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Roseberry Revisited / Buses on the move

 

From Buses to Blooms

Member Jason Sharpe visited the site of our former home at Roseberry Avenue in Burnaby, last week. As you may know, our unit, #6, was part of a complex of two buildings owned by United Flower Growers.

United Flower Growers is a co-operative of 80 members engaged in the floriculture industry. Flowers and other floral products are supplied to retailers and wholesalers throughout BC, as far as Manitoba in Canada and California in the United States. Flowers are auctioned “Dutch-style” – that is the price starts high and is lowered until someone buys. The process is now computerized, available online, each transaction taking from two to five seconds.

UFG began in 1963. The auction is said to be the largest in North America. The former building housing Unit #6 was opened in 1986, part of a $5M complex. Below is Jason’s photograph of the beginnings of a new structure, believed to be more warehousing. (I’m not sure whether a new auction hall is being built – the number of ‘in-person’ auctions declined considerably during the pandemic, moving on-line.)

Meanwhile at our new facility in Langley, buses were again moved around, in preparation for a possible “trade” with our satellite storage. Fageol M852 may travel out to the Fraser Valley in exchange for 4107 or 3106. Both coaches need minor work performed on them. Lawrence Walker and Angus McIntyre gave the Fageol a spin around the Langley parking lot. (Above, Mathew Walker starts the engine while Lawrence makes some adjustments to it.)

On Tuesday, Brill T-44 trolleycoach travelled from satellite storage to TransLink’s VTC to be be prepped for a special event coming up in August. (Photo: Bryan Larrabee)

(Photos: Angus McIntyre)

Bryan Larrabee writes:

We had quite a day on Tuesday April 24th.

Mundies Towing was very accommodating as we made a change of plans the day before.  Sean, Lawrence, Milan and I met the Mundies truck at 8am at our Langley shop.  They loaded the Fageol and it was trailered out to our Fraser Valley storage where we all met at 10am.  Lawrence backed the Fageol off and parked it aside and then Fraser used his 4×4 tractor to tow #2040 carefully out of the barn, out the driveway to the road, pulling it backwards past the Mundies truck, lining it up then winching it onto the truck.  Sean and Milan helped the driver (John) measure the height and the load was okay.

After that was done, Lawrence backed the Fageol into place.  Lots of help by Sean and Milan spotting.

We then turned our attention to the Hillclimber #4107.  Fraser had it on a charger overnight for us and after a quick check of everything by Sean, we hit the starter and she wouldn’t start.  Lawrence and Sean decided to connect our booster pack and the spare battery we brought from Langley to give it maximum power.  After rechecking by Sean and Lawrence, Milan hit the rear starter switch and she started first try.  We got a brief bit of black smoke on start up, and white smoke for another 10 seconds and no smoke afterwards.

On the drive home, we stuck to the curb lane and easily followed the flow of traffic through Maple Ridge onto the Golden Ears Bridge into Langley.  The bus ran fine.  Brakes appeared to be okay and the steering was great.  We parked the bus face in.  All done by 2pm.

In the meantime, #2040 arrived safely at VTC met by James and Angus.  The plan is to have the trolley guys start looking at it asap and give us an assessment on it’s roadworthiness.

Quite a day and thanks to everyone that helped.

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A Quiet Sunday…

It was a quiet Sunday; Matthew and Lawrence tidied up a few of our destination blinds. Recently they had unearthed a vintage Winnipeg roll. It’s in very good condition. Angus has been in touch with his contacts at Manitoba Transit Heritage Association to see if they are interested. (Photo: Editor)

Trevor Batstone drove TDH4519 #4612 over to fuel up. Lawrence did a quick calculation of its diesel consumption: 7.9 miles per gallon or in today’s language 35 litres per 100 km. Which is impressive for a vehicle of its age. (Photo: Matthew Walker)

The TMS crew headed by Sue Walker (and TDH4512 #730) will be at David Lam Park in Vancouver for “The BIg Picnic” next Saturday, April 1st. The event runs from 10am till 4.30pm. Stop by and say hello!

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Do The “Shop Shuffle”

It’s an attempt to get our vehicles in better positions within our Langley shop to allow for easier exit when required for duty and to allow for inspection to diagnose vehicle condition.

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Description automatically generated with low confidence Step 1: Move everything outside. Luckily it’s a Sunday: the are very, very few other vehicles in our parking area.

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Step 2: Put everything back where we want it.

A picture containing text Description automatically generated It can be a tight squeeze. The coach has to be brought in at an angle… there is less than ten feet available to enable it to turn the 90 degrees so it may be backed in to the lefthand side parking spaces.

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Phase 1 completed: time for lunch!

While this may sound simple, it really isn’t. Few of our coaches have power steering. So this involves a “work-around”: two person steering, one in the driver’s seat, the other providing extra muscle. Then we have to consider those participants that are reluctant to start (or shouldn’t in an enclosed space!).

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Description automatically generated While doing the dance, opportunity was taken to inspect the business end of TDH4512 #730. Our maintenance staff have noticed some vibration back there, that over the years has caused some components to shake loose, or cause oil leaks. The consensus seems to be that it is occurring in the transmission. While not urgent, its something they’d like to fix in time.

Sean Keating lines up the ramp – but the 671 aboard #730 doesn’t provide enough “uumph” to reverse up. So driver Lawrence Walker has to perform some tricky two-foot driving to give the coach of a running start while being able to brake in time before overshooting the ramp.

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Jason Sharpe, Lawrence Walker, Sean Keating and Richard Dyer hunt for the cause of the vibration.

Meanwhile, taking advantage of the sunny weather, Jason Sharpe moved his “seat rehab” project outdoors.

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A pleasant Sunday…

Just a few odd-and-ends to report this week.


Sue Walker has been busy cleaning the seat covers on the cushions that Jason Sharpe removes from our D40LF.

Hubby Lawrence meanwhile has constructed a permanent solution to our problem of ventilation aboard #730 during the summer.

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On summer days, the interior is quite hot. To provide a cross-flow breeze, we generally open the emergency door. In the past we cordoned off the exit with a cone and fabric rope, Now we have a child’s gate. Lawrence modified it so that bolts extend from the gate into the body of #730, making a rigid and safe anchor.

Matthew is putting the finishing touches to a Grant Money Meter farebox to be gifted to Vancouver mayor, Ken Sims. Meanwhile, he is starting on restoring another farebox, but this one is slightly different to the ones we are familiar with.

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This one has a window to show the mechanism… the BC Hydro versions we have seen usually had a plate covering the aperture instead.

On March 10th, #4612 -driven by Trevor Batstone- visited Winston Churchill Secondary School. It was part of an end-of-term project by TMS Member Aden Wong.

During the couple of hours the coach was parked in front of the school, 155 students visited. Says Lawrence, who with Matthew, hosted: “We were well received and quite popular.”

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And, in closing, we’d like to mention Matthew’s YouTube playlist featuring our TMS buses. You can watch it at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8cGLI_p5qM&list=PLYKhZgSecot_UtYu1KHZeWo9hYNd9Q8s7

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Our New Board of Directors

At the TMS Annual General Meeting held in New Westminster, March 3rd, our new Board of Directors was elected. Pictured above, in this picture by Rhonda Larrabee, are (L to R) Jason Sharpe, Lawrence Walker, Michael Taylor-Noonan, Sue Walker, Bryan Larrabee, Milan Streit, Rob Chew and Angus McIntyre.

“I think this Board of Directors will do some good things and I’m proud to be a part of it.  For the first time in our history, we have elected a woman to the Board of Directors.  Special congratulations to Sue who has already made her mark on our organization and I know will help take us into the future.  

  

When I looked around the room last night (at the AGM) I saw a lot of young faces and cultural diversity and it gives me a real feeling of enthusiasm for the things that we can do together moving on.”

Bryan Larrabee, President

We have a number of “foreign” transit artefacts – this roll blind comes from Seattle.

Especially with such limited storage space as we have at Langley, we must sharply define our accession guidelines. Such items as this are being offered for sale. Here, Sue helps a customer inspect the item. Thankfully our parking lot was almost empty this day!

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A D40LF ‘re-branded’

Missing from our donated D40LF were any fleet name or other branding. BC Transit had removed these before we picked it up. The horizontal stripes along the bodywork remained, but there was space where the company logo had been on the nearside and front. Chris Cassidy stickhandled putting the TMS logo on the front dash. But the shape of the nearside space below the ‘belt line’ precluded doing the same there.

Our logo, designed by Mike Cui, included our name. Jason Sharpe had the idea of just using that text to fill the vacant space. He also that that we could use a reversed version of the logo on the rear panels, in the same fashion as West Vancouver Municipal Transit used a sailboat motif.

With help from myself and President Bryan Larrabee, we produced high quality drawings suitable for use as decals. In a strange twist we found that the hexadecimal ‘colour code’ of our blue TMS logo matched the blue of the existing stripe almost perfectly. According to the BC Transit graphic standards, it should have much darker. (Maybe the BC Transit colours were formalised after the stripe was applied, or the decal had darkened through exposure to the climate.)

When applying the rear decal, Jason noticed that it would be more attractive if the surplus black background was trimmed off – this he did with consummate care, and the results look fantastic.

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You’d be correct if you noticed the snow on the ground in these pictures. I took them on Tuesday, 2nd February at Cullen Diesel Power Ltd. on 192nd Street in Surrey. Bryan Larrabee drove #9753 there so they could perform a CVIP inspection and certification. While the bus was there, Cullen also examined the underside of the coach as part of our Preventive Maintenance program. We’re pleased to say we received good news on both!

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Our first fan-trip of 2023

Sights of South Delta

At 12 noon on Saturday, February 4th, coach #4612 departs on our first fan-trip of 2023. It won’t be its first outing. Trevor Batstone drove the 1964 GM TDH4519 “Fishbowl” in the Lunar Parade on January 22nd. Then it will  perform two private charters during this week, culminating with the fan-trip on Saturday.

This Sunday, 29th January our volunteers were busy putting the finishing touches to the bus. Matthew Walker has fitted a Grant Money-Meter farebox – bring some spare change to donate to the Museum and hear the musical tones once part of every bus ride in the sixties and early 1970s! (The musical fareboxes were introduced in 1960 –along with tokens rather than tickets — and were replaced by the simple ‘Duncan’ in 1973.)

The tour was programmed by Milan Streit with assistance from Andrew Joyce. We’re sure everyone onboard will enjoy the fan-trip. Hopefully this will be the first of many in 2023! (This fan-trip is now sold out!)

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Matthew Walker makes some last-minute adjustments to the farebox and affixes the licence plate.

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Chris and Jason give #4612 a wash-and-brush-up.

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Photos from the Past

Those of us over a certain age will no doubt remember listening to our vinyl records and how much clearer digital CDs were (for good or bad!). The same holds true for photographs. Today’s digital photographs are so much more detailed and able to be tweaked to correct minor problems. Yesterday’s photos just can’t compare – especially those taken with consumer-grade cameras. Colour prints from the seventies and eighties are notoriously unstable. Add cheap camera optics, small image size, poor contrast range and bad lighting to the mix, and one could be forgiven asking whether its worth preserving some of the photos.

The answer is “yes”. No matter how much below the quality we expect nowadays, there is often detail in the images themselves that can only add to our knowledge of transit history. So, I have started a project to scan these images that have been donated to our library through the years. I’m placing them in their own gallery on our website, so viewers know we are preserving them for their historical content more than their photographic merit. Sometimes, the historical content may not be evident at the moment: perhaps some future archivist will discover a nugget of valuable information contained in them!

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We all know of the celebrations of the 100th Anniversary of transit – but what about the 90th?

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The “Bus” sign was not a decal?

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#2601 was fitted with a Brown-Boveri chopper control. Compare the “hump” between it and #2605

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Of course, some are “borderline!”. Maybe it is not worth keeping.