Red Jammers
Vintage Glacier National Park tour buses since 1936.
Since 1936, Glacier National Park has used vintage White Motor Company/Bender Body Company Model 706 buses, known as Red Jammers. The buses are called reds for their livery, painted to match the color of ripe mountain ash berries. Drivers are called jammers because of the sound the unsynchronized transmissions made when shifting gears on the steep roads; even double-clutching could not eliminate all meshing clatter, permanently eliminated in a 1989 retrofit that added automatic transmissions.
Quick Facts
- Manufacturer
- White Motor Company
- Also known as
- Whites
- Reds
- Yellows
- Jammers
- Production
- 1935–39
- Model years
- 1936–39
- Designer
- Alexis de Sakhnoffsky
- F.W. Black
- Frank Bender
- Engine
- 318 cu in (5,211 cc / 5.2 L), I6 White 16A
- Transmission
- manual (retrofitted to automatic)
- Wheelbase
- 176 in / 4.47 m
Facts from the source article.
Design
These distinctive buses, with their roll-back canvas tops, were designed by industrial stylist Alexis de Sakhnoffsky, while F.W. Black and Herman Bender handled the mechanical side. The White 16A engine and chassis had already seen use in city and intercity buses, and the canvas top was a feature carried over from the White Model 614 buses built for Yellowstone since 1931. Later models sometimes used the White Type 20 engine. Drivers had to double-clutch through four forward gears and one reverse, reaching about 45 mph at top speed. The mechanical brakes could overheat, so descending hills required engine braking by downshifting to third gear, which limited speed to 22 mph. A fourteen-passenger version operated in Yellowstone, which swapped the rearmost bench seat for luggage space. This version is identifiable by the missing rearmost curb-side door, replaced by rear gatewing doors, and metal bars on the rear doors and windows.
History
Before stagecoaches were swapped out in Glacier, they had been the main transport since 1913, but rough roads and alpine weather made them unreliable. Walter White pitched his company's vehicles to Louis Hill, who had drawn up the park's tourism blueprint in 1914. That summer, Roe Emery's Glacier Park Transportation Company tested ten 11-passenger buses, five 7-passenger touring cars, and two trucks from White Motor Company. Though the buses' capacity was exaggerated and they offered scant shelter, they replaced the stagecoaches later that season, and Hill locked in an exclusive deal with White. The 1914 buses got better bodies over time, and fresh models arrived between 1925 and 1927 as the originals wore out. When Going-to-the-Sun Road finished in 1933, the old fleet couldn't handle Logan Pass, so GPTC ordered the White Model 706. Thirty-five of these buses were built for Glacier and delivered from 1936 to 1939. As of 2020, the park still ran 33 of those originals. In 1956, the Volkswagen Type 2 Microbus was considered as a replacement but was turned down because it lacked air conditioning and had weak engines—Banff had been using them. One missing bus, no. 78, survives in original condition at park headquarters in West Glacier. Bus no. 100 was destroyed beyond repair in a fatal crash early on June 27, 1977.
Other parks
Approximately 500 White 706s were manufactured and operated in seven National Parks by 1939: Bryce Canyon, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion. In Glacier, the challenge of driving Going-to-the-Sun road maintained steady demand for bus tours, unlike other parks where private automobiles led to discontinuance of bus tours and sale of White 706 buses in the 1960s. Yellowstone, the largest operator with 98 buses, currently has eight original White 706s available for tours and keeps one in original condition. These eight were repurchased from the Skagway Street Car Company in 2001, which had acquired ex-Yellowstone buses from private collectors starting in 1987. They were restored in 2007 by TransGlobal, mirroring the 2000–02 restoration of the Red Jammers: bodies were placed on Ford E-450 chassis with a 5.4L V8 gas engine, heaters were fitted, and materials upgraded. In at least one instance, the original White inline-6 was replaced by a 300 in3 Ford inline-6; other restorations used original or contemporary White engines. Private owners include an operator restoring two ex-Yellowstone buses for Gettysburg National Battlefield tours. Ex-Yellowstone No. 433 has been used by the Historic Flight Foundation in Spokane, Washington since 2012 for group tours. Restored No. 427 is available for rent from American Movie Trucks after auction in 2016. Two ex-Yellowstone 706s restored by Jack Damratoski in the 1990s conduct tours in Napa Valley. Another, No. 386, was restored and sold to the Montage Hotel in Big Sky, Montana, for guest shuttles after its scheduled 2021 opening.
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