Matthew Walker is continuing to work on his project to rewire the Hayes Teardrop. This Sunday he managed to remove interior panels from the front dome to expose wiring for the marker lights.

This photo ‘exposes’ a long lost feature of bus & coach construction: panel beating. General Motors and other automobile manufacturers were begining to introduce stamping dies in mass production. It was expensive and could only be justified when mass producing vehicles. But low volume production (yes, Hayes bus assembly was as low-production as you can get!) relied on manual techniques to shape metal.

The ‘panel beater’ was a highly skilled trade. Numerous techniques were used to bend metal to the required shape. Metal doesn’t naturally curve without be forced to change shape. So the craftsmen used leather ‘shot bags’ filled with sand or shot, hammering and mallets over wooden forms, and a device called an ‘English Wheel’. This stretches and smooths sheet metal between a flat upper wheel and a domed lower wheel, allowing the craftsperson to gradually form double‑curvature shapes like fenders and body panels.

The term ‘panel beater’ has now but all disppeared from the vehicle vernacular, replaced by bodyman or person. Panels are stamped, or many times replaced by fibreglass and straight box like structures that need very little bending.

Once again, the city of Burnaby hosted “StreetFest on Central” to celebrate Canada Day.  There were live concerts, food trucks, dance performances and other attractions including our mobile museum, GM #730.

This year there were new exhibits onboard, including a lookback at Expo ’86 – it was forty years ago that BC welcomed the world to its world exposition. Over 3500 guests passed through our vehicle.

Shawn Benner drove the coach to the event with Evan Russell driving it back to Langley. A big “thank you” to them and our hosts: Milan Streit, Steve Goodman, Oscar Kapsa, Michael Penco,   Aden Wong, Matthew Walker, Rob Chew, Aurora Rose, Rian Fatemi, Hubert Leong, Max Chang, David Tan, Isaac Tam and Martin Wu.  

(Photos courtesy of Martin Wu, Rob Chew, & Matthew Walker.)

Low Floor – Nothing New!

You would be forgiven for thinking that a low-floor transit vehicle is a recent invention – it was in 1992 that the first New Flyer D40LFs were delivered to the New York/New Jersey Port Authority. (The vehicle had been offered in 1991 after three years of development.)

But no! In 1913, BC Electric took delivery of Car #500 – a low floor streetcar.

Again, New York was a pioneer in the introduction of an accessible easy-to-board transit vehicle. Typical streetcars required passengers to step up to a floor over two feet above ground. The reason for this was quite simple and applied equally to buses produced before the D40LF: Virtually all mechanical and electrical components were below the floor. Streetcar operators believed that a low floor car would speed up boarding and alighting times and be safer for the public.

The “stepless” streetcar featured a floor just 10 inches above the ground. Two New York Railways’ engineers drew up the design. Frank Hedley was the General Manager, and JS Doyle the Superintendent of Car Equipment. The Hedley-Doyle streetcar featured a flat sloping floor. The electrical and mechanical equipment was redesigned and repositioned – resistors and compressor were moved into the motorman’s cab. The prototype was introduced in Manhattan in 1912. It appears to have been a success since more such streetcars were ordered from the car’s builder, J.G. Brill. The BC Electric Railway ordered one and numbered it 500. It was delivered in 1913.

Photos: Matthews, James Skitt, Major (1878-1970) – https://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/trial-run-of-first-step-less-car-in-british-columbia, Public Domain

There is a report that the trial lasted only two days before being abandoned. What went wrong?

Probably it was found to be incompatible with Vancouver’s trackwork – especially on hill sections where the 10” floor clearance would present problems. Too, the trucks used would have been problematic on some tight curves. As can be seen from the interior drawing and photos, the flat floor extended to the ends of the car where there was a raised motorman’s cab. Much like a D40LF, this raised area allowed mechanical components -in this case the truck – to be placed under it. But in the streetcar, a portion of the truck had to be located under the passenger compartment. To build-in adequate clearance, a semi circular bench seat covered the truck wheels nearest the centre of the car. But even this was insufficient, and the designers resorted to the use of the “maximum-traction” truck.

A normal truck has two axles, with wheels of equal diameter. The “maximum-traction” truck has one axle equipped with small pony wheels. The theory is that the weight of the streetcar is shifted to the larger diameter wheels, giving better traction. This design was a passing phase, the cars often derailed because the pony wheels carried very little weight.

New York Railways persevered with the design, even modifying it to a double-deck design. But by-and-large, those street railways that purchased the “stepless” streetcars (including two in Australia!) disposed of them within ten years or so.

Hedley-Doyle low-floor car – interior layout. Courtesy Perth Electric Tramway Society [Inc.] & David Brown

Interior from Brill Magazine, VI, 1912

New York City, Brill “Hedley-Doyle car” # 6000 — Photo — Urban Electric Transit

Now that most of the mechanical work has been completed, attention shifts to the electrical rewiring. Bob & Lawrence are helping Matthew rewire the bus, changing from positive to negative ground in the process.

Sunday, the trio tackled the interior wiring, hidden behind panels secured by screws with decades of old paint obscuring the slots. Slow work!

Sean, Jason and Richard meanwhile fabricated a new metal floor panel for 730. It appears that decades of water penetration (probably from the driver’s shoe soles!) had rusted out the metal floor besides the pedals.

Delta held its inaugural Museum Fest June 6th to encourage people of all ages to engage with the city’s museums.

We, at the Transit Museum Society brought our vintage 1957 GM Oldlook bus for visitors to explore. There were also demonstrations of blacksmithing, quilting as well as child-friendly activites such as bridge building, ice-cream making, and a paper plane flying contest.

“The event is aimed at a family audience to encourage new people to visit the Discovery Centre and other museums and galleries within the Delta area. Activities will be themed around the history of Delta as well as its present culture.”

City of Delta

Special thanks to driver Evan Russell (who also hosted) and our hosts Aurora Powell, Oscar Kapsa,  Michael Penco, Matthew Walker and Bryan Larrabee.

not the Transit Museum Society (not yet!) but SkyTrain and Expo ’86.

We are displaying some artefacts and memorabilia from those two events in our museum bus, 730. Milan Streit has searched through our library holdings and selected some items from that memorable year. They are temporarily on display along with some new exhibits: our intention is to have a working Grant Money Meter Farebox and a roller-style destination blind on show for the summer season. Later, in time for the PNE, we hope to have the first of our interactive kiosks up and running.

Our 2026 entry, TDH4519 #4612, was dedicated to a long-time TMS member and supporter no longer with us. Rhonda Larrabee, wife of our President Bryan Larrabee passed in April. 4612 bore her name, travelling the 2 km parade route in New Westminster — the city that sits partly on the unceded territory of the Qayqayt First Nation. The band occupied a village on what is now Front Street. Rhonda was the Chief of the Qayqayt.

The coach was driven by Anthony Sherst, and Jackie Sherst, Sue, Matthew and Lawrence Walker walked with Bryan and daughter Sharel Wright and husband Franklyn ahead of the bus. Grandson Dakota Ferguson Hall also attended. (Photos, Bryan Larrabee, Sue Walker)

Once again, our 1964 TDH4519 “New Look” transit bus drove in the 2026 Cloverdale Parade. It was in last year’s parade, too. The big difference this year? No rain! Our coach, one of 65 entries, was driven by Anthony Sherst. Lawrence, Sue and Matthew Walker and Jackie Sherst were onboard to greet the spectators line up along the route. (Photos Sue & Matthew Walker)

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We are all familar with “The Buzzer”, whether in its original printed format or its online incarnation. But when is the Buzzer, not a Buzzer? When it was published by Pacific Stage Lines. Then it was called the “Tally-Ho!” The brochure employed the same design and layout as the Buzzer, but was aimed at patrons travelling by the intercity subsidiary of BC Electric.  It appears the publication was introduced in 1951. But this was not the first “Tally Ho!”. The PSL employee newsletter was also named “Tally-Ho!”  and seems to have pre-dated the rider brochure by several years. It is unclear whether the two publications co-existed.  (Just a quick clarification for our younger TMS members: Tally‑ho began as a French hunting cry (taïaut) and was used in English fox‑hunting in the 1770s. It evolved into a name for fast stagecoaches in the early 1800s.)

I discovered this information from a binder of personal memorabilia loaned to us by TMS member Suzanne Plummer. It was complied by her father Norm Smith who worked as a mechanic for BC Electric and BC Hydro. It contained one example of each, the employee newsletter being dated 1941, and the rider brochure as Vol. 1 of 1950. Thank you Suzanne!

 

and TMS volunteers keep working!

Just a few shots to show what we have been doing at our Langley facility. Jason (helped by Anthony) continues to frame out the interior of P4107, our new ‘rolling musuem’. Matthew is working on rewiring the Hayes, including the conversion from a positive to negative ground system. (Early vehicles genrally used positive ground wiring based on a number of benefits that were the result of incomplete knowledge of electrical systems, especialy when wiring was cloth covered.) Lawrence, Ike and Ewan have been cleaning the vehicle’s various components and regreasing them.