It’s not every day a group of kids has a birthday party on a Calgary Transit bus, but that’s just what happened on Thursday. Alec Hamilton wanted to say goodbye to his favourite bus.
Hamilton and a group of his friends enjoyed cupcakes and balloons in the seats of Calgary Transit bus 7570 at the bus storage facility.
“I’ve just loved transit for so long,” Hamilton said Thursday. “It all started when I really started to like freight trains when I was two, and then I started to go into buses and CTrains.
“That just totally got me into Calgary Transit loving.”
Hamilton’s love of the city’s public transit network grew even more when he attended the City Hall School program, which sees students and teachers spend a week at city hall for a week of class.
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Instead of a school bus, Hamilton and the other students were taken back and forth on city buses — one of which was bus 7570.
“It was a 1995 New Flyer D40LF,” Hamilton said.
He explained he loves that particular bus because if its style, the window on the back and the green lighting on the front.
That bus is now being retired, and Hamilton is hoping that doesn’t mean it’s on an express route to a scrapyard.
“At least I’m not seeing it getting all broken up,” he said. “I would prefer it to be a parts bus or something to sort of help the other buses and then we could see a bus going down my street one and see… there’s a part of 7570 on it.”
Hamilton’s love of Calgary Transit is long-standing. Last year, he held his birthday party on a CTrain and he’s even dressed up as a CTrain for Halloween.
Hamilton said possible backups for his favourite bus would be 7558 (another 1995 New Flyer D40LF), or bus 7640, which is a 1996 New Flyer D40LF.