Columbia Nitecoach Highway Sleeper (1933-1936)
Buses running on combustion engines very quickly grew in popularity, displacing stagecoaches in large cities around the world. At this time the first buses that drove routes between urban centres made their appearance. In the 1930s, businessman Charles F. Wren’s company built 18 units of the Columbia Nitecoach Highway Sleeper, which represented the height of luxury at the time.
This bus could accommodate 25 passengers and offered service between Los Angeles and Chicago, with a stop in Salt Lake City, Utah. 10 of the 18 buses built were bought by the Pacific Greyhound company, a name that would quickly become ubiquitous in the domain of public transit.
Each of the bus’s five compartments had its own radio, toilet, air conditioner and hot water heater. There was even a separate changing room for women. Each unit cost about $20,000 to build at the time, but as the context of that time was the Great Depression, it’s not surprising that so few of them were built.
