General WTF Moments

[Downsview 108]

Sweet! ^

[Wayside Observer]

21 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

An Electrodata counter

How about another Eldorado and a couple of HPs for good measure?

I need to swap the dead nixie with another in the Eldorado and see if the problem follows the tube or is the driver section for that position in the display and fix that.  The lower HP’s power supply appears to have developed a problem since the last time I used it.  

[Wayside Observer]

On September 6, 2019 at 3:24 PM, Downsview 108 said:

"Border Blasters" Yep, they talked about XER on that documentary. Wasn't Wolfman Jack a DJ there for a short time? It's crazy how the AM signal has deteriorated throughout the years. I wonder if it has to do with cell and wifi towers interfering with it. A lot of good the CN tower is doing. I can barely pick up AM 740 which is one of the last stations playing the old songs I like. I noticed how bad it got sometime around 1994. I used to listen to 1050 CHUM a lot but by that time around 5:30PM the signal would get really bad and fade in and out with this weird AM oscillation going on in the background. It wouldn't clear up until about 1 or 2AM. I dunno if that had to do with increasing interference or maybe they had to cut back and put their transmitter into low power. With a company as big as CHUM media was you'd think they could afford to blast it full power. I remember AM1350 before they moved to 1580 used to go into low power around 5PM and just die off until the next morning.

Cell and wifi are so far away from the AM band in the RF spectrum they won't do much to it unless you're phone's sitting right next to your radio and directly interfering with it's operation and making that characteristic staccato of noise in the speaker.  The CN tower's neither here nor there for AM because as far as broadcast goes, it's strictly FM and TV.  AM transmitter sites are typically one or more towers that are mast radiators.  The whole tower is made out of metal, stands above the ground on an insulator, and is energized with RF.  The four towers of CFRB 1010's transmitter plant by Clarkson station's a good example.  Those four towers form a phased array that shapes and steers the RF being radiated to avoid interference with other stations on the same frequency and/or meet coverage footprint requirements. Eg. CFRB 1010's pattern's arranged to try to avoid messing with 1010 WINS in New York.  1050 CHUM's another phased array along the edge of Lake Ontario that's designed to throw RF across the lake towards Toronto.  Sometimes the terms of license specify pattern changes and nighttime power reductions so it's not necessarily the big media companies being cheap about the power bill.  The other problem is, depending on the radiation pattern and your location in it, you could be in a null where the signal strength is seriously reduced and that'll make reception a chore even if you are geographically nearby.  CBC had been complaining that 740 suffered from bad reception in downtown Toronto for years and then they got to move to 99.1 on FM.  That's a 50 KW omnidirectional, no power reduction at night clear channel frequency off a transmitter near the Toronto Premium Outlets mall.  Zoomer buys transmission service from CBC and they ran into the same reception complaints in the city and eventually got an FM repeater.  The AM oscillation you're hearing is probably 10 kHz heterodyne whine and interference from carrier and one of the sidebands from an adjacent station to the one you're listening to.

On September 6, 2019 at 3:24 PM, Downsview 108 said:

Thanks for the heads up. I thought it was a different kind of nixie tube. LOL. I never seen one in real life unfortunately. I really had my eye on this one actually: https://www.amazon.ca/Makenology-Nixie-Tube-Clock-Boulder/dp/B07FHWB4N9/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=nixie+clock&qid=1567796494&s=gateway&sr=8-4

Yes, those are the real thing.  Probably Russian nixies from the looks of them which would be typical for clocks these days.  Notice how the 5 is an upside down 2 in the picture in the advertisement?  That's usually a good indication because the Soviet manufacturers repurposed the 2 form and turned it upside down instead of making a proper form for the number 5.

On September 6, 2019 at 3:24 PM, Downsview 108 said:

Don't get me started about the LEDs now. The worst culprit are today's computer parts. It seems I can't buy a simple motherboard or CPU fan that doesn't put on a rave. I just wanted a nice low profile fan for my shoebox case and this is what I find: https://www.amazon.ca/Cooler-Master-MAM-G1CN-924PC-R1-MasterAir-Technology/dp/B079K11GNB/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=low+profile+cpu+fan&qid=1567796911&s=gateway&sr=8-5

It reminds me of this tower I bought from a young dude years ago. It was a good deal at the time (Q6600, 6GB RAM, water cooling, the whole gambit) but it was in this plexiglass case with neon lights that would actually pulse to music.

Same here...  I hate tacky LED bling bling.

On September 6, 2019 at 3:24 PM, Downsview 108 said:

I always said that the best sound equipment you can buy are 70s Japanese made electronics and even musical instruments, especially those made during the "lawsuit era". That Sansui I mentioned, when I opened it up, I couldn't believe how neat and organized the chips were inside. It didn't have that much point-to-point wiring and was easy to pull apart except to access the neon lights for the radio display. That "silverface" stuff is priceless. Some of which is still expensive today. They certainly entered the market to be competitive and they did it the right way by offering quality alternatives to USA made stuff. Unfortunately, those days are no more. Even Audio Technica stuff is moving out of Japan.

Sometimes, people clueless about the value of vintage stuff can be a blessing to those who know about them and want a deal because that stuff still commands top dollar today. That Sansui I bought came with a Dual 1219 in a "Noresco" cabinet. I think I paid $100 for the pair. Unfortunately, Duals being the temperamental and proprietary machines that they are, it was locked up due to the lube being completely dried out. I had absolutely no experience with that stuff so I had to part ways with it. A Harmon-Kardon from that era would command a lot of money today. I probably would have kept that even if it was broken.

The 1970s solid state stuff was beautiful.  We had a Marantz receiver from that time when I was younger and it was fantastic until the cat destroyed it in the early 80s.  The Denon receiver my parents bought to replace it sounded lacklustre at best and the phono stage was such a piece of garbage that everyone in my family stopped listening to records after not very long because it sounded so bad.

On September 6, 2019 at 3:24 PM, Downsview 108 said:

I didn't know PCCs were that complex. At least not compared to the CLRVs. I can sympathize with the lack of knowhow to maintain them as those skills are just some of many that become for scarce with each passing year. I'm sure as long as you have the blueprints they can be worked on. These newer computer controlled cars are going to be a completely different story when the times comes. Just like you said, the proprietary chips and software will be a huge stumbling-block. It seems everything is meant to be disposable today, even multi-million dollar vehicles. I wonder if any cars today would be considered classics 50 years from now and will even run as a result.

Yes and no.  Compared to a platform controller like the K types used in Peter Witt cars and similar controllers on similar cars, PCCs are extremely complicated machines.  All those platform controllers do is make and break a small number of electrical connections between the incoming 600 V from the line switch, sometimes there isn't one in really old cars, and the resistors through to the motors and there's a limited number of positions with specific open and closed connections.  You shove the handle where you want it when you want it.  It's also operated fully manually and has no feedback to monitor and respond to what the car's doing, and is also used for acceleration only.

On a PCC car, it's automatic.  The power or brake pedal deflection closes certain contacts based on which pedal's pushed down and changes the setting on a limit relay (Westinghouse) or ABR coil (GE) by distorting a spring with a preset tension which is counterracted electromagnetically by the coils wound on a form which measures off motor current and the whole thing's set up to open and close rapidly and cause varying duty cycle of pulses to come out and feed the pilot motor.  All of this causes the pilot motor to walk the controller up or down it's range of movement to accelerate the car, brake the car, or pre-position the controller while coasting in order to begin braking or resume power at any time.  Also, cushioning resistors are added at the beginning of acceleration and when switching off power to reduce motor torque and take the edge of the jerking when power's applied or removed.  Field shunting's added at the top of acceleration to get more speed or during coasting to reduce torque during spotting so the car doesn't drag too hard.  Then on the braking cycle, you've got the handoff between dynamic braking to either air or electric drums at the bottom end of the cycle.  There's a lot of interlocking in the sequence of events that has to happen for a PCC to accelerate from a dead stop, accelerate from coasting, go from coasting to braking, power to braking, power to coasting, dynamic brake cut over to friction braking etc. etc. that all has to take place correctly at the right time.  Limit relay or ABR coil calibration is sensitive otherwise the whole thing goes haywire and the streetcar's performance can go lopsided in a big way.  Plus, the pilot motor and controller have mass and inertia, so as a physical system, they have ballistic properties that are accounted for in a number of kludges in both Westinghouse's and GE's design that counteract controller overshoot/undershoot problems that are characteristic over parts of their ranges.  It's interesting to see how both manufacturers approached dealing with the same limitations and problems.  Fortunately, a lot of the problems introduced by dirt mucking up controller contacts and causing things to act up can be dealt with by keeping everything clean and blowing out and polishing up the small contact surfaces, especially the silvered surfaces on WH car.  The rest of it comes down to understanding the required inputs and outputs for a given mode of operation, how the circuits work, and what the sequence charts call for as well as the analog values in and out of the limit relay/ABRs.  Compared to the older cars the controllers are basically a giant rotary wafter switch, this is not trivial and I've only banged out a coles notes version; the SEPTA GE all electric PCC maintenance manual I have is an inch thick.  That's only GE all electric.  You'd have to make it thicker to cover the differences pertaining to GE air cars, WH all electrics and WH air cars.

 

[Bus_Medic]

Some visuals:

GE control:

Westinghouse:

 

[Wayside Observer]

Ha, that's a trip down memory lane.  It's tough to read the guy's diagram but some friends and I had a similar problem on a GE PCC last year due to an accidentally disconnected wire instead of an open resistor.

What's happening:  He's stepping on the power pedal and everything's going fine until the GE KM controller reaches the end of it's travel.  The resistor he's circling on the diagram being open B3's circuit (on the diagram, B3 is to the left of the resistor he circles) to stay open.  In our case, it didn't oscillate at the last few steps on the KM, it just went to the end and stopped dead, and it was because we accidentally disconnected the wire from that limit switch that he's holding open with the tag to simulate the problem.

What's supposed to happen:  The KM brush arm and the camshaft attached to it should move from its home position to the end of travel, cause B3 and LB3 in turn to close.  Contactor LB3 bypasses the controller's resistances and feeds the 600 V down to the motors from the line which leaves the controller free to cycle back to get ready for coasting or braking which is taking place when it reverses and goes back while the power pedal is still down when the tag's removed.  If this happened without LB3 closed, it would put the resistors back in series with the motors and throttle the car down which is why it's interlocked and why the controller sequence stops and malfunctions at the end of resistive acceleration when the B3 circuit doesn't complete.

Then, power pedal released, the controller does an interesting round trip.  Since it topped out, it does the whole dynamic braking sequence where it cuts out the variable resistances via the brush arm in series with a fixed resistor, hits the end of it's travel and some contactors throw to bypass the fixed resistor (similar to how LB3 bypasses the variable resistor in acceleration) and travels through only the variable resistor on the controller a second time which is how a GE car's gets a twice as large step count in braking vs. acceleration.  The reason why coast looks and is the same as braking in the video is with the motors cut out to do a sequence test, there's zero current flowing so the ABR coil's contacts are held closed by the spring regardless of how far the power or brake pedals are pushed down since there's no electromagnetic field being created due to zero current in the traction circuit to oppose it.  Even the small current value demanded by the ABR coil for coasting isn't satisfied which is why the coil makes the pilot motor run at full speed just as if it was braking  or accelerating hard (too hard, if motors were cut in) to attempt to get something out of the traction circuit.

[Transit geek]

[Downsview 108]

8 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

Cell and wifi are so far away from the AM band in the RF spectrum they won't do much to it unless you're phone's sitting right next to your radio and directly interfering with it's operation and making that characteristic staccato of noise in the speaker.  The CN tower's neither here nor there for AM because as far as broadcast goes, it's strictly FM and TV.  AM transmitter sites are typically one or more towers that are mast radiators.  The whole tower is made out of metal, stands above the ground on an insulator, and is energized with RF.  The four towers of CFRB 1010's transmitter plant by Clarkson station's a good example.  Those four towers form a phased array that shapes and steers the RF being radiated to avoid interference with other stations on the same frequency and/or meet coverage footprint requirements. Eg. CFRB 1010's pattern's arranged to try to avoid messing with 1010 WINS in New York.  1050 CHUM's another phased array along the edge of Lake Ontario that's designed to throw RF across the lake towards Toronto.  Sometimes the terms of license specify pattern changes and nighttime power reductions so it's not necessarily the big media companies being cheap about the power bill.  The other problem is, depending on the radiation pattern and your location in it, you could be in a null where the signal strength is seriously reduced and that'll make reception a chore even if you are geographically nearby.  CBC had been complaining that 740 suffered from bad reception in downtown Toronto for years and then they got to move to 99.1 on FM.  That's a 50 KW omnidirectional, no power reduction at night clear channel frequency off a transmitter near the Toronto Premium Outlets mall.  Zoomer buys transmission service from CBC and they ran into the same reception complaints in the city and eventually got an FM repeater.  The AM oscillation you're hearing is probably 10 kHz heterodyne whine and interference from carrier and one of the sidebands from an adjacent station to the one you're listening to.

Yes, those are the real thing.  Probably Russian nixies from the looks of them which would be typical for clocks these days.  Notice how the 5 is an upside down 2 in the picture in the advertisement?  That's usually a good indication because the Soviet manufacturers repurposed the 2 form and turned it upside down instead of making a proper form for the number 5.

Same here...  I hate tacky LED bling bling.

The 1970s solid state stuff was beautiful.  We had a Marantz receiver from that time when I was younger and it was fantastic until the cat destroyed it in the early 80s.  The Denon receiver my parents bought to replace it sounded lacklustre at best and the phono stage was such a piece of garbage that everyone in my family stopped listening to records after not very long because it sounded so bad.

Yes and no.  Compared to a platform controller like the K types used in Peter Witt cars and similar controllers on similar cars, PCCs are extremely complicated machines.  All those platform controllers do is make and break a small number of electrical connections between the incoming 600 V from the line switch, sometimes there isn't one in really old cars, and the resistors through to the motors and there's a limited number of positions with specific open and closed connections.  You shove the handle where you want it when you want it.  It's also operated fully manually and has no feedback to monitor and respond to what the car's doing, and is also used for acceleration only.

On a PCC car, it's automatic.  The power or brake pedal deflection closes certain contacts based on which pedal's pushed down and changes the setting on a limit relay (Westinghouse) or ABR coil (GE) by distorting a spring with a preset tension which is counterracted electromagnetically by the coils wound on a form which measures off motor current and the whole thing's set up to open and close rapidly and cause varying duty cycle of pulses to come out and feed the pilot motor.  All of this causes the pilot motor to walk the controller up or down it's range of movement to accelerate the car, brake the car, or pre-position the controller while coasting in order to begin braking or resume power at any time.  Also, cushioning resistors are added at the beginning of acceleration and when switching off power to reduce motor torque and take the edge of the jerking when power's applied or removed.  Field shunting's added at the top of acceleration to get more speed or during coasting to reduce torque during spotting so the car doesn't drag too hard.  Then on the braking cycle, you've got the handoff between dynamic braking to either air or electric drums at the bottom end of the cycle.  There's a lot of interlocking in the sequence of events that has to happen for a PCC to accelerate from a dead stop, accelerate from coasting, go from coasting to braking, power to braking, power to coasting, dynamic brake cut over to friction braking etc. etc. that all has to take place correctly at the right time.  Limit relay or ABR coil calibration is sensitive otherwise the whole thing goes haywire and the streetcar's performance can go lopsided in a big way.  Plus, the pilot motor and controller have mass and inertia, so as a physical system, they have ballistic properties that are accounted for in a number of kludges in both Westinghouse's and GE's design that counteract controller overshoot/undershoot problems that are characteristic over parts of their ranges.  It's interesting to see how both manufacturers approached dealing with the same limitations and problems.  Fortunately, a lot of the problems introduced by dirt mucking up controller contacts and causing things to act up can be dealt with by keeping everything clean and blowing out and polishing up the small contact surfaces, especially the silvered surfaces on WH car.  The rest of it comes down to understanding the required inputs and outputs for a given mode of operation, how the circuits work, and what the sequence charts call for as well as the analog values in and out of the limit relay/ABRs.  Compared to the older cars the controllers are basically a giant rotary wafter switch, this is not trivial and I've only banged out a coles notes version; the SEPTA GE all electric PCC maintenance manual I have is an inch thick.  That's only GE all electric.  You'd have to make it thicker to cover the differences pertaining to GE air cars, WH all electrics and WH air cars.

 

Thanks for that. I forgot that the CN Tower is only for TV and FM actually so it must be my location. The best AM reception I had was back when I lived in North York which is weird because I'm close to the lake. You'd think that would improve. I guess quality of radio receiver has something to do with it as well. A clock radio I bought 3 years ago can't pick up as many AM stations as a very cheap one I had years ago where at night I could pick up stations as far away as Boston. I think you're right about that oscillation too because it would go back an forth between some other station. It would start out slow then ramp up to where it sounded like the intro from Ironman by Black Sabbath.

Good to know about that Denon. I always thought that was a higher end brand but it seems manufacturers skimped on phono stages later on and past the vinyl era. I think I will probably buy myself an external preamp. I am in the market for one of those old Pioneer receivers that have the two phono inputs and I think a switch for MM/MC cartridges. 

Awesome info on PCC controllers! Not bad for 1930s technology. I didn't end up riding one of those until a charter 21 years ago actually even while I was living downtown when they were still in service sadly. I was impressed how smooth the ride was but I noticed (4549 I think) nowadays would jerk and make a spark under the car when the operator took his foot off the power. What causes that? I don't think 4500 does that. It sort of feels and sounds like the camshaft H cars when they are starting up. Is it doing the same thing as those cars? Like remember the movie The Taking of Pelham One Two three when the hijacker was starting up and the train jerked and the operator said it was "bucking"? Is that the same deal?

I need to bookmark some of your posts. This is great information! Thanks!

Thanks Bus Medic as well for those videos.

[Wayside Observer]

13 hours ago, Downsview 108 said:

Good to know about that Denon. I always thought that was a higher end brand but it seems manufacturers skimped on phono stages later on and past the vinyl era. I think I will probably buy myself an external preamp. I am in the market for one of those old Pioneer receivers that have the two phono inputs and I think a switch for MM/MC cartridges. 

The 1980s stank for stereo equipment.  We had a small Rotel integrated amplifier, an RA-820, to power a small pair of outboard speakers in the TV room to provide a 2.0 sound setup in today's home theatre language because the TV's speakers were next to useless.  That Rotel was perfectly fine as a speech amplifier and that's all it needed to do in the TV room, amplify talking heads and dialogue.  I inherited it when the TV room got a larger pair of speakers and a more powerful amplifier because the Rotel was bottoming out hard and a channel blew.  I fixed it up and started listening to music through it and it stank as an amplifier for playing back music.  It was worse sounding as an amplifier than that Denon receiver was, and the phono stage was far worse.  That Rotel is what pushed me to start scrounging and fixing up tube gear.  The Denon was an oddball.  The tuner was mediocre, the amplifier was mediocre, the phono stage was awful, and the volume control went from 0-40.  Not 0-10, not 0-100, not calibrated in dB, not even Marshall style 0-11.  Zero to forty.  Why????

13 hours ago, Downsview 108 said:

Awesome info on PCC controllers! Not bad for 1930s technology. I didn't end up riding one of those until a charter 21 years ago actually even while I was living downtown when they were still in service sadly. I was impressed how smooth the ride was but I noticed (4549 I think) nowadays would jerk and make a spark under the car when the operator took his foot off the power. What causes that? I don't think 4500 does that. It sort of feels and sounds like the camshaft H cars when they are starting up. Is it doing the same thing as those cars? Like remember the movie The Taking of Pelham One Two three when the hijacker was starting up and the train jerked and the operator said it was "bucking"? Is that the same deal?

Each PCC was unique and no two ever performed exactly the same even if they went through a 10,000 mile servicing and tuneup in the shop one right after each other.  4500 has always been the smoother of the two by far and 4549's always been a bit rough and ropey although the trip on Queen St. last September was a lot more rubberbanding than usual.  I rode it early this summer and the operator told me that it had been cleaned up and it performed a lot better for it with a lot less rubber banding in the acceleration and braking but it still had a bit, so I guess it's back to its old self.

What's happening when the operator releases the power pedal is described as a cushioned shutoff, a small resistance is put back in series with the motors to slightly reduce the torque output right before the line switch opens and cuts off power completely to soften the edge of the motors coming off and smooth things out a bit.  The flash and bang are from the line switch opening up.  Depending on how fast the car is going and how quickly the motors are spinning, there could be very serious current flowing through the motor circuits, especially at lower speeds, which the line switch interrupts when the operator takes his foot off the brake pedal.  The line switch has what's known as a blowout coil installed which is a few turns of wire in series with the switch contacts itself.  When the switch contacts open up but the circuit is still established because of arcing through the air gap, the arc, that blue ionized air carrying the electric current, is pushed away and down an arch chute by the magnetic field created by the blowout coil.  That causes the air to cool off and stop being ionized and stop conducting electric current and breaks the circuit.  On 1,500 V cars, quite often the heavy current carrying switches also have an air valve that opens briefly and blasts the contact tips in addition to the blowout coil to extinguish arcs.

Breaking DC is rough on contact tips in these contactors because unlike AC, there's no zero crossing where the voltage hits 0 and there's a certain amount of self-commutating action.  With DC sitting at a constant 600 or 1,500 volts, the equipment has to be designed to handle breaking the full voltage and current being carried on it's on every time which is why the flash and bang when switching off happens.  That's pretty much standard fare on any DC traction equipment that's pre-chopper control.  You'd see and hear the same thing on the subway cars up through H4 whenever the driver would go from Inch, Series or Parallel into Open.  Again, especially when done at low speed where the motors are turning slowly and not generating much counter-EMF to keep the current passing through down.  Of course, with chopper controls and AC propulsion, the control system just instructs the pass element semiconductor to turn off or on the older thyristor choppers, fire the commutation circuit to get the main thyristors to under their latching threshold and make them stop conducting and then a traditional line switch drops open quietly after and that's why there's no impressive bang and sheet of flame coming out the arc chute anymore.

[Downsview 108]

22 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

The 1980s stank for stereo equipment.  We had a small Rotel integrated amplifier, an RA-820, to power a small pair of outboard speakers in the TV room to provide a 2.0 sound setup in today's home theatre language because the TV's speakers were next to useless.  That Rotel was perfectly fine as a speech amplifier and that's all it needed to do in the TV room, amplify talking heads and dialogue.  I inherited it when the TV room got a larger pair of speakers and a more powerful amplifier because the Rotel was bottoming out hard and a channel blew.  I fixed it up and started listening to music through it and it stank as an amplifier for playing back music.  It was worse sounding as an amplifier than that Denon receiver was, and the phono stage was far worse.  That Rotel is what pushed me to start scrounging and fixing up tube gear.  The Denon was an oddball.  The tuner was mediocre, the amplifier was mediocre, the phono stage was awful, and the volume control went from 0-40.  Not 0-10, not 0-100, not calibrated in dB, not even Marshall style 0-11.  Zero to forty.  Why????

Each PCC was unique and no two ever performed exactly the same even if they went through a 10,000 mile servicing and tuneup in the shop one right after each other.  4500 has always been the smoother of the two by far and 4549's always been a bit rough and ropey although the trip on Queen St. last September was a lot more rubberbanding than usual.  I rode it early this summer and the operator told me that it had been cleaned up and it performed a lot better for it with a lot less rubber banding in the acceleration and braking but it still had a bit, so I guess it's back to its old self.

What's happening when the operator releases the power pedal is described as a cushioned shutoff, a small resistance is put back in series with the motors to slightly reduce the torque output right before the line switch opens and cuts off power completely to soften the edge of the motors coming off and smooth things out a bit.  The flash and bang are from the line switch opening up.  Depending on how fast the car is going and how quickly the motors are spinning, there could be very serious current flowing through the motor circuits, especially at lower speeds, which the line switch interrupts when the operator takes his foot off the brake pedal.  The line switch has what's known as a blowout coil installed which is a few turns of wire in series with the switch contacts itself.  When the switch contacts open up but the circuit is still established because of arcing through the air gap, the arc, that blue ionized air carrying the electric current, is pushed away and down an arch chute by the magnetic field created by the blowout coil.  That causes the air to cool off and stop being ionized and stop conducting electric current and breaks the circuit.  On 1,500 V cars, quite often the heavy current carrying switches also have an air valve that opens briefly and blasts the contact tips in addition to the blowout coil to extinguish arcs.

Breaking DC is rough on contact tips in these contactors because unlike AC, there's no zero crossing where the voltage hits 0 and there's a certain amount of self-commutating action.  With DC sitting at a constant 600 or 1,500 volts, the equipment has to be designed to handle breaking the full voltage and current being carried on it's on every time which is why the flash and bang when switching off happens.  That's pretty much standard fare on any DC traction equipment that's pre-chopper control.  You'd see and hear the same thing on the subway cars up through H4 whenever the driver would go from Inch, Series or Parallel into Open.  Again, especially when done at low speed where the motors are turning slowly and not generating much counter-EMF to keep the current passing through down.  Of course, with chopper controls and AC propulsion, the control system just instructs the pass element semiconductor to turn off or on the older thyristor choppers, fire the commutation circuit to get the main thyristors to under their latching threshold and make them stop conducting and then a traditional line switch drops open quietly after and that's why there's no impressive bang and sheet of flame coming out the arc chute anymore.

I think I have a better understanding now. Just a quick question, what do you mean by "open" on the subway controller? Is that "off" or some setting inbetween those settings?

And I hate to derail this topic but if you wanna take a step back into WTF territory, check out this YouTube channel I found where a guy collects and taste tests old military rations.

You read right.

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA

[Wayside Observer]

13 hours ago, Downsview 108 said:

I think I have a better understanding now. Just a quick question, what do you mean by "open" on the subway controller? Is that "off" or some setting inbetween those settings?

Yes, it's the same thing as off.

[M. Parsons]

Given the way this thread has gone, I figure some of you might be interested to see the set up and testing equipment used with the Simatic on Edmonton's U2's before rebuild.

Very interesting reading earlier on the PCC controls. The U2's are a bit more complex I gather, but, are still just a motor driven cam controller. Quite outdated technology frankly when Edmonton, Calgary, and San Diego got their cars, given what was going on in Germany. 

I believe Edmonton has replaced the Simatic, or is in the process of replacing them with something a bit more modern. The cars are still running with their original controllers however. 

The amazing thing is that with the Thales CBTC installation the U2's were on track to be capable of automatic train operation, however, with Thales basically being fired and CBTC ultimately removed... that won't be happening now. 

[Wayside Observer]

On September 10, 2019 at 10:43 PM, M. Parsons said:

Given the way this thread has gone, I figure some of you might be interested to see the set up and testing equipment used with the Simatic on Edmonton's U2's before rebuild.

Very interesting reading earlier on the PCC controls. The U2's are a bit more complex I gather, but, are still just a motor driven cam controller. Quite outdated technology frankly when Edmonton, Calgary, and San Diego got their cars, given what was going on in Germany. 

I believe Edmonton has replaced the Simatic, or is in the process of replacing them with something a bit more modern. The cars are still running with their original controllers however. 

The amazing thing is that with the Thales CBTC installation the U2's were on track to be capable of automatic train operation, however, with Thales basically being fired and CBTC ultimately removed... that won't be happening now. 

Ah, thanks for that, especially the pictures.  You know how many Toronto foamers you just traumatized with the sight of electronics test equipment hooked up to a streetcar?  I'm only being half sarcastic because there is a major hate with a lot of the people in the Toronto area for anything to do with electronics for reasons unknown.  But yeah, that's what it looks like, keeping equipment like that working which means your pictures are a pretty good indication of what reality's going to start looking like for trolley museums that end up with recently/soon to be retired equipment if they're going to do more than just create stuffed and mounted static exhibits of LRVs of different kinds.

I've been in conversation with a couple of people from the museums that have SD U2s and from what I've gathered, the parts and documentation situation's kind of thin just due to how the car acquisitions ended up unwinding for various reasons.  I don't know if any of the museums ended up with the OEM test sets.  But yeah, this is going to be a WTF moment for a lot of the foamers for sure, looking at pictures of a Tektronix 468 (I can read the lab cart model in the pictures but I can't quite tell if that's a 468 or a 465/475 with the DM44 option on the top but I'm leaning towards 468 from the button layout) on a Model 3 lab cart and how that's necessary for maintaining a streetcar.  Or if they know their lab equipment, WTF about the portable scope being planted on a lab cart designed for the giant mainframe machines but you use what you've got on hand.  But you know you're in a working electronics shop when you see a Tek scope on top of a scopemobile with the blue manuals on the bottom shelf.

The motor driven cam controller's a bit outdated for the time but the OEM control box was contemporary late 1970s electronics from what I've seen been sent my way to go through, but that cam controller is definitely a throwback compared to even domestic products like the CLRV, the H5 subway car, and south of the border, Boeing LRVs which all had solid state chopper controls to handle the traction power instead of resistors being switched by a cam controller.  The BBC trolleybuses that ETS was buying at the same time were a lot more advanced technologically than the U2s for that reason.  The same thing played out at SEPTA around the same time where differing managements in charge of different areas prioritized differently so they ended up with chopper control on the Kawasaki LRV cars made by Westinghouse Electric but with an electronically supervised cam controller similar to what Siemens did on those U2s on the Kawasaki B-IV subway cars that was made by General Electric.  SEPTA's since retrofitted those with a DC chopper control that was built by Kiepie that powers the existing GE traction motors.

I honestly think that Calgary and Edmonton both ended up better off with the U2 LRVs than by buying any Ontario Government Transit Crapola.  The CLRVs weren't too bad but they're much too small compared to the size of vehicle needed for the LRT systems those cities were building and any place that took one look at ICTS before taking a pass on it and buying something else, anything else, ended up ahead for sure.

[Wayside Observer]

Just for the heck of it, I lit up one of the Tek 465s that has the DM44 option at work.  You can see the resemblance with the one in @M. Parsons picture.  This one’s on one of the scopemobiles that’s specifically designed for the late 70s portable scopes.

On that note, I’m going to head downstairs and get ready to surrender and be taken into custody for engaging in the prohibited activity of practicing electronics engineering within the city of Toronto.  I’m sure one of the Orion 7 Event Support buses loaded up with a goon squad has been dispatched and is rolling this way now.

[Downsview 108]

1 hour ago, Wayside Observer said:

Just for the heck of it, I lit up one of the Tek 465s that has the DM44 option at work.  You can see the resemblance with the one in @M. Parsons picture.  This one’s on one of the scopemobiles that’s specifically designed for the late 70s portable scopes.

On that note, I’m going to head downstairs and get ready to surrender and be taken into custody for engaging in the prohibited activity of practicing electronics engineering within the city of Toronto.  I’m sure one of the Orion 7 Event Support buses loaded up with a goon squad has been dispatched and is rolling this way now.

Wayside. I wonder if that anti-Electronics Torontoism is why Active Surplus staff were long considered to be legendary douchebags.

[Wayside Observer]

23 minutes ago, Downsview 108 said:

Wayside. I wonder if that anti-Electronics Torontoism is why Active Surplus staff were long considered to be legendary douchebags.

It's not just the Active Surplus staff.  Take a look at the reviews for A1 Electronic Parts in Etobicoke and Electronic Surplus Industries on Sheffield Ave. and see how the staff of those places have been written up.

I'll have to ask the guys who run ESI if they own the building they're in whenever I see them next because if they're renting, their days are numbered with the way the whole "Castlefield Design District" is encroaching fast.

There's definitely an anti-electronics bent for sure.  The anti-electronics bent is especially among the Toronto foamer community in particular that's been trotting out the most insane BS for close to 20 years now that doesn't seem to exist elsewhere and I have no idea at all how on earth it got started, but my view on the Torontoism aspect has evolved over time and I think it's a bit narrow of a definition.  Here's what I've noticed:  Office workers are ok.  Service workers are ok.  Someone's got to cook the food in the restaurants and serve it, drive the Uber cars, staff the stores, and do the cleaning.  Someone has to drive the TTC vehicles - but I'm going to mention a specific incident where I saw the tolerance for TTC employees break below.

The problem with this recent Toronto attitude appears to stem for a general disdain for anybody that gets dirty for work.  How electronics with the raised computer floors, the clean room manufacturing, the electrostatic discharge protection, dust minimization got lumped in with that is a mystery to me unless it's stemming from a total lack of understanding about the field.  Why the Toronto foamer crowd has such an itch to scratch with electronics is totally beyond me and that's strictly a Toronto foamer thing.  Foamers from elsewhere don't care one way or another, they just want their train or trolley or bus or whatever.  But I first started to notice the attitude shifting towards people who get dirty in the course of work about 20 years ago.  I think it was 1998, maybe 1999 and I was heading home from work downtown and I got off the subway at Eglinton station to walk the rest of the way home.  The down escalator going from the ground floor of Canada Square on the SW corner of Yonge and Eglinton to the station mezzanine was torn apart and two mechanics were working on it.  Some obese, bald asshole in a power suit had just come down the other escalator which was shut off and acting like a staircase with a couple of other people and he stopped to look at the escalator mechanics with his buddies, gestured at the mechanics and then bellowed out for the whole station to hear "How can anybody work like this?!" with a hell of a smirk on his face.  They laughed and carried on their way.  I swear, a piece of me died inside.  The two escalator mechanics were stoic in ignoring this shit.

Since then, I've had a few conversations with people who've encountered this sort of crap.  I was working with an electrician on a project where we were running fibre optic cable and doing fusion splices one night and he told me he stopped taking the Go train because he was tired of getting shit on and sneered at by Bay St. suits because he was wearing jeans, a denim shirt that said "Plan Group Electric" and carried a small tool bag with his fibre optic tools and a hard hat.  The two guys in the machine shop downstairs have told me stories about what it's like if the hop out quickly to the food court next door without taking off their dirty lab coats.  Since about 2014, I've had to put my construction gear on frequently after my place got in trouble a couple of times due to parts of the building being renovated and construction permits being in effect.  The permits and requirements of construction sites apply to everyone working in the specified areas, not just the construction contractor's staff, so it's led to interesting situations where even after the heavy work of equipment decommissioning, removal, installation and commissioning of new, even when projects are almost done but the permits haven't been cancelled yet and I've been sitting in areas that are pretty much done, everything's installed, and I'm doing configuration and testing work sitting in an office chair flying a keyboard and mouse while wearing steel toe boots, high viz coveralls, a hard hat and safety glasses.

Go elsewhere in the building, go outside, go to the food court next door, go to most of the area businesses on a break, or travel to and from home and watch people move away from you fast when you're dressed like that even though you're driving a bunch of glorified computers in a glorified office-ish/data-centre-ish/light-industrial-ish environment that's technically still under a permit because the HVAC company is still working on the equipment cooling after hours which means a ministry of labour or city of Toronto inspector can still write you up and issue fines if you don't comply with the regs surrounding that.  I've got a standing joke with one of the guys at work about flipping a coin to decide which one of us has to go into the Starbucks across the street while geared up like that to ask for a double double on a dare.  There has been a slight reversal recently where construction workers in the area have become somewhat more tolerated begrudgingly only because of the number of condos being built in this section of downtown right now and people have figured out that the army of people building them is non-negotiable since condo buildings don't sprout and grow upwards on their own overnight.  But anyone who works with their hands, gets dirty, works in the trades, you name it is looked down on and tolerated, barely, at least in downtown Toronto now.

[Downsview 108]

3 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

It's not just the Active Surplus staff.  Take a look at the reviews for A1 Electronic Parts in Etobicoke and Electronic Surplus Industries on Sheffield Ave. and see how the staff of those places have been written up.

I'll have to ask the guys who run ESI if they own the building they're in whenever I see them next because if they're renting, their days are numbered with the way the whole "Castlefield Design District" is encroaching fast.

There's definitely an anti-electronics bent for sure.  The anti-electronics bent is especially among the Toronto foamer community in particular that's been trotting out the most insane BS for close to 20 years now that doesn't seem to exist elsewhere and I have no idea at all how on earth it got started, but my view on the Torontoism aspect has evolved over time and I think it's a bit narrow of a definition.  Here's what I've noticed:  Office workers are ok.  Service workers are ok.  Someone's got to cook the food in the restaurants and serve it, drive the Uber cars, staff the stores, and do the cleaning.  Someone has to drive the TTC vehicles - but I'm going to mention a specific incident where I saw the tolerance for TTC employees break below.

The problem with this recent Toronto attitude appears to stem for a general disdain for anybody that gets dirty for work.  How electronics with the raised computer floors, the clean room manufacturing, the electrostatic discharge protection, dust minimization got lumped in with that is a mystery to me unless it's stemming from a total lack of understanding about the field.  Why the Toronto foamer crowd has such an itch to scratch with electronics is totally beyond me and that's strictly a Toronto foamer thing.  Foamers from elsewhere don't care one way or another, they just want their train or trolley or bus or whatever.  But I first started to notice the attitude shifting towards people who get dirty in the course of work about 20 years ago.  I think it was 1998, maybe 1999 and I was heading home from work downtown and I got off the subway at Eglinton station to walk the rest of the way home.  The down escalator going from the ground floor of Canada Square on the SW corner of Yonge and Eglinton to the station mezzanine was torn apart and two mechanics were working on it.  Some obese, bald asshole in a power suit had just come down the other escalator which was shut off and acting like a staircase with a couple of other people and he stopped to look at the escalator mechanics with his buddies, gestured at the mechanics and then bellowed out for the whole station to hear "How can anybody work like this?!" with a hell of a smirk on his face.  They laughed and carried on their way.  I swear, a piece of me died inside.  The two escalator mechanics were stoic in ignoring this shit.

Since then, I've had a few conversations with people who've encountered this sort of crap.  I was working with an electrician on a project where we were running fibre optic cable and doing fusion splices one night and he told me he stopped taking the Go train because he was tired of getting shit on and sneered at by Bay St. suits because he was wearing jeans, a denim shirt that said "Plan Group Electric" and carried a small tool bag with his fibre optic tools and a hard hat.  The two guys in the machine shop downstairs have told me stories about what it's like if the hop out quickly to the food court next door without taking off their dirty lab coats.  Since about 2014, I've had to put my construction gear on frequently after my place got in trouble a couple of times due to parts of the building being renovated and construction permits being in effect.  The permits and requirements of construction sites apply to everyone working in the specified areas, not just the construction contractor's staff, so it's led to interesting situations where even after the heavy work of equipment decommissioning, removal, installation and commissioning of new, even when projects are almost done but the permits haven't been cancelled yet and I've been sitting in areas that are pretty much done, everything's installed, and I'm doing configuration and testing work sitting in an office chair flying a keyboard and mouse while wearing steel toe boots, high viz coveralls, a hard hat and safety glasses.

Go elsewhere in the building, go outside, go to the food court next door, go to most of the area businesses on a break, or travel to and from home and watch people move away from you fast when you're dressed like that even though you're driving a bunch of glorified computers in a glorified office-ish/data-centre-ish/light-industrial-ish environment that's technically still under a permit because the HVAC company is still working on the equipment cooling after hours which means a ministry of labour or city of Toronto inspector can still write you up and issue fines if you don't comply with the regs surrounding that.  I've got a standing joke with one of the guys at work about flipping a coin to decide which one of us has to go into the Starbucks across the street while geared up like that to ask for a double double on a dare.  There has been a slight reversal recently where construction workers in the area have become somewhat more tolerated begrudgingly only because of the number of condos being built in this section of downtown right now and people have figured out that the army of people building them is non-negotiable since condo buildings don't sprout and grow upwards on their own overnight.  But anyone who works with their hands, gets dirty, works in the trades, you name it is looked down on and tolerated, barely, at least in downtown Toronto now.

Wow. This post nearly got my blood boiling because of my experience on the matter. This is why I hate office work and prefer to do jobs where I get my hands dirty like landscaping work. I've done many odd jobs as well. It's a good thing that one cleaning gig at Centennial college I told you about was overnight because I heard stories working there about the suits spilling hot drinks in their own offices and then complaining that the cleaning staff didn't get the stains out properly. A remember one time my small landscaping group, after a HUGE tree cutting job went to a pizza place right in the thick of the Ossington hipster zone. The job was around there too and we had to deal with our share of snobs but the looks we got at the pizza place being almost completely covered in dirt and whatever else that comes from cutting down 150 year old trees was almost cartoonish. This is why no one likes Toronto. I always had respect for dudes that did the hard, dirty work. Because these are the same people that the Toronto snobs complain to, whine about, or go insane over when whatever they work on fails, like during a blackout. I always said that Waste workers, sewage workers and etc should be paid the most. Not these guys who think they are better than everyone because they sit in a tilt-and-swivel in something they picked up at Tip Top Tailors for 8 hours a day. LOL! Maybe my respect for guys who do the hard work comes from my childhood getting construction based toys. I can't believe they used to call this place "people city". I remember it being a lot friendlier when I was a kid before all the yuppies moved in.

[Wayside Observer]

1 hour ago, Downsview 108 said:

Wow. This post nearly got my blood boiling because of my experience on the matter. This is why I hate office work and prefer to do jobs where I get my hands dirty like landscaping work. I've done many odd jobs as well. It's a good thing that one cleaning gig at Centennial college I told you about was overnight because I heard stories working there about the suits spilling hot drinks in their own offices and then complaining that the cleaning staff didn't get the stains out properly.

I like being hands on too.  I hate those days where I'm stuck in front of a computer screen all day with noActually, someone on my previous football team who worked for a flat roofing company pouring tar roofs got into it with me about how I 'work in an office' and I had to explain that yes, I usually work indoors but not always, and not really in an office either despite management's best attempts to turn the shop into a room full of Stepford Wives corporate office drones, but I had to make it clear it's still a workshop full of engineering technologists before he calmed down.  Nobody including myself ever figured out what set him off about my job in the first place.  Unfortunately, there are people who spill drinks, break equipment, stuff like that to get attention and then complain about how the support staff didn't measure up when called upon.  I've run into that many times.

1 hour ago, Downsview 108 said:

A remember one time my small landscaping group, after a HUGE tree cutting job went to a pizza place right in the thick of the Ossington hipster zone. The job was around there too and we had to deal with our share of snobs but the looks we got at the pizza place being almost completely covered in dirt and whatever else that comes from cutting down 150 year old trees was almost cartoonish.

Wow.  It's amazing how so many people are out there treat the workers who take care of things like that and make the landscaping and everything else happen like they're a bunch of ompa loompas or elves that show up, do what has to be done, and disappear again without burdening the real people with their unnecessary presence after the task at hand is completed.  Maybe they thought you guys should've piled into your truck, driven somewhere out of site, and eaten food out of a lunchbox discretely.

1 hour ago, Downsview 108 said:

This is why no one likes Toronto. I always had respect for dudes that did the hard, dirty work. Because these are the same people that the Toronto snobs complain to, whine about, or go insane over when whatever they work on fails, like during a blackout. I always said that Waste workers, sewage workers and etc should be paid the most. Not these guys who think they are better than everyone because they sit in a tilt-and-swivel in something they picked up at Tip Top Tailors for 8 hours a day. LOL! Maybe my respect for guys who do the hard work comes from my childhood getting construction based toys. I can't believe they used to call this place "people city". I remember it being a lot friendlier when I was a kid before all the yuppies moved in.

When I was a kid, I always wanted a set of tools of my own.  I was always taking things apart to see how they worked and I always had a fort or a clubhouse in the back yard built out of scrap plywood and lumber and bricks that were in the yard and the garage of the house when we moved into it or scrounged from friends, and I always had an outdoor extension cord run over with a couple of lights and a radio, and a heater during fall/winter/summer.  It was great fun!  I learned a lot by doing all of that stuff and got an appreciation for what it's like to build stuff for real.

There's a divide at work for sure where some employees have a snob factor about the people in the technical maintenance department that keeps the place running properly.  They're rude and dismissive until something goes wrong and they call in a total panic.  Interestingly, that population tracks younger.  A lot of the older, long time employees who know and appreciate what the various technical services departments do and rely on us are fantastic to work with and a lot of them drop off cards and boxes of candy or pastries in the various workshops at Christmas time.

I think what we both remember about Toronto back in the old days was when it was by and large a middle class, working city.  Sure, the Forest Hill and Rosedale and a handful of similar neighbourhoods have always existed, but the city was for the most part middle class.  Some people worked in offices, some in factories, some in retail, some in services, but it was mostly middle class and pretty much everyone respected what everyone else had to do to earn a living.  Now that things have stratified up and down and the middle's been hollowed out - remember the Toronto Star's series of articles about the two cities that ran a couple of years ago? - you have even small, run down detached houses selling as total gut and renovate or teardown and replace jobs for a million dollars and prices go up from there.  Tiny condos go for $450K plus and anything reasonable size starts at around $600K.  So other than older people who were able to get established before prices got insane, it's a city of wealthy people who've led charmed lives and never had to work, put in good solid hard work day in, day out, and poorer people in the services industries living in exorbitantly priced rental apartments enduring long TTC commutes to cater to the needs and wants of these jerks.  It's just a theory but the anecdotal evidence I've heard and what I've seen firsthand seems to support it.  For what it's worth, on what would be considered a middle class income elsewhere in the country, I had to bail out to the 905 area code to buy a small house of my own about six and a half years ago.  I don't think I could afford to buy it for what it would sell for today.

What got me and kind of forced a mental recalibration against rest-of-the-country standards was those two trips out west and up north to do branch plant equipment upgrades back in August.  When I touched down in Calgary, I got a day pass, took the bus and the CTrain downtown, checked into the hotel and took off to ride the CTrain system until the project manager got in and we went for dinner.  Right at that time I headed out to ride around and kill time, a lot of downtown construction sites finished up and the workers emptied out, grabbed coffees, stopped in the bank branches, gathered on the CTrain platforms and went home still in full gear.  I got on a train with a bunch and I was stunned that this was just accepted as a normal, every day 3:30 PM occurrence with none of the sideways glances, stinkeye, snide remarks, people shifting away etc. that I've always experienced in Toronto.

Then, up in Yellowknife, I was killing time one late one evening since I had broad daylight until well after 11 PM hiking along one of the trails around a bunch of the nearby lakes.  There was a sign with the trail rules and one of them mentioned the terrain and remoteness and recommended wearing a helmet.  Makes sense, it's all exposed hard Canadian shield rock up there, and if you take a spill and smash your head, you may not have a passerby find you for a long time, you may not have cell service to call for help, you're on your own and you're expected to take some responsibility for that.  That point got nailed home when the project and I took a drive out into the countryside and it was beautiful.  The radio stations faded out.  Northwestel cell service vanished and we rolled by a totally destroyed abandoned car at the side of the road.  We stopped to look at the scenery and nobody passed by.  You couldn't see or hear another person. It was just the two of us and no way to communicate with anybody else.  The wrecked car was a stark reminder that up there, if you screw up, you're truly on your own to sort out the aftermath.

I also went into the Centre Square Mall up there to grab coffee at the Tim Hortons and saw a sign, and I am kicking myself for not taking a picture of it, but it said "Intoxication and drug use are prohibited.  Centre Square Mall security is authorized to remove patrons not complying with mall rules by force if necessary.  Centre Square Mall property management and security are obligated to provide a safe environment for mall patrons."  My jaw dropped when I read that.  They tell you up front right at the door that if you screw up and you don't behave, security will lay their hands on you and you will be thrown the fuck out if you don't behave.  Now that's backing from management I would've loved to have had when I used to work security.  Can you imagine how something like that would fly in Toronto?  That the mean guys in the uniforms have the ok to go ahead and engage in not-niceness with drunk and high idiots to toss them out?

Out there, hard work is respected instead of looked down upon and you're expected to take some personal responsibility for your actions.  Returning to Toronto was like dropping the clutch hard.  When I got back and in between the two trips, I saw Uber Eats hand delivering food to you while you sit at your airport gate waiting for your plane to board, I saw Metrolinx childproofing the Hamilton Go Centre because people can't be trusted to walk underneath moving buses, I saw someone vomiting on the sidewalk outside Union station after I got off the UPExpress train before 8 AM, I almost stepped in a different pile of vomit outside Union station the next morning, I saw suits steering well clear of the construction workers on the various condo, Union station etc. projects on their way to and from the food shops in the new food court there, in the coffee shops in the area, you name it, that's why I was spitting nails pissed off when I got back home and you probably saw evidence of that in some very bitterly sarcastic posts I wrote back in August.

[Downsview 108]

49 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

I like being hands on too.  I hate those days where I'm stuck in front of a computer screen all day with noActually, someone on my previous football team who worked for a flat roofing company pouring tar roofs got into it with me about how I 'work in an office' and I had to explain that yes, I usually work indoors but not always, and not really in an office either despite management's best attempts to turn the shop into a room full of Stepford Wives corporate office drones, but I had to make it clear it's still a workshop full of engineering technologists before he calmed down.  Nobody including myself ever figured out what set him off about my job in the first place.  Unfortunately, there are people who spill drinks, break equipment, stuff like that to get attention and then complain about how the support staff didn't measure up when called upon.  I've run into that many times.

Wow.  It's amazing how so many people are out there treat the workers who take care of things like that and make the landscaping and everything else happen like they're a bunch of ompa loompas or elves that show up, do what has to be done, and disappear again without burdening the real people with their unnecessary presence after the task at hand is completed.  Maybe they thought you guys should've piled into your truck, driven somewhere out of site, and eaten food out of a lunchbox discretely.

When I was a kid, I always wanted a set of tools of my own.  I was always taking things apart to see how they worked and I always had a fort or a clubhouse in the back yard built out of scrap plywood and lumber and bricks that were in the yard and the garage of the house when we moved into it or scrounged from friends, and I always had an outdoor extension cord run over with a couple of lights and a radio, and a heater during fall/winter/summer.  It was great fun!  I learned a lot by doing all of that stuff and got an appreciation for what it's like to build stuff for real.

There's a divide at work for sure where some employees have a snob factor about the people in the technical maintenance department that keeps the place running properly.  They're rude and dismissive until something goes wrong and they call in a total panic.  Interestingly, that population tracks younger.  A lot of the older, long time employees who know and appreciate what the various technical services departments do and rely on us are fantastic to work with and a lot of them drop off cards and boxes of candy or pastries in the various workshops at Christmas time.

I think what we both remember about Toronto back in the old days was when it was by and large a middle class, working city.  Sure, the Forest Hill and Rosedale and a handful of similar neighbourhoods have always existed, but the city was for the most part middle class.  Some people worked in offices, some in factories, some in retail, some in services, but it was mostly middle class and pretty much everyone respected what everyone else had to do to earn a living.  Now that things have stratified up and down and the middle's been hollowed out - remember the Toronto Star's series of articles about the two cities that ran a couple of years ago? - you have even small, run down detached houses selling as total gut and renovate or teardown and replace jobs for a million dollars and prices go up from there.  Tiny condos go for $450K plus and anything reasonable size starts at around $600K.  So other than older people who were able to get established before prices got insane, it's a city of wealthy people who've led charmed lives and never had to work, put in good solid hard work day in, day out, and poorer people in the services industries living in exorbitantly priced rental apartments enduring long TTC commutes to cater to the needs and wants of these jerks.  It's just a theory but the anecdotal evidence I've heard and what I've seen firsthand seems to support it.  For what it's worth, on what would be considered a middle class income elsewhere in the country, I had to bail out to the 905 area code to buy a small house of my own about six and a half years ago.  I don't think I could afford to buy it for what it would sell for today.

What got me and kind of forced a mental recalibration against rest-of-the-country standards was those two trips out west and up north to do branch plant equipment upgrades back in August.  When I touched down in Calgary, I got a day pass, took the bus and the CTrain downtown, checked into the hotel and took off to ride the CTrain system until the project manager got in and we went for dinner.  Right at that time I headed out to ride around and kill time, a lot of downtown construction sites finished up and the workers emptied out, grabbed coffees, stopped in the bank branches, gathered on the CTrain platforms and went home still in full gear.  I got on a train with a bunch and I was stunned that this was just accepted as a normal, every day 3:30 PM occurrence with none of the sideways glances, stinkeye, snide remarks, people shifting away etc. that I've always experienced in Toronto.

Then, up in Yellowknife, I was killing time one late one evening since I had broad daylight until well after 11 PM hiking along one of the trails around a bunch of the nearby lakes.  There was a sign with the trail rules and one of them mentioned the terrain and remoteness and recommended wearing a helmet.  Makes sense, it's all exposed hard Canadian shield rock up there, and if you take a spill and smash your head, you may not have a passerby find you for a long time, you may not have cell service to call for help, you're on your own and you're expected to take some responsibility for that.  That point got nailed home when the project and I took a drive out into the countryside and it was beautiful.  The radio stations faded out.  Northwestel cell service vanished and we rolled by a totally destroyed abandoned car at the side of the road.  We stopped to look at the scenery and nobody passed by.  You couldn't see or hear another person. It was just the two of us and no way to communicate with anybody else.  The wrecked car was a stark reminder that up there, if you screw up, you're truly on your own to sort out the aftermath.

I also went into the Centre Square Mall up there to grab coffee at the Tim Hortons and saw a sign, and I am kicking myself for not taking a picture of it, but it said "Intoxication and drug use are prohibited.  Centre Square Mall security is authorized to remove patrons not complying with mall rules by force if necessary.  Centre Square Mall property management and security are obligated to provide a safe environment for mall patrons."  My jaw dropped when I read that.  They tell you up front right at the door that if you screw up and you don't behave, security will lay their hands on you and you will be thrown the fuck out if you don't behave.  Now that's backing from management I would've loved to have had when I used to work security.  Can you imagine how something like that would fly in Toronto?  That the mean guys in the uniforms have the ok to go ahead and engage in not-niceness with drunk and high idiots to toss them out?

Out there, hard work is respected instead of looked down upon and you're expected to take some personal responsibility for your actions.  Returning to Toronto was like dropping the clutch hard.  When I got back and in between the two trips, I saw Uber Eats hand delivering food to you while you sit at your airport gate waiting for your plane to board, I saw Metrolinx childproofing the Hamilton Go Centre because people can't be trusted to walk underneath moving buses, I saw someone vomiting on the sidewalk outside Union station after I got off the UPExpress train before 8 AM, I almost stepped in a different pile of vomit outside Union station the next morning, I saw suits steering well clear of the construction workers on the various condo, Union station etc. projects on their way to and from the food shops in the new food court there, in the coffee shops in the area, you name it, that's why I was spitting nails pissed off when I got back home and you probably saw evidence of that in some very bitterly sarcastic posts I wrote back in August.

The guy who complained about your job must have had a bunch of battle scars dealing with snobs that he just gave up and assumed anyone who worked as you did was likewise. That's the kind of disillusionment that happens sometimes and you see it played out perfectly with everyone from transit drivers to (especially) school teachers. I always make the claim that I rarely see the same drivers again. I can only remember about four or five in my lifetime that I saw more than once. All of whom seemed to have brass ones. The coolest was a bus driver my brothers and I as well as a couple close friends who lived near us used to take from school whom we called "Beethoven" because he sort of looked like the composer. He used to drive the rush hour 54 and we'd always see him behind the wheel of those 1980 GMs. But back to corporate disillusion, I can always tell a new operator in Toronto by how old school they act. Cheerful attitude, old school announcements and even sometimes full regalia with the operators cap. I can tell those who are veterans because of the reserved look on their faces and their mannerisms. Like those subway operators who rush into their cab and slam the door without removing their coats. LOL. Can't say I blame them. I used to work in a counter deli that was next to another counter that sold cheap slices of pizza and pop that was next to a condo construction site. I can tell by the way that the construction guys acted and ordered that they had to stick together. This was in Liberty Village and you know how it goes with the hoity-toity, ex-warehouse-turned-loft dwelling crowd there!

Yeah that one tree cutting job was one for the books. In the space of about an hour or two we had one lady who spent the better part of 30 minutes accusing of us scratching her fancy new SUV with a pine needle or something. We're lucky we didn't have to summon a jeweler to have a look for her and prove there was not a scratch on her Snobmobile. We had another resident (it was in one of those neighbourhoods with those garages facing each other with an alleyway going out to the street) complaining about the noise of our chainsaws. Another complaining about the mess made from the debris of a 150 year old tree coming down. Actually it was two of them. And many other complaining about the debris in the driveway that we didn't clear away fast enough for them being a crew of only 4 guys. In spite of that though (and a trip up a ladder from one roof to the roof of a low rise apartment that nearly stopped my heart) it was a good job and we all made a killing. I even got to surf on a bundle of pine tree cuttings hitched to the back of the truck LOL.

I was the same way when I was a kid. We were lucky it was the 80s and the economy was relatively good that we were able to replace all the toys that I broke just to see how they worked. The earliest I remember is pulling a motor out of some battery operated car I got for Christmas. That car didn't last 3 hours. LOL. I dunno how I became interested in electric/electronics stuff. I used to just gaze at the telegraph poles and all the weird contraptions and wires and draw them on the back of all my school work. I miss the trolley buses for that reason. I like the look of a bunch of wires, insulators, and etc in the air. Most people don't like that. Wish I got more serious about electronics engineering.

That right. Back in the old days when Toronto was more of a working class manufacturing hub, people were nicer and didn't look down on you for what you did. And people did rather well for themselves. My mom was an accountant on University Ave and also a computer programmer my dad was a truck driver. I imagine a union like that would never happen today! LOL We also had things like cub scouts back then which taught self-sufficiency at an early age. A thing that seems completely lost with this up and coming generation. I once went for a bike ride with a friend and her bike seat kept shifting. We stopped and I grabbed my tools that I always carry on bike rides and fixed it on the spot. She was like, DAMN, my bf would never be able to do that (her bf was a hipster deal). You could tell she wanted a little ride on the Downsview 108. Let that be a lesson to you yunguns. Women like a guy that can fix stuff! . Speaking of which, those pine trees you see behind the G Ross Lord reservoir were planted by my beaver troupe in the 80s. We did that stuff at age 6. Good luck finding a 20 year old who can do that today! I've met grown men that didn't know a Robertson screwdriver from a Phillips head. I have to shake my head sometimes. I noticed the same shift around the time you did. Somewhere around 1998-99. That's when I started to notice people buried in their Nokia phones as if there was anything to monitor constantly on those. I enrolled in a school where the first order of the day in the first class was the teacher asking everyone what our parents did for a living so they could pre-judge us. We are lucky we were raised the way we are because guys who can fix their own things diminishes with each passing generation.

HAH! Good luck with enforcing a rule like that in Toronto where more often than not the security are on drugs/drunk themselves! I imagine in those places you are speaking of, people have weapons for self-defence or for hunting and not in case of "being disrespected" like here in the city. So I imagine the reason they'd never make rules like that down here are to protect security guards from any irrational violence.

I haven't been out West or that far North. But I have worked a lot in cottage country and even up there it's a different story. That is if it's not like a town like Port-Carling that imported Toronto up north. I totally understand how you felt when you got back. i first experienced that feeling after my first trip up North to Kearney. I had to take the next day off school when we got back because I was depressed.

 

 

 

[Doppelkupplung]

I've figured out that I'll be spending close to $400 a month on transit. So around $2,600/ academic year. Neat. 

[captaintrolley]

43 minutes ago, Doppelkupplung said:

I've figured out that I'll be spending close to $400 a month on transit. So around $2,600/ academic year. Neat. 

Wow, that's a lot.

[Wayside Observer]

14 hours ago, Doppelkupplung said:

I've figured out that I'll be spending close to $400 a month on transit. So around $2,600/ academic year. Neat. 

That's an interesting practical example of how parts of the election campaign and recent history have been unfolding.

Back when I went back to school, the 15% public transportation tax credit had just been put in place.  That plus the educational credits, I was getting all of the tax deducted on my part time and summer earnings back and had some carryover on the educational credits and I had a third to a half of my next year's tuition ready to go as soon as the tax refund arrived, since tuition was a lot more reasonable back then too.

Going by your numbers, that tax credit's worth $60 to you per month or just under $400 per academic year which is a lot of money when you're a student.  If you're using Go Transit which the $400/month figure tends to suggest, you're also forking out for the cumulative year over year 7% plus fare increases they stacked up for the longest time while that tax credit was available before Trudeau axed it.  Fares didn't go down when that happened either so between the loss of that 15% plus the more modest 3% increase Metrolinx did that year, Go Transit prices went up 18% in a single year on top of all those 7% increases previously.  Unfortunately, all this means that you're being screwed just getting to and from campus, never mind what's been done to student aid plus what you're going to be taken for after you set foot in the office of the registrar to pay your fees.

Now here's where things get interesting for the election campaign:  Trudeau can't really campaign on putting that tax credit back after taking it away.  In terms of campaigning towards the middle class and those aspiring to join it, Scheer has out manoeuvred Trudeau by promising to reinstate the tax credit and the money that Trudeau took out of the pockets of you're average middle class or anybody else riding public transportation to and from work every day.  The various statistics out there suggest that the tax credit has minimal effect on carbon output but it does line up with both of them campaigning to put more money back in your pocket which this credit does directly.  Interestingly, as a working example of bias in reporting, in the media that I've seen so far, both CBC and the Toronto Star have been only reporting the cost vs. minimal environmental benefit side only and not that it would help out people experiencing serious commute costs.  You have to be careful about accepting media reports, election promises, advertising claims, press releases, you name it at face value because there's always some amount of spin of some kind being put on it.

14 hours ago, captaintrolley said:

Wow, that's a lot.

Aren't you happy you don't live in Ontario?  This place veered off the rails head first into a rock face when the "Common Sense Revolution" happened and it's been a smoking wreck ever since.

[Wayside Observer]

On 9/7/2019 at 8:54 PM, Wayside Observer said:

The lower HP’s power supply appears to have developed a problem since the last time I used it.  

I continued with my workshop rebuild today and had to move those counters out of the way.  So I thought I’d look at the one that acted up quickly.  When I fired them up it spazzed out and I brushed my hand against the two of them and got a tingle so I grabbed a meter and measured 60 v on the chassis so I was wondering if the power cord had a bad ground or neutral since realized I had another piece of gear spaz out similarly with the same cord.  Low and behold, the cord crushed the ground prong in.  I haven’t checked the other piece of equipment but I wonder if the same thing happened and I’ve got a cord with a bad PH-163 connector on the end.  I hope nothing got torched in this mess.

I made good progress getting the rest of the shelves up and equipment racked even if I put some gouges in the bench surfaces fighting some of the heavier RF stuff into place by myself.  If anybody ever breaks into my place, the police would only have to go to the hospital and ask who checked in with hernias to find the suspects.

[Wayside Observer]

On September 13, 2019 at 7:59 PM, Downsview 108 said:

But back to corporate disillusion, I can always tell a new operator in Toronto by how old school they act. Cheerful attitude, old school announcements and even sometimes full regalia with the operators cap. I can tell those who are veterans because of the reserved look on their faces and their mannerisms. Like those subway operators who rush into their cab and slam the door without removing their coats. LOL. Can't say I blame them. I used to work in a counter deli that was next to another counter that sold cheap slices of pizza and pop that was next to a condo construction site. I can tell by the way that the construction guys acted and ordered that they had to stick together. This was in Liberty Village and you know how it goes with the hoity-toity, ex-warehouse-turned-loft dwelling crowd there!

I've noticed that too.  I wonder what the average time span is between a new hire goes from bright eyed and idealistic to cynical and jaded with that resigned look of another day, another dollar?  Liberty Village has turned into something else.  Personally, I don't have much reason to visit the area very often but I had a kijiji pickup for an HP 11C scientific calculator about a month ago.  I arrived and ended up with time to kill so I sat down on a bench and watched the circus going on.  The population density is insane.  There is no supporting infrastructure to carry it.  I almost asked the lady selling me the 11C how on earth someone living in that area came to own a machine like that.  It's something I'd never expect given the demographic and as it was, she was surprised someone even wanted it and there'd be a market for something like that these days.  The whole time I was down there, I felt like I was sorely out of place.  I know the indoor football people organizers are thinking about renting the Allan Lamport stadium over the winter seriously enough to get pricing quoted and if that happens, it's going to be a nightmare.  Getting in and out of Liberty Village by car and finding parking is going to be a disaster and I doubt that the locals would be happy with a ton of football players showing up every Saturday night and ruining the vibe of the area.

On September 13, 2019 at 7:59 PM, Downsview 108 said:

In the space of about an hour or two we had one lady who spent the better part of 30 minutes accusing of us scratching her fancy new SUV with a pine needle or something. We're lucky we didn't have to summon a jeweler to have a look for her and prove there was not a scratch on her Snobmobile. We had another resident (it was in one of those neighbourhoods with those garages facing each other with an alleyway going out to the street) complaining about the noise of our chainsaws. Another complaining about the mess made from the debris of a 150 year old tree coming down. Actually it was two of them. And many other complaining about the debris in the driveway that we didn't clear away fast enough for them being a crew of only 4 guys.

Wow.  Unfortunately, this kind of nonsense from bystanders has become incredibly common these days.

On September 13, 2019 at 7:59 PM, Downsview 108 said:

That right. Back in the old days when Toronto was more of a working class manufacturing hub, people were nicer and didn't look down on you for what you did. And people did rather well for themselves. My mom was an accountant on University Ave and also a computer programmer my dad was a truck driver. I imagine a union like that would never happen today! LOL We also had things like cub scouts back then which taught self-sufficiency at an early age...Speaking of which, those pine trees you see behind the G Ross Lord reservoir were planted by my beaver troupe in the 80s. We did that stuff at age 6.

Looking back at things now with the benefit of a late 2019 perspective, I really wonder if the beginning of the end of the middle class began in earnest with the recession that happened at the very end of the 1980s and lingered through the first couple years of the 90s.  Since then, the economy's never really had long sustained run where things have gotten better for everybody.  By the time things started climbing back from that recession, there was that Asian Flu recession in the later 90s, the .com bubble crashed a couple of years after that, 9/11 crashed the economy a couple years after that, then there was the 2008 financial crisis, and things don't seem to have recovered from that still and the tariffs and trade wars that Trump's kicked off is putting additional drag on things.  In the meantime, I look back at what my parents were able to do by the time they were my age, most of that time on a single income, and compare against my situation and I've in theory done everything right or fairly close to and there's no comparison.

I was never in beavers but I got in cubs and stayed through scouts.  It's true, things like that teach you a lot about how to be self sufficient and there's a whole raft of skills there that are sorely lacking with a lot of people now.  Basics like how to cook.  Each patrol in scouts was responsible for at least one meal during the camps.  Contrast with the articles about how a lot of new condos don't have kitchens.  The troop I was in owned Camp Endobanah which is just outside of Norland.  Getting up there well after dark for a fall or winter camp was great.  I miss those.  There's a TTC connection too.  The mess hall was a building thrown up by the TTC at Eglinton div. during WWII and wasn't needed post-war so it was disassembled and rebuilt up at the scout camp.  Getting up there after the sun set and throwing the breakers on and getting the mess hall lit up with the soft glow of the 60 watt bulbs in the rafters and a roaring fire going in the fireplace to take the chill off, and fire up a big cauldron of hot chocolate in the kitchen was always the start to a great weekend as long as nothing set off scouter grumpy.

On September 13, 2019 at 7:59 PM, Downsview 108 said:

I haven't been out West or that far North. But I have worked a lot in cottage country and even up there it's a different story. That is if it's not like a town like Port-Carling that imported Toronto up north. I totally understand how you felt when you got back. i first experienced that feeling after my first trip up North to Kearney. I had to take the next day off school when we got back because I was depressed.

Things start change once you get out of Toronto even as close as the top of Newmarket and the Niagara Peninsula as long as you stay away from the tourist traps and Toronto weekend vacation destinations where it's more of the same because it's been imported.  I remember the first year I started playing football, one of the away games was in Sault Ste. Marie and we all carpooled up there and some of the players I was riding with had never been that far from the GTA before and several commented about how people were a lot quieter and more polite compared to down here.  I had to explain that this was normal once you get out of the greater Toronto area.  Shortly after I got my first car, one of my friends and I took it out for a spin on a Monday and we were driving around some back roads northwest of Toronto and we saw a dirt road.  The friend said no, don't go up the dirt road right as I was spinning the steering wheel to get on it and we barrelled up north along a bunch of dirt roads and somehow ended up in Collingwood as the sun was setting.  Both of us were hungry so I parked and we found a British pub.  The Monday night special was a very reasonably priced beautiful prime rib dinner which we both ordered and enjoyed in a low key, relaxing atmosphere.  This was very clearly being put on by the pub for the locals, deliberately scheduled for Mondays once the Torontonians were safely packed up and migrated down south the day before.   The atmosphere in that restaurant would've been totally different during the weekend, that's for sure, with a DJ blasting music and a place packed full of loud yuppies.  I love cottage country and points north so I definitely understand being depressed upon returning to Toronto.  I couldn't believe how hard the adjustment was when I came back from Calgary and Yellowknife.  I wasn't expecting anything to hit me at all, never mind hit me hard like that.  It is depressing, coming back to the GTA after you've enjoyed being away for a while isn't it?

[Downsview 108]

On 9/15/2019 at 7:02 PM, Wayside Observer said:

I've noticed that too.  I wonder what the average time span is between a new hire goes from bright eyed and idealistic to cynical and jaded with that resigned look of another day, another dollar?  Liberty Village has turned into something else.  Personally, I don't have much reason to visit the area very often but I had a kijiji pickup for an HP 11C scientific calculator about a month ago.  I arrived and ended up with time to kill so I sat down on a bench and watched the circus going on.  The population density is insane.  There is no supporting infrastructure to carry it.  I almost asked the lady selling me the 11C how on earth someone living in that area came to own a machine like that.  It's something I'd never expect given the demographic and as it was, she was surprised someone even wanted it and there'd be a market for something like that these days.  The whole time I was down there, I felt like I was sorely out of place.  I know the indoor football people organizers are thinking about renting the Allan Lamport stadium over the winter seriously enough to get pricing quoted and if that happens, it's going to be a nightmare.  Getting in and out of Liberty Village by car and finding parking is going to be a disaster and I doubt that the locals would be happy with a ton of football players showing up every Saturday night and ruining the vibe of the area.

Wow.  Unfortunately, this kind of nonsense from bystanders has become incredibly common these days.

Looking back at things now with the benefit of a late 2019 perspective, I really wonder if the beginning of the end of the middle class began in earnest with the recession that happened at the very end of the 1980s and lingered through the first couple years of the 90s.  Since then, the economy's never really had long sustained run where things have gotten better for everybody.  By the time things started climbing back from that recession, there was that Asian Flu recession in the later 90s, the .com bubble crashed a couple of years after that, 9/11 crashed the economy a couple years after that, then there was the 2008 financial crisis, and things don't seem to have recovered from that still and the tariffs and trade wars that Trump's kicked off is putting additional drag on things.  In the meantime, I look back at what my parents were able to do by the time they were my age, most of that time on a single income, and compare against my situation and I've in theory done everything right or fairly close to and there's no comparison.

I was never in beavers but I got in cubs and stayed through scouts.  It's true, things like that teach you a lot about how to be self sufficient and there's a whole raft of skills there that are sorely lacking with a lot of people now.  Basics like how to cook.  Each patrol in scouts was responsible for at least one meal during the camps.  Contrast with the articles about how a lot of new condos don't have kitchens.  The troop I was in owned Camp Endobanah which is just outside of Norland.  Getting up there well after dark for a fall or winter camp was great.  I miss those.  There's a TTC connection too.  The mess hall was a building thrown up by the TTC at Eglinton div. during WWII and wasn't needed post-war so it was disassembled and rebuilt up at the scout camp.  Getting up there after the sun set and throwing the breakers on and getting the mess hall lit up with the soft glow of the 60 watt bulbs in the rafters and a roaring fire going in the fireplace to take the chill off, and fire up a big cauldron of hot chocolate in the kitchen was always the start to a great weekend as long as nothing set off scouter grumpy.

Things start change once you get out of Toronto even as close as the top of Newmarket and the Niagara Peninsula as long as you stay away from the tourist traps and Toronto weekend vacation destinations where it's more of the same because it's been imported.  I remember the first year I started playing football, one of the away games was in Sault Ste. Marie and we all carpooled up there and some of the players I was riding with had never been that far from the GTA before and several commented about how people were a lot quieter and more polite compared to down here.  I had to explain that this was normal once you get out of the greater Toronto area.  Shortly after I got my first car, one of my friends and I took it out for a spin on a Monday and we were driving around some back roads northwest of Toronto and we saw a dirt road.  The friend said no, don't go up the dirt road right as I was spinning the steering wheel to get on it and we barrelled up north along a bunch of dirt roads and somehow ended up in Collingwood as the sun was setting.  Both of us were hungry so I parked and we found a British pub.  The Monday night special was a very reasonably priced beautiful prime rib dinner which we both ordered and enjoyed in a low key, relaxing atmosphere.  This was very clearly being put on by the pub for the locals, deliberately scheduled for Mondays once the Torontonians were safely packed up and migrated down south the day before.   The atmosphere in that restaurant would've been totally different during the weekend, that's for sure, with a DJ blasting music and a place packed full of loud yuppies.  I love cottage country and points north so I definitely understand being depressed upon returning to Toronto.  I couldn't believe how hard the adjustment was when I came back from Calgary and Yellowknife.  I wasn't expecting anything to hit me at all, never mind hit me hard like that.  It is depressing, coming back to the GTA after you've enjoyed being away for a while isn't it?

You should have seen Liberty Village during the G-20 in 2010. It took me nearly 20 minutes to walk from the GO station to work on Lynn Williams street. They were better off when that area was factories. Would have been a thousand times more productive that latte-sipping yuppies everywhere.

Yeah, those "NIMBYs" are just looking for an excuse to complain about something because their lives are boring.

Very true. Remember "The Cub Book"? I learned a LOT from that little book. I learned to sew, to cook and other things just from that one little 2-color manual (green and black) manual. Unfortunately, I left beavers before I ended up in cubs. My older brother stayed in Scouts Canada for many years. Even got some kind of award at a really cool ceremony (with a magic show afterwards) held at brockton High School (RIP). I did, however, accompany him to a couple banquets. One of which they must have cleaned out the nearest KFC to supply forgetting that these were a bunch of 12-13 year olds. LOL. The amount of leftovers would have resupplied another KFC.

The bars up north are a lot of fun and I worked at a couple of them. Nice place to watch a game and some of them have really good food. Regular, blue-collar guys are in there a lot and most people I see in the bars and restaurants up there look like regulars on first-name basis with the staff. I even went to a cool music festival just outside of Algonquin park on the way to barry's bay. It was completely free. If not for the black, deer and horse flies I'd live up there and only come to Toronto to relieve myself. LOL.

[Downsview 108]

Does this website have a bitcoin miner in it or something? Everytime I open the page my cpu usage skyrockets.