DURBAN - Municipal buses have long been overtaken by taxis as a primary mode of transport for communities.
But, in their glory days, they were much more than that.
It is this rich history that 80-year-old John Fann has captured through his hand-crafted set of models. More than a century reflected, of how people moved in a developing city.
Fann is most likely short for “Fanatic” – because, like his forefathers, he too, is crazy about wheels.
The collection was inspired by historian and former eThekwini Transport employee Kevan Mardon,
who passed away in 2022.
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Fann – who took in excess of 14 000 bus trips during his school years, worked flat-out on the collection for four years, from midday to midnight, seven days a week.
The set of 80 vehicles is made mostly from cereal boxes, and reflects every generation from the first trams and electric buses, to contemporary diesel machines. But, surprisingly, Fann is yet to find a museum or suitable place to house his collection.
These models are possibly the only accurate and complete representation,
of a century of public transport in Durban – with almost all the original machines now, but a distant memory.
By: Dasen Thathiah