Flyer E800 (or is that D800?) #2649 is visiting the Vancouver area from our Fraser Valley storage facility. It is in town for a private function, but you may see it driving around Metro Vancouver! Because of space constraints it has unfortunately been stored outside, but appears that apart from a good scrub, it is ready to go.
So some may have already guessed that this coach is ex BC Hydro 2649, a 1976 delivered E800. Sometimes the best ideas don’t quite work out — this was the case with the previous 2600s. Take a new bus shell and install electrical equipment from Calgary Brills purchased especially for the surgery. What went wrong? Well, the linkage between accelerator pedal and motor control resistances was originally mechanical in the Brills. By 1976 the technology had changed and these E800s were designed with a hybrid system featuring an air connection to the pedal. Apparently this introduced a delay into the system which caught ex-Brill operators by surprise and many found it hard to drive without excessive jerkiness.
There were fifty in service but BC Hydro was uneasy about potential passenger injuries. The first solution was to rebuild them with modern (1980s) ‘chopper’ controls. Indeed one (#2602) had already been rebuilt with Brown Boveri Canada controls. But for some reason this was rejected, and it was proposed to order an extra 49 sets of chopper controls from Westinghouse as an add-on to the next forthcoming order of E901A/902 trolleys. After investigation this was rejected an 49 extra complete trolleys ordered.
The E800s were withdrawn from service, but then a fortuitous event happened. It was discovered the rear overhang on the 1973 deliveries of Flyer D700s was causing ‘ground strikes’ on the hills of New Westminster. Speculation was that this was damaging the rear frame area of the coach. Indeed one bus was so badly damaged that the rear axle departed the bus while travelling on Kingsway. (This may be folklore or just embellished, but that is why one coach became the Expo ’86 InfoBus.)
So on one hand BC Transit had 49 buses with no propulsion, and on the other, it had an equivalent number of low mileage engines and transmissions with no bus. Ta-Da! Inspired idea #2 — marry the two. Which is what was done, producing the ‘Triesel’.
The ‘Triesels’ were successful in the minds of the top BC Transit executives, though less so in the minds of the Operators who had to drive them. Though they were slow as molasses, they served their purpose of transporting people at low cost for over 12 years. But there was one more twist of fate for two buses (2649 and 2645, renumbered 1109 and 1110) both of which had been donated to TMS.
The new E40LFR trolleys delivered in 2006/7 had a feature that retracted the poles when they sensed they had dewired (and hence there was a lack of electricity flowing through them.) Unfortunately this condition was mimicked when there was ice on the line. Soon on a cold winter’s morning there would be many trolleys stalled on Vancouver’s streets because their poles had retracted because of the sudden lack of current. Until new overhead trucks could be delivered, one stop gap measure was to remount the poles onto the two retired triesels and equip them with deicing equipment. The fluid flowed up the poles and combined with special ‘cutter’ trolley heads, they cleared the lines of ice.
When restored, TMS also renumbered it back to its original 2649, even though technically it only ever carried the number before conversion.