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2001 D40LF retirement


Blake M

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The 7700s are garbage!

They are extremely underpowered, the turning radius on these things are horrible. They literally rattle my brain and are extremely fatiguing to drive. 

Heaters suck in the winter and stays on during the summer! Suspension on these things seem to fail more often than any other bus.

Some of the early 7800s are in the same boat…

The 7900s are my favourite. Lots of power, great heat a nice solid bus… dream to drive. 
 

Don’t ask me about the Excelsior’s or the Nova’s… I haven’t had the chance to drive those buses because they are out of a garage that I prefer not to work out of. 

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In my opinion, I think they’re ok buses, there are certainly worse ones (7921-7962) and I think the 7700’s might be at least better than those. I do have to agree that the 7800’s and 7900’s are more of my boat. They work more smoothly, and seem to break down less. But probably because the 7700’s are pretty beat. 

 

Favourite one 7778 ?

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37 minutes ago, Souluxy said:

In my opinion, I think they’re ok buses, there are certainly worse ones (7921-7962) and I think the 7700’s might be at least better than those. I do have to agree that the 7800’s and 7900’s are more of my boat. They work more smoothly, and seem to break down less. But probably because the 7700’s are pretty beat. 

 

Favourite one 7778 ?

The 7700’s have been run 7 days a week for 17 years of their life, specifically when VP was the 24 hour garage. They have 1.5 times the km’s that their counterparts 7818-7920 have as those units ran primarily Monday to Friday 06:00-19:00 work through their life with some exceptions. 
 

7921-7962 also met the school of hard knocks in terms of usage at VP, however they have received a decent amount of work lately.

If the budget goes through as proposed we could see everything from 7818-8015 retired over the next 4 years. 

 

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3 hours ago, JK-from-YYC said:

To be fair, from what I’ve heard about and observed on several 01’s, many units haven’t got a lot of power and have acquired a rather unhealthy engine note. I can’t really comment any further than that because I don’t work for CT and don’t have exact stats about their reliability, but I will say the 7600’s did not need their engines rebuilt when they were only 6 years old…

Eh, I’ll always be a stickler for old things. In reality, the 78’s and 79’s are indeed actually better buses, but I feel like the 2001’s hold small bits and bobs of (at least to myself) history in them.

First non Detroit Diesel buses (although we all know what happened to the ISC’s…), first LED Dest units (although the Axions truly do suck…), and some of the first 3 stripe buses to get the new livery (although most of the decals are still lopsided to this day…) okay, maybe they are misfits…

Nowadays, they rattle and rumble, but I’ll still remember being a small kid in the 2000’s waiting for the route 1 and having a beast of a 7700 pull up. Good times. 

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26 minutes ago, PartiallySD said:

Eh, I’ll always be a stickler for old things. In reality, the 78’s and 79’s are indeed actually better buses, but I feel like the 2001’s hold small bits and bobs of (at least to myself) history in them.

First non Detroit Diesel buses (although we all know what happened to the ISC’s…), first LED Dest units (although the Axions truly do suck…), and some of the first 3 stripe buses to get the new livery (although most of the decals are still lopsided to this day…) okay, maybe they are misfits…

Nowadays, they rattle and rumble, but I’ll still remember being a small kid in the 2000’s waiting for the route 1 and having a beast of a 7700 pull up. Good times. 

Agreed. The cosmetic inconsistencies with the refurbs much like the 2003/04 fleet, with some buses having different decals here and there, some mismatched interior features, etc, almost gives each bus a personality of its own kinda like the GM Fishbowl refurbs back in the day. Despite all that though I will have to say the 7700's were never really my favorite buses in Calgary and I won't be particularly sad to see them go.

As for the 7900s though, specifically the higher 7900s which I grew up riding more than any other fleet, that'll be the big one for me and will definitely be something I'll want to throw a farewell charter on when the time comes. I feel like they seriously dropped the ball on the 2005-2007 fleets.... IMO they could have easily gotten more than 20 years of life out of them had they followed through with the midlife refurbs on them and who knows if that would have saved some money over going for that massive order of 250+ electric buses. I digress though.

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12 hours ago, vicinity said:

The 7700’s have been run 7 days a week for 17 years of their life, specifically when VP was the 24 hour garage. They have 1.5 times the km’s that their counterparts 7818-7920 have as those units ran primarily Monday to Friday 06:00-19:00 work through their life with some exceptions. 
 

7921-7962 also met the school of hard knocks in terms of usage at VP, however they have received a decent amount of work lately.

If the budget goes through as proposed we could see everything from 7818-8015 retired over the next 4 years. 

 

Agreed! Those buses are definitely worn out but I do remember the 7700s when they’re almost new and they weren’t that great. 
 

I would really like to see Calgary Transit purchase electric buses like the ones that Transit is using. They have quite the set up out there to house those e-buses…state of the art garage!
 

But because Calgary is such an oil city it may be a very long time before we see electric buses (with the exception of the electric shuttle buses that are supposed to be coming but I don’t think Transit purchased the buses anyway?), and to my understanding I believe they’re only going to invest in CNG for all future bus purchases (correct me if I’m wrong people)

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While it's promising, from experience battery electric buses can be variable with their available range. Will be highly dependent on what charging technology Calgary Transit chooses to use. Being that Anderson Garage is predominately rush hour anyway, electric buses could be used for short runs. Control will need to be flexible to do bus swaps for when buses run out of battery if garage recharging is used.

 

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34 minutes ago, Yoho said:

While it's promising, from experience battery electric buses can be variable with their available range. Will be highly dependent on what charging technology Calgary Transit chooses to use. Being that Andrews Garage is predominately rush hour anyway, electric buses could be used for short runs. Control will need to be flexible to do bus swaps for when buses run out of battery if garage recharging is used.

Would be cool to see some overhead charging at ctrain stations and major bus terminals 

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Update for the missing-in-action 7700 situation for the new year, keep an eye out for:

7701 - last ran 10/12/2022
7722 - last ran 01/17/2023
7723 - last ran 10/18/2022, changed off
7729 - last ran 11/01/2022
7735 - last ran 12/06/2022, changed off
7737 - last ran 02/07/2023
7743 - last ran 10/05/2022
7747 - last ran 02/28/2023
7749 - last ran 11/22/2022
7759 - last ran 05/12/2022
7761 - last ran 10/19/2022
7764 - last ran 09/26/2022
7769 - last ran 02/14/2023
7778 - last ran 01/26/2022
7782 - last ran 11/22/2022

7787 - last ran 01/27/2023
7791 - last ran 12/12/2022
7792 - last ran 02/15/2023
7793 - last ran 03/02/2023
7795 - last ran 11/14/2022, changed off
7806 - last ran 01/31/2023

Also worth noting that On CT's online fleet roster, no 7700's are listed anymore. Of course that's not definitive, since several 2001's that weren't on the list back in September are still going strong, but it could mean that CT doesn't plan on keeping them around for too much longer. We'll just have to wait and see what happens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Edited by JK-from-YYC
7721/34 back, 7722/47/93 missing
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  • 2 weeks later...
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6 hours ago, BC_YYC said:

7705's cad kicked on at Spring Gardens around 10 AM this morning even though 7705 has been scrapped since July 2021. I wonder what bus now holds 7705's cad unit

Screenshot_20230215_155258_Chrome.jpg

Probably another bus that got its original cad replaced. Because I don't know if it has anything to do with what my first sentence says but when Stoney Transit Facility first opened in spring of 2019 one of the new compressed natural gas bus had a retired bus number 1726.s cad

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