[Jon A.]

Oh wow, I had never heard of that sort of thing before. A lot of our old buses had the route number displayed in the rear window on a card in a special bracket, or used flip number cards, some had the bracket but lacked the route number altogether, and occasionally, if I recall correctly, some displayed the incorrect route number in the rear window. The buses that did have rollsigns, many drivers would just set them in between exposures while out of service, or just scroll to an exposure for a defunct route, rather than scrolling all the way to "out of service". 872 at least also had an exposure that read "next bus please". That particular bus apparently carried its original paint all the way to its retirement. It was very worn. One day, as the daylight was fading, 872 was approaching my stop. I didn't realize that it was a 1983 Classic until the driver turned on the rollsign's backlight and started to pull over. He said that he normally didn't pick up anyone there (it was so close to the end of the peak-hour route).

P.S. flash forward, exactly 100 fleet numbers to a 1995 Novabus Classic that I couldn't care less about. It's only noteworthy to me because I was on it the night after Halloween in 2006 when someone tossed a pumpkin into its path, which crashed through the windscreen. It has a split windscreen of course, said pumpkin went through the door side. Casing on rear view mirror was broken as well. Nobody hurt.