Tag Archives: Gillig Phantom

Bus Photo of the Month: September 2023

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Gillig Phantom 5418

Location: River Road at Landy Lane, Bethesda, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Ride On Montgomery County Transit
Date of Photo: March 24, 2001

This weekend, Mrs. Oren’s Transit Page and I are celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary!  Mrs. OTP is very supportive of my hobby and this website, and this has been demonstrated in various ways over the course of our relationship.  One of the ways is that as a bit of a gag on our wedding website, I included instructions for how to get to our wedding venue by public transit.  We weren’t sure if anyone would actually attempt to do this, but it turns out several of our guests did in fact take a combination of Metrorail and Ride On to come celebrate us on our special day.  

To mark this occasion, I chose a photo of a bus operating on the route our guests were instructed to take to reach our venue.  Although it is technically a Metrobus route, it is operated by Ride On on weekends and most holidays.  Since our wedding took place on a Sunday, it seemed appropriate to share a photo of a Ride On bus serving the route.  

Have you ever used public transit to travel to a wedding?

For more photos of Ride On’s Gillig Phantoms, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: November 2020

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Gillig Phantom 3212Gillig Phantom 3212

Location: 2nd Avenue at Broad Street, Seattle, WA
Operator of Vehicle: King County Metro
Date of Photo: August 3, 2007

On Friday, October 23, 2020, King County Metro retired the last of its diesel buses.  At the time that the first of its “1100 Series” Gillig Phantoms was delivered, there were 1,100 buses in the King County Metro fleet, all of which were diesel powered.  The one featured in this photograph was among them.  Fast forward to today, and with the retirement of the last Gillig Phantom, the KCM fleet is now made up entirely of diesel electric hybrids, electric trolleybuses, or electric buses such as Proterra Catalyst and BYD K9 models.  It is one of the largest bus fleets in the United States that does not have any vehicles to only be powered by diesel.  King County Metro is aiming to have the entire fleet consist of zero-emissions vehicles by 2040.

For more photos of King County Metro buses, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: April 2017

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Gillig Advantage 09-108

Gillig Advantage 09-108

Location: Covadonga Terminal, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Operator of Vehicle: Autoridad Metropolitana de Autobuses de Puerto Rico (AMA)
Date of Photo: March 21, 2016

When traveling to Puerto Rico, there are a number of ways in which you are reminded that you are not on the US mainland anymore, and then there are other ways in which you are reminder that Puerto Rico is a United States territory.  The transit fleet in San Juan definitely falls in to the latter category.  The bus fleet is made up of the same Orion and Gillig models you find all over the United States.  Capture a CVS or Walgreens in the background of a photo and without other context, you may very well think that the photo was taken somewhere other than Puerto Rico.  Unfortunately, public transit on the scale that one would find comparable to the US mainland is only available in San Juan, and evening and Sunday service is lacking even in that city to say the least.  However, if one wants a slightly “foreign” flavor to what would otherwise be “standard” North American transitfanning, San Juan might be worth a visit!

For more photos of Autoridad Metropolitana de Autobuses de Puerto Rico (AMA)’s buses, please click here.

OTP Update: New section and lots of new photos!

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Gillig Advantage 911 (right) and Gillig Advantage/CNG 264
After a tease on the Oren’s Transit Page Facebook page a few weeks ago, I have finally made it through my photo queue to add a slew of photos from all over the US to the website this morning.  Highlighting this update is the newest section of the website from Richmond, Virginia.  Richmond has a 175 unit bus fleet and is building a new bus rapid transit line and you can now see some of their current operations here on the website.  Richmond is also home to the Triple Crossing, the only known spot in North America where three Class I railroads cross each other at the same spot, and there is a photo on the Norfolk Southern page from that location.

If you wanted to travel by train from Richmond to other places featured on Oren’s Transit Page, Amtrak would be a great choice, and you can now see photos of the relatively recently restored Main Street Station in downtown Richmond on the Amtrak Stations page, as well as Amtrak’s Genesis P42 Locomotives serving the station.  New photos were also added to the Amtrak ACS-64 Locomotives and Acela Express pages.

Kawasaki 7140
Further along the Northeast Corridor, a number of Washington, DC area galleries got updates, too.  New photos of the DC Circulator, as well as WMATA’s now retired New Flyer C40LF buses were added to the respective galleries.  On the rail side of things in DC, there are new photos in the Rohr (1000 Series), Breda Rehab, and Kawasaki (7000 Series) galleries.  

Even further to the north, there are two new Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority bus photos in this update.  If you travel very far to the east, a single photo of an Israel Railways Bombardier trainset that was not included in the most recent update from Israel is now on the site.  

Despite my constantly telling myself there isn’t all that much in the photo queue, getting through it all always seems to take longer than I expect.  I have a number of interesting articles to profile on Oren’s Reading List, and also plan to share more commentary on some of my photos through the Viewfinder, including some of my favorite photos from this update.  In addition to adding new photos from a variety of sections, I also hope to have the New York section rebuilt sometime in the next 6 months.  But while you’re waiting on all the content to come, I do hope you enjoy the new content that was just added or revisiting the content that I’ve posted over the past 16+ years.  

 

Bus Photo of the Month: April 2016

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Gillig Phantom 4111

Gillig Phantom 4111

Location: 1st Avenue at Marion Street, Seattle, WA
Operator of Vehicle:  King County Metro
Date of Photo: August 3, 2007

King County Metro, the primary transit operator in the Seattle area, has two notable features wtihin its bus fleet. It operates more electric trolley buses, such as the one photographed here, than any other city in the United States other than San Francisco. The trolleybuses, in addition to emitting no emissions, are also able to handle Seattle’s many steep hills more easily than traditionally powered coaches. Seattle also has the second largest articulated bus fleet and one of the largest diesel-electric hybrid bus fleets in the United States.

For more photos of the King County Metro bus fleet, please click here.