Vintage Ottawa-Gatineau Transit Photos & Discussion

[Mark Walton]

On 7/26/2017 at 1:03 PM, tomsbuspage said:

7930 also had a ground-level tailpipe and two flat white plates next to the rear window similar to the BC Transit hillclimbers, at least back in the 1990s.  I thought it looked neat and a little like the rear window of a TDH-5301.

IIRC 7930 was retrofitted with a CNG engine for a few years, but that wasn't a success; it was later restored to 6V71.

[tomsbuspage]

15 hours ago, Mark Walton said:

IIRC 7930 was retrofitted with a CNG engine for a few years, but that wasn't a success; it was later restored to 6V71.

Actually, fifteen 1979 buses were converted to propane in 1984 as part of a federal-provincial study on alternative fuels.  I've mentioned the propane Fishbowls a few times in this thread, and @MCIBUS posted some photos he took of them at the time:

On December 23, 2015 at 4:36 PM, MCIBUS said:

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

I remember seeing a old photo of 9308 IIRC on what looks to be Mackenzie Bridge station. It still had the Pylon sign, but I think it was taken in 2000-2002, because there were photos of Orion VIs and I think even D60LFs if I remember correctly at the same station in the same era. Does anybody know when the first Classic got Balios signs, or when the last one got them?

I also saw another photo of 9247 still in the stripe livery with the Luminator signs on it. I'm guessing this was probably in the late 90s or REALLY early 2000s, probably 2000, maybe even 2001 at the latest. When did these get Luminators? Also, when were they all repainted? Something tells me they all got repainted around the late 1999-2002 era.

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

I was reading somewhere that OC decided to keep A/C on some '91 Classics, specifically the ex-Grey Line ones. Is this really true?

[tomsbuspage]

10 minutes ago, OCTranspo/STO Fan said:

I was reading somewhere that OC decided to keep A/C on some '91 Classics, specifically the ex-Grey Line ones. Is this really true?

Only while OC Transpo still had the Gray Line contract, and then only when the buses were in sightseeing service.  Once the Gray Line-OC deal was over, the A/C was disconnected in those 1991 Classics as well.

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

3 minutes ago, tomsbuspage said:

Only while OC Transpo still had the Gray Line contract, and then only when the buses were in sightseeing service.  Once the Gray Line-OC deal was over, the A/C was disconnected in those 1991 Classics as well.

When did the deal end? When did they get repainted?

[tomsbuspage]

25 minutes ago, OCTranspo/STO Fan said:

When did the deal end? When did they get repainted?

The deal ended in the late 1990s and the buses were repainted around 2007, some back into the red-stripe scheme and some into the maple-leaf livery.

I remember the cost cutting at OC Transpo when the Mike Harris government cut funding to transit agencies across Ontario, and OC was trying to save money anywhere they could, including purchasing used buses instead of new ones, retaining older buses long past their best-before dates, reducing service, and eliminating any non-essential maintenance, which included air conditioning.  It affected other cities as well as Ottawa, as Brockville and Cobourg switched from Orion buses to cutaways, and Pembroke cancelled its bus service entirely due to insufficient funding from the province.

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

34 minutes ago, tomsbuspage said:

The deal ended in the late 1990s and the buses were repainted around 2007, some back into the red-stripe scheme and some into the maple-leaf livery.

I remember the cost cutting at OC Transpo when the Mike Harris government cut funding to transit agencies across Ontario, and OC was trying to save money anywhere they could, including purchasing used buses instead of new ones, retaining older buses long past their best-before dates, reducing service, and eliminating any non-essential maintenance, which included air conditioning.  It affected other cities as well as Ottawa, as Brockville and Cobourg switched from Orion buses to cutaways, and Pembroke cancelled its bus service entirely due to insufficient funding from the province.

When they did paint them back, they forgot to put the diagonal stripe at the back of the bus, except for 9113. Another question: Why did they only paint some in the leaf?

On another note, I saw your photo of 9111 all the way back in 2001 in the leaf with a rack. Was that the only classic like that at the time?

[tomsbuspage]

4 minutes ago, OCTranspo/STO Fan said:

When they did paint them back, they forgot to put the diagonal stripe at the back of the bus, except for 9113.

According to the wiki, 9111, 9112, 9117, 9118, and 9119 were painted into the maple-leaf livery, which means that only 9114, 9115, and 9116 were missing the diagonal stripe.  Given that the buses were only a few years from retirement, I don't think that OC were too concerned about how complete the paint jobs were.

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

10 minutes ago, tomsbuspage said:

According to the wiki, 9111, 9112, 9117, 9118, and 9119 were painted into the maple-leaf livery, which means that only 9114, 9115, and 9116 were missing the diagonal stripe.  Given that the buses were only a few years from retirement, I don't think that OC were too concerned about how complete the paint jobs were.

So that explains the classics with the completely red front...

I also recently looked over another topic on this board and saw that you posted a picture of 9054 (in the stripe) in the crash in 2003. How many D40s in the stripe were left by then?

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

40 minutes ago, tomsbuspage said:

According to the wiki, 9111, 9112, 9117, 9118, and 9119 were painted into the maple-leaf livery, which means that only 9114, 9115, and 9116 were missing the diagonal stripe.  Given that the buses were only a few years from retirement, I don't think that OC were too concerned about how complete the paint jobs were.

You missed 9110. 9103 had a stripe livery that was identical to the fishbowl livery, i.e. just a straight line going down the length of the bus, until the diagonal stripe. Plus, it had a completely red front. Wonder how that happened!

[tomsbuspage]

23 hours ago, OCTranspo/STO Fan said:

I also recently looked over another topic on this board and saw that you posted a picture of 9054 (in the stripe) in the crash in 2003. How many D40s in the stripe were left by then?

That is information I do not have, as 2003 is fourteen years ago.  Back then, there were no smartphones and I was still using a film camera.  Heck, I didn't even have a cell phone in 2003, and I was not making notes with pen and paper of every bus I saw in service.  If I noticed something was significantly different about a bus, such as a new paint scheme or major refurb, I would try to get a photo of the bus.  Please note the word "significantly".  Now, if you want to know which bus models ran in 1980 or the history of route 84-->184-->144-->84-->C84-->114-->40, I'm your guy.  However, I have no information about for minor paint details or exactly what refurbishments were done to which buses and when.  For that info, you'll need to look elsewhere.

[8792]

On 8/3/2017 at 6:46 PM, tomsbuspage said:

Actually, fifteen 1979 buses were converted to propane in 1984 as part of a federal-provincial study on alternative fuels.  I've mentioned the propane Fishbowls a few times in this thread, and @MCIBUS posted some photos he took of them at the time:

I remember the "Propane" stickers on those 79s. Does anyone have a recording of how those propane engines sounded or can describe what they were like?

[tomsbuspage]

2 hours ago, 8792 said:

I remember the "Propane" stickers on those 79s. Does anyone have a recording of how those propane engines sounded or can describe what they were like?

I don't have any sound recordings for the propane Fishbowls--I was just a kid in the mid-1980s--but to me they sounded most like the Cummins engines used on the NFI Invero buses.  After the propane trial was over, the Screaming Jimmies were reinstalled and the buses sounded just like any other late-1970s Fishbowls.

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

I looked in the old CPTDB website, and apparently, 7801 was the last ever fishbowl to be in the silverside livery, in 2005! It also never got rebuilt, or painted, according to one poster on there.

[tomsbuspage]

Today's TBT post on OC Transpo's Twitter feed is a Sept. 1979 timetable from peak period route 54, which ran from Billings Bridge to Lincoln Fields via Heron, Baseline, Clyde, Maitland and Carling.  Digging through my old maps, I first saw the route on my January 1978 map (I don't have a 1977 OC Transpo map, so I do not know exactly when the route began, but it wasn't there in 1976), and it appears to have been a peak-period supplement to route 53, a carryover from the OTC era which would be merged with what would become route 111 in 1982.  It was rerouted from Billings Bridge to Herongate in 1982 and was split into routes 114 (via Woodward and Laperrière) and 116 (via Maitland and Clyde) when the Transitway was opened in 1983.  Route 116 would end up being cancelled in 1987, but route 114 remained in service until it was cancelled during a round of severe service cuts in 2004.  The route did not change much in the meantime, except that the western end of the route was cut back to Carlingwood in 1988, and extended to Lincoln Fields in 1997.

Sept. 1979 timetable, route from c. 1978 to c. 1982:

Transitway-related route change, Dec. 1983:

Route from 1988 to 1997:

Route from 1997 to 2004:

Last route map, April 2004:

Notice of route cancellation, June 2004:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040621232519/http://www.octranspo.com:80/mapscheds/Service_Changes/Summer_SC_menue.htm

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

Found a picture of 8553 in the early 90's in the Transitway from OC Transpo on Twitter that was posted last year.

The bus seems to have what looks to be some kind of black bar on the front. Was this for any purpose? Also, the red stripe on the front is messed up because of it. 

[8792]

The black bar with fluorescent tape was a grip bar. Back in the day, few drivers enforced the behind the yellow (or white) line. I held on tightly to that bar many a time on overstuffed (often high school specials) buses.

@tomsbuspage - the old 114 never made any sense to me. Why did it stop 2 blocks short of the Herongate Mall? Quite frankly, I never understood, why OC didn't lengthen the route by another 7-8 minutes up to Walkley and along St. Laurent to terminate at Elmvale. Doing so would have vastly increased ridership on the route.

It was good for the St. Pat's and Ridgemont kids, but other than that, it was a lightly travelled route.

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

5 minutes ago, 8792 said:

The black bar with fluorescent tape was a grip bar. Back in the day, few drivers enforced the behind the yellow (or white) line. I held on tightly to that bar many a time on overstuffed (often high school specials) buses.

Thanks, but I actually meant the black thing right above the fleet number. You can see that the red stripe livery is kind of messed up on the front. Was this some weird paint thing, or did it actually have a purpose?

[8792]

Just now, OCTranspo/STO Fan said:

Thanks, but I actually meant the black thing right above the fleet number. You can see that the red stripe livery is kind of messed up on the front. Was this some weird paint thing, or did it actually have a purpose?

Good question. I have no clue about that I'm afraid.

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

On 2017-09-08 at 11:57 AM, 8792 said:

Good question. I have no clue about that I'm afraid.

That's fine. I'm guessing it's some kind of weird paint defect on the front. I can see that there is some beige thing right beside the black part, which leads me to think that is a paint defect. 9326 actually had the same  beige color, but instead of getting it on a little part, it was literally beige on the whole bottom front half of the bus! That's why it got a red front. Is it me, or did OC's 93 Classics rust more than the other Classics?

Photo by Nick Hauser.

[Guest]

On 9/7/2016 at 7:19 PM, MCIBUS said:

It was 8779 GM Classic Envorbus 

I actually have T-Shirt from the individual who painted the bus.

 

If you go to the OC Transpo's Bus Fan Club Polls Group in the Database section you'll see a list of AD/Wrap buses. Not all are there but some of earlier ones are

https://ca.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/octransposbusfanclubpolls/database/3/edit

 

 

I might have photo I'll check?

 

I think this is it:

 

[Oc4526]

Found this on Lost Ottawa.
 

 

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

21 hours ago, ONQCBusFan said:

I think this is it: https://www.flickr.com/photos/janboic/22304401204/in/album-72157624829201290/

I heard only the 877x buses were painted like that. Didn't the whole 87xx series get a Visibus paint job?

[OC Transpo/STO Fan]

Found this picture on Twitter, posted by OC Transpo.

According to the description, the last Ikarus was retired January 31, 2003. It died because of a broken water pump while in service. It then got towed to Jurassic Park. I assume 8627 was the last unit in service.