Members. (Non-members can access the listings, by do not have full access to the high-resolution digitized photos.)

The listing of the physical archives is below. The digitized collection can be accessed via our Crown Photo Lookup tool.

If you are a researcher seeing high-resolution copies, please contact us at info@pacbus.org.

Physical Archive Files

  • Crown Photos – Black Binder – Supercoach

  • Photos compiled by Louk Markham for his Crown book from the Warren Bowen and Dick Whittington Crown Corp photo collections

  • Crown Photos – Blue Binder – Specialcoach

  • Photos compiled by Louk Markham for his Crown book from the Warren Bowen and Dick Whittington Crown Corp photo collections

  • Crown Photos – Grey Binder – Misc Book Photos

  • Photos compiled by Louk Markham for his Crown book from the Warren Bowen and Dick Whittington Crown Corp photo collections

  • Crown Photos File Cabinet #1

  • This file cabinet contains the 1st half of the Crown Photos donated by Louk Markham.
    Contents include items from these Markham cardboard bankers boxes:

    • Drawer #1 – Markham Negative Box #1 of 2 (#2 is missing) and Crown Book Negatives & Slides
    • Drawer #2 – SM1 – Bowen 1960’s to 1980s + Misc and SM2 – 1950’s Dick Whittington
    • Drawer #3 – SM2 – 1950’s Dick Whittington and SM3 – 1950’s Warren Bowen
    • Drawer #4 – SM4 and SM5
  • Crown Photos File Cabinet #2

  • This file cabinet contains the 2nd half of the Crown Photos donated by Louk Markham.
    Contents include items from these Markham cardboard bankers boxes:

    • Drawer #1 – NOT LOADED YET
    • Drawer #2 – NOT LOADED YET
    • Drawer #3 – NOT LOADED YET
    • Drawer #4 – NOT LOADED YET
  • SM6 – Selected Crown Photos for Louk’s Crown Book

  • Selected Crown Photos for Louk’s Crown Coach Corp Book

  • SM7 – Misc Photos, Service Manuals

  • Box SM7 – Photos: Crown Misc Photos, Service Manuals (a.k.a. Larry DD3) Some photos seem to be from Ron Ward, but most are unknown.


Crown Sales/Build/Engineering Records

The Pacific Bus Museum has all the original records from the Crown Coach Corp. 

  • Original Sales Orders (from #### to ####)
  • Detailed Build Specifications (from 1970s to ####)
  • Completed Build Photographs (Sorted by customer, not year)

These records are interesting because they contain a great many facts about these coaches, including when the bus was made, who it was sold to, etc.

These are very old-school paper records that will take some time to index and digitize. This process has only begun.

We have not started digitizing these yet, except for this one record:

Crown Archive Items

1 Crown Chasis Found

Utilizing these Sales/Build/Engineering Records

To use these paper records, it is easiest to begin by noting the coach chassis underneath your front-right tire well. Alternately/additionally you can note the serial number printed on the body rails.

The next step is to use the Sales/Build Record Index – Lookup  tool to find the sales/build records corresponding to your chassis/serial number. Within those column we’ll find records that look like this example from our Crown #4:

  • Chasis N0: 32951 which matches the number welded inside the front-left tire well
  • Purchaser: Los Gatos Union High School
  • Model: A-779-11
  • Motor N0: Hall-Scott #192373
  • 5C-65SP Fuller Transmission

Crown Coach Corporation – Sales Records

Crown Coach Corporation – Sales Records for Crown #4

Crown Coach Corporation – Sales Records for Crown #4

Crown Coach Corporation – Sales Records for Crown #4

If the coach in question was built from the 1970’s onward, we can also find a folder in the “salmon” file cabinets. These folder have additional build/engineering details.

Crown Coach Corporation – Detailed Build Specification Files from 1970’s forward

Researcher & Crown Owners

Researchers can contact the museum for access to these archives.

Current Crown coach owners should note their chassis/serial numbers and contact the museum so we can look up your sales/build information.

Pacific Bus Museum Members

For PBM members we are building some searchable indexes that will enable us to lookup this information. This is a work-in-progress. Contact the PBM Webmaster for access and assistance.

 

 

 

 

 

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