GOOD OLD DAYS:

Former ACTION bus driver Stan Harriden with the newly painted 1949 Regal bus, similar to the one he trained in.

THIS TIME MACHINE ROLLS BACK THE YEARS FOR STAN
It was a proud day for former bus driver Stan Harriden, of Yarralumla, yesterday. He got behind the wheel of a 1949 AEC Regal bus again.

His wife Pat ironed his old uniform and they found his old cap in the garage. The last outings for that cap had been at preschool show-and-tell and dress-up days for his grandchildren.

"The Regal bus brings back lots of lovely memories of the old days," Stan said as he admired the gleaming bus at ACTION's Tuggeranong depot.

The Regal Mark 111, C59351, is known fondly among the staff as Matilda. It has recently been fully restored and repainted. Its livery is Biscuit Fawn (or Canberra Fawn) with a canary yellow band, trimmed in red.

The bus was first delivered to the then Department of the Interior, operators of the Canberra City Omnibus Service in 1949 when the city had 20,000 people and 55 buses which served the suburbs of Acton, Ainslie, Braddon, O'Connor, Reid and Turner on the northside and Barton, Causeway, Forrest, Griffith, Kingston, Manuka and Narrabundah on the southside, with infrequent trips to Duntroon, Fairbairn, Molonglo and Westridge. Several rural settlements were served by school buses.

C59351 was one of 45 buses of a similar ilk: operated by a two-man crew, a driver and a conductor, from 1949 to 1959 when it was replaced at the Ainslie depot by a one-man operated underfloor-engined AEC Reliance.

The Regal was then sold and operated on the South Coast for some years. In late 1977 it passed into the hands of a man in Schofield, NSW, who sold the bus to ACTION in 1979.

Now it is used as a flagship: a far cry from the modern buses that now ply the routes, but a fine reminder of the past. It had its first public outing last weekend at a Celebration of Families community event at Tuggeranong.

And yesterday, Stan got reacquainted with it. Stan worked as a driver from 1956 until he retired in 1994. He learnt to drive on a bus similar to Matilda.

It sure brought back good memories.