Posted on July 22, 2024 by admin — Leave a comment

Be part of the Conversation!

Bryan Larrabee,

President, TRANSIT MUSEUM SOCIETY

I was at an event in New Westminster and happened to meet David Keighron who is with the Marketing Faculty at Douglas College in New Westminster. They offer students a 4 year Marketing Degree that covers everything from marketing research, promotional strategy, marketing essentials to buyer behaviour. They offer practicums and work experience to students in their field of interest. I introduced myself to David as the President of the Transit Museum and he immediately suggested that we might have a common interest. We talked about how his 3^rd and 4^th year students might be able to help us develop a marketing strategy for our museum.

David does a series of half hour podcasts featuring businesses and other establishments that are looking for help in developing a marketing strategy. It may be a coffee shop hoping to establish an alternate brand different from Tim’s and Starbucks or it might be a tourism association trying to compete for the tourist trade against Vancouver or Whistler. They play the podcast in the classroom setting and challenge the students to use what they are learning and come up with ideas.

Since we are in the process of developing our own long term strategic plan, we thought that the Transit Museum (TMS) would be a good candidate for input from the students.

Some of our concerns were:

How can we distinguish our “brand” separate from TransLink and Coast Mountain Bus? Many people think that we are just a part of corporate transit in Vancouver.
How can we better use our Non-Profit Society status to raise funds?
Our Mobile Museum attends many community events every year and we get literally thousands of people viewing our displays. How can we take advantage of that to establish our own “brand”, recruit more volunteers and raise funds for our society?
How can we interest skilled volunteers like drivers, mechanics and trades people and keep them interested in the Museum?
How can we increase our capacity to allow for vehicle restorations or larger projects?

David introduced me to Alison Phung, their Marketing Podcast Coordinator and we set a date to record our podcast. David was interested in why anyone would want to become a member of TMS and what we had to offer. He also wanted to know what advantages there were to being a non-profit society. Before the podcast we talked a bit about the questions we both wanted to put forward for the interview.

I believe we are the 15^th podcast in the current series and I found David to be a very skilled moderator, keeping me on topic and asking a lot of open ended questions. For me it was a comfortable experience with something that I have never done before.

It will be interesting to see what the Marketing students come up with because they have a completely “outside” view of TMS. It might be a fresh perspective for us.

Douglas College has kindly allowed us to use the podcast so that our own members can hear it and come up with ideas and suggestions. I like this possibility because you probably have your own past experience with TMS and could bring a completely different perspective that the Marketing students won’t have.

Listen to TMS President Bryan Larrabee describing the aims of our Society and the challenges we face.

It’s only a half hour of your time so I hope you will listen to the podcast and give us your suggestions and ideas. You can start discussions or make comments below and you are welcome to contact me directly at president@transitmuseumsociety.org

Posted on October 23, 2023October 23, 2023 by admin — Leave a comment

4107’s transformation begins….

We embark on our Museum Bus project!

Bulletin #1 – October 22^nd, 2023

During the Summer, our mechanics inspected 4107. We drove it out to several events to see how it behaved itself on the road. The consensus was that it would be a good candidate for conversion to our second Mobile Museum bus.

These past two weekends, TMS volunteers began to remove the seats from the bus. Jason Sharpe, the project leader for the conversion was also instrumental in bypassing the coolant hoses from the onboard heaters. These have been troublesome, and prone to leaking. Since the coach will primarily be travelling to events in the summer, we decided to bypass the heaters rather than repairing them. (The driver’s heat will remain functional, however!)

(Below: TMS Volunteers Kyle Little (l) and Milan Streit (r) remove the seats from GM ‘Fishbowl’ 4107 in preparation for conversion to our Mobile Museum bus.)

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Posted on October 3, 2023October 16, 2023 by admin — 1 Comment

Thank you to our volunteers

Volunteer Appreciation BBQ

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Volunteers, left to right: Anthony Sherst, Angus McIntyre, Jason Sharpe, Leland Babic, Michael Taylor-Noonan, Bryan Larabee, Paul Waller, Jacquie Sherst, Chris Cassidy, Matthew Walker, Gary Davis, Glenda Cutinha, Jeff Veniot, Kyle Monda, Maxwell Chang, Rian Fatemi, Stephen Goodman, Rob Chew, Ewan Streit (with sunglasses and with pop in face), Ethan Enns, Martin Wu, Oscar Kapsa, Rachel Lee, Issac Tamm, Hubert Leong, Savannah Dewolf, Nathan Sheng, Sue Walker, Aden Wong, Francis He, Milan Streit, Theodore Cassidy(child), Eric Webster, Richard Dyer, Ron Hoskyn, Sue Bradley, & Fred Bradley

Not in picture were Lawrence Walker And Rhonda Larabee – they were taking the photo.

Sunday, 1^st October 2023 and volunteers of TMS were treated to a BBQ at our Langley facility. It was organized by Sue Walker, Lawrence Walker & Glenda Cutinha as a “thank-you” to those members who donated their time and volunteered at the events we attended this past summer. Thanks to Save-On Foods & Real Canadian Superstore for their generous donations of food for the BBQ. Though they wouldn’t admit to it, I’m sure that Sue, Lawrence and Glenda also contributed from their own pockets, too!

A group of people standing outsideDescription automatically generated A person sitting in front of a busDescription automatically generated A group of people sitting in chairs outsideDescription automatically generated This year, an added attraction was the ‘BBQ Shuttle” from Patterson SkyTrain Station bringing out many members to Langley. After eating, Operator Chris Cassidy provided much amusement by programing 9753’s electronic destination sign with audience requests. Jason travelled to Langley in his antique Mercury, Lawrence edited a video showcase of our events. Jeff Veniot told of some his exploits while driving trolleys. Chef Angus McIntyre (aided on “hot dog duty” by your blogger) provided the culinary skills, while Sue & Glenda kept everything running smoothly. A grand and enjoyable time was had by all!