Restored school bus donated to North Carolina museum

HIGH POINT, N.C. — The North Carolina Transportation Museum will add a school bus to its collection with the donation of a restored 1940 school bus from Thomas Built Buses.

The all-steel bus features a six-cylinder gasoline engine and has four long bench seats where children sat facing each other. The bus was manufactured just four years after the company — then called Perley A. Thomas Car Works — switched from production of streetcars to school buses.

Founded in 1916, the company changed its name to Thomas Built Buses in 1972. Perley A. Thomas, the company’s founder, was inducted into the North Carolina Transportation Hall of Fame in 2005.

The North Carolina Transportation Museum is located approximately 40 miles north of Charlotte, N.C., and features an authentic train depot, antique automobiles and a 37-bay roundhouse that houses locomotives, rail cars and other exhibits. For more information, visit the museum’s Website at www.nctrans.org.