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NS VIA Fan

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Nova Scotia
From a trip in January 1979:

I wanted to get one last ride in on the 'Southern Crescent' before Amtrak took it over. I was riding the 'Floridian' north from Miami on a 'USA Railpass' but upon reaching Birmingham I found out the Southern Crescent was sold out from there but I could get a coach seat in Atlanta where additional cars were added.

Now what to do?.....Well Greyhound had a bus and with a quick taxi ride in Atlanta I was there in time to get the Southern Crescent to Washington.

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I remember riding Greyhound's "nonstop" New York - Chicago service, which made only food stops on the way. The bus was pretty full. It was in the 1979 timeframe when I traveled one summer all across the US using a one month Greyhound Ameripass. I was a student with no spare money to speak of. The entire trip was planned to spend nights on the bus, unless I had a friend or acquaintance somewhere that I could crash at. And I actually had fun. But then I also have fun flying these days, so maybe I just have a strange idea of what is fun
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Didn't Greyhound have a Seattle to Miami route that ran without an equipment change? Obviously it would require new drivers along the way. That would have been an interesting ride.
 
I remember riding Greyhound's "nonstop" New York - Chicago service, which made only food stops on the way. The bus was pretty full. It was in the 1979 timeframe when I traveled one summer all across the US using a one month Greyhound Ameripass. I was a student with no spare money to speak of. The entire trip was planned to spend nights on the bus, unless I had a friend or acquaintance somewhere that I could crash at. And I actually had fun. But then I also have fun flying these days, so maybe I just have a strange idea of what is fun
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Found an article on unlimited transportation passes. Of course Amtrak had it, and so did several major airlines. The airlines kind of reduced the chances of students using them by requiring that at least two be booked at a time.

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/07/09/archives/unlimited-travel-by-air-bus-rail-a-single-ticket.html

At least two adults or one adult and two children between 2 and 11 years old must travel together. (Each child”s fare is about $200.) For families, this usually presents no problem, but it meant a bit of a hassle for Jeana Woolley of Portland, Ore., who would have preferred to travel alone when she went to Miami and Trinidad and Martinique early this year. “Instead, there were four of us,” she said, “including a couple of friends-of-friends whom I didn”t know. One of the others set up the itinerary, and I would have done some things differently myself. But overall, it was a tremendous opportunity. My travel agent said I had $1,300 worth of tickets for only $320, and such a trip would normally have been an impossible dream for me.”
 
Didn't Greyhound have a Seattle to Miami route that ran without an equipment change? Obviously it would require new drivers along the way. That would have been an interesting ride.
If there was, it would be about 4000 miles. On a bus. That would literally be hell for me.
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Buses are the one form of transportation that sets off my motion sickness. Trains, never a problem. Planes, nothing. Ferries, I was on a ferry during Hurricane Hugo and survived w/o puking.

But 4000 miles on a bus? I can barely go 4000 feet on a bus without Dramamine
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Ah, the Greyhound Ameripass...99 bucks and unlimited travel as long as you didn't backtrack. In 1980, I did over 4000 miles on the Dog betweem Boston and Seattle, visiting friends in Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California on the way. I quickly learned that the optimum boarding strategy was to get to the end of the line for boarding if the line was long, because if the bus filled up they would put on a second bus which would often be only lightly filled. So you could stretch out to sleep that way, as well as getting privacy from passengers who wanted to be overly friendly with solo young female passengers.

I had a map of the US which I marked my route on with a Magic Marker, a Sony Walkman with plenty of cassette tapes, and a backpack.  Good times...

(Well, actually it was mostly fun...)
 
After the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad's 'Potatoland Special' and 'Aroostook Flyer' were discontinued in 1961.....passenger service to Northern Maine continued on railroad owned buses.

At Madawaska the bus briefly crossed the border to Edmundston, New Brunswick then went right back to the States and continued along it's run. (wonder how Customs handled that one!) The VIA Station in Edmundston was adjacent to the International Bridge....and at Van Buren, Maine the VIA Station in St. Leonard was a half-mile away.

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At one time, Bangor and Aroostook and Eastern Greyhound Lines had an interline thru bus from Fort Kent to New York City.

It was always a treat for bus fans to see the “exotic” BAR equipment in The Port....
 
Back in the '70s I boarded a Greyhound bus in San Francisco which said "New York" on its destination sign, and was supposedly a through service with several stops of course. As I discovered, the equipment got swapped out en route at Salt Lake City and then again in Chicago as I seem to recall. But it was really not that bad a ride considering the fare I was paying in the form of an Ameripass. In those poor graduate student days, it was either that or no trip. Amtrak was way too expensive even in Coach.

As it turns out, while I was enjoying the northwest I lost track of time, and by the time I got to San Francisco I was running short of time. So after spending a day or two in San Fran I had to get on the direct bus back to NY to avoid having to spend more money on additional tickets. This was a strictly cash in pocket trip. I had no credit card or any way of getting additional money easily before I got back to New York.
 
At one time, Bangor and Aroostook and Eastern Greyhound Lines had an interline thru bus from Fort Kent to New York City.

It was always a treat for bus fans to see the “exotic” BAR equipment in The Port....
That thru bus left Fort Kent at 9:20am and didn't reach New York until 4:15am the next morning. Fort Kent is the northern terminus of US1....2,369 miles from Key West.   

Greyhound also had thru buses from New York to Moncton, Saint John and St. Stephen, New Brunswick where they interlined with SMT

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They were the Scenicruisers.....the 'Dome Car'  of buses!
That is what was called a Super-Scenicruiser if I recall correctly. Greyhound, at least circa 1965-66 called their single level buses Scenicruisers and the two-level ones with the "hump" in the back Super-Scenicruisers.

I traveled in one of those in 1965, seated in the first row of that upper level, from Boston to Niagara Falls. It was really nice to be able to look forward with an unhindered view of the road ahead. Of course most of that trip was on Mass Turnpike and New York State Thruway.
 
That is what was called a Super-Scenicruiser if I recall correctly. Greyhound, at least circa 1965-66 called their single level buses Scenicruisers and the two-level ones with the "hump" in the back Super-Scenicruisers.
The 'Scenicruisers' were also 2-levels. When rebuilt...the modified units became 'Super Scenicruisers'
 
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Well - as a kid who took the bus to school a lot, I thought maybe it was about bus equipment.  I went to a Catholic school a few miles away and along a main drag where AC Transit was running plenty of buses.  Then later on we'd take special AC Transit buses to school that were dedicated drop-off and pickup at my junior high.

The primary equipment used back then was the General Motors "New Look".  I remember seeing the individual differences, such as where the exhaust was.  Some were hidden under the body, while others were on either side of the rear window.  One type was of a large exhaust panel located above the rear window.
 
It was always a treat for bus fans to see the “exotic” BAR equipment in The Port....
Did you also see "exotic" SMT equipment in "The Port..." ? They painted their buses in a Greyhound-like scheme. Schedule shows thru buses between Moncton and New York.

SMT was owned by the New Brunswick Irving family. Today they own the former Canadian Pacific Railway mainline east of Brownville Jct. Maine and operate the former Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. They also own the Irving Gas stations throughout New England and eastern Canada.

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Greyhound operated through interline trips all over North America with a multitude of carriers’s.  In most, but not all cases, the pool carrier equipment had to be up to Greyhound standards, and be in a similar blue, white, and silver color scheme, even if the “regular” scheme differed.

SMT (Eastern Limited) buses did indeed come into The Port.  IIRC, at one time there was even a summertime thru trip all the way to Halifax, involving Acadian Lines.

Another “exotic” pool was a New York to Quebec City via Newport, Vermont with Quebec Central Transportation Company.
 
That particular one was the “GX-2”, prototype, built in 1949.   The 1,001 production models were built in 1954-1956.  Raymond Loewy, of GG-1, Studebaker, and Air Force One design, amongst other famous designs, helped design it.
Is it correct to say though that the only benefit of this design is that passengers get a front window?
 
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