tomsbuspage

For comparison, here are two photos of 0939 I took when she was nearly brand new, taken at the Square One terminal on 30 January 2010:

I must make two corrections to what I wrote above. The first is that whether the number was random or the fleet number depended on the software installed on the transfer machine as older machines continued to print the random number at least as late as 2008. I have a transfer from my last OC Fishbowl ride in December 2006, and the number was random even though the bus I rode was 8239--I have a photo of the bus on my website. It looks as if the non-upgraded machines were on buses that were due to be retired soon, as the fleet number transferes all appeared to be from newer buses. The second correction is that there was no number on any of the transfers I have from between late 2011 and mid-2012. There seemed to be some kind of software upgrade at the time and the number got left off, meaning that there was no way to trace the transfer back to its bus. The error must have been noticed and corrected with the summer schedule change as it had reappeared by July.

There have been four-digit numbers somewhere on the transfers since OC Transpo switched to printed transfers in 1999, although I have a test transfer from 1997 that does not appear to have the number--it's hard to tell because the printing has faded on the thermal paper over the last two decades. At first, the number appeared to be random, though I'm certain that OC had some kind of system to be able to trace the transfer back to the issuing bus, and transfers back then also had the route number and direction printed on them. In 2006, the number switched to the bus' fleet number, and it's been that way ever since.

Apparently, Ottawa ranks behind both Toronto and Montreal in terms of public transit (no subway in Ottawa--yet) and speed from downtown to the airport (need to drive on city streets for much on the distance rather than expressways), and ahead of Toronto but behind Montreal for road rage. However, criteria such as fuel prices, road injuries and seem to be ranked at a national level, as Montreal's fuel prices in the survey are the same as Calgary's (yeah right), even though the "petrol price score was based on information from local stations". One must remember what Mark Twain claimed British PM Benjamin Disraeli once said (although there is no evidence Disraeli actually said it): "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

What about us brain-dead slobs?

I don't know a thing about the interior of the ex-demo Orion/Ikarus bus, but externally I found that it resembled a Crown/Ikarus bus more that its OC Transpo/TTC siblings (larger headlamps, smaller wheel wells, taillights arranged horizontally above the back bumper, etc.).

AFAIK, the only other Orion III/Ikarus 286 bus with the four-pane rear doors was the demo that would become St. Catharines Transit 8441. It eventually made its way to Ottawa as a parts donor, as I saw it in the "Jurassic Park" dead lot with a number of other junked Ikarus artics years ago. https://images52.fotki.com/v1639/photos/9/2227239/11413293/windsorIkarusdemo-vi.jpg https://images51.fotki.com/v1638/photos/9/2227239/11280747/stcatharines8441f_JPG-vi.jpg

106.1 CHEZ here in Ottawa is playing non-stop Tragically Hip all day today. (Listen Live) EDIT: The staff at CHEZ have decided to continue the Tragically Hip marathon until Monday morning, and have temporarily renamed the station "GORD FM".

John Dunsworth, beloved actor best known as Mr. Lahey on Trailer Park Boys, has died at age 71

That was for heating and ventilation, as OC's LFS buses did not have A/C. Contemporary LFS buses with A/C, such as HSR 9704, had a much larger housing:

Looks as if the mirrors on 9726 had been replaced by December 2002:

Up for auction on eBay is this slide of 6684 parked at the St. Laurent garage in 1973 (the listing says 1974 but the blue licence plate and OTC bus stop across the road for route 52, 53 and 85 indicate that the photo was taken a year earlier). Unusually, this bus has the two-pane exit doors of later Fishbowls, rather than the four-pane doors the OTC normally ordered on their buses in the 1960s. The bus stop is still there at the corner of St. Laurent Blvd. and Shore Street, though now serving routes 40 and 106, but the street entrance to the OC Transpo garage in the background was removed some time in the 1990s. This slide is up for auction by "Vintage-Vault75" and isbeing used for educational purposes only.

I've done a little research and have dated the Mackenzie King bus stop to around 1986. Route 86 had recently been renumbered from route 71, and route 88 would become route 29 by 1987:

Here is a link to the history of route 27 Downtown bus from the Transit Toronto website, along with a copy of the timetable from February 1984. On 23 November 1989, route 27 was merged with the 97 Yonge bus, effectively becoming route 97B.

Yes, I wanted to save what I had typed before trying to add links and photos to my post. My computer has a bad habit of refreshing the page every time I change tabs, and sometimes it erases what I occasionally spend quite some time writing out.