Every once in a while, myself and my colleagues receive some interesting content from readers in our email and snail-mail inboxes. Friend of the blog Jason Vanderhill sent me a few images of transit past. The first is of a 1990 brochure, the year of BC’s public transit centennial. The next is an image of a weekly transit pass from 1947.
Public Information Officer for TransLink, Drew Snider, received this photo and a card from the participants in last year’s Shinerama. Shinerama is a fundraiser for cystic fibrosis. Volunteers, like the ones in this photo, shined one of our community shuttles at UBC as part of the activities.
I always love getting transit-related photos/images. If you have some and would like to share them, please send them to me at thebuzzer@translink.ca.
Angus McIntyre started operating buses in Vancouver in 1969 and retired just last year. During this time, he operated different types of buses including Brill Trolly buses and worked for the different bus operating authorities in Metro Vancouver including BC Hydro and Power Authority, Metro Transit and Coast Mountain Bus Company.
Not only are the images curious peeks into Vancouver’s past, Angus’ voice tells a story of someone who truly cared for the work that he did and the people he moved.
Angus was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) for his 41 years of exemplary customer service and 36 years of safe driving. He’s also been inducted into the CUTA Hall of Fame and is the first “front-line” transit employee to be honoured. Here he is wearing his original BC Hydro uniform!
A southbound 8 Davie at Howe and Pender in 1969. Click for a much larger version. Photo by Angus McIntyre!
The lovely Angus McIntyre is scanning his archives of historical Vancouver transit photos, and sent along two classic bus photos that he thought we might enjoy. Above is one, and below is the other!
Granville southbound, nearside Dunsmuir. Note the split stop arrangement for the 7 and 10, and the Granville behind. Click for a much larger version. Photo by Angus McIntyre!
Angus added the following about this second photo:
Notice lack of right side mirror, no licence plate and the change dish is visible through the front window. A gentleman at the rear doors is holding the gate for alighting passengers.
Oh also — it turns out that Angus also took one of the photos of the 14 Hastings recently posted on the blog, and he sent along a little more info about it!
A Brill trolley with the BC Hydro colours, operating as the 14 Hastings in 1967.
Note: This is a scheduled post as I’m away this week, returning Monday April 11, 2011. If you need to reach TransLink info or staff, see this post!
As part of our April 2011 service changes, we are bringing back the 14 Hastings trolley route—an iconic former bus route that ran through Vancouver’s downtown for many years!
The 14—which even had a famous play named after it—makes its triumphant return to the streets due to optimization changes for the 10 and 17 trolley routes.
Here to tell us more about the 14’s history and its current incarnation is Peter Klitz, one of TransLink’s planners involved in the project. Read on for more insights and some classic photos of the 14 through time!
A very early imagined illustration of the SkyTrain station environment by Ron Love for the Vancouver Regional Rapid Transit project. The rendering of Waterfront Station turned out to be quite different from final implementation. Click for a MUCH larger version!
Well! After seeing a couple of early SkyTrain drawings, Buzzer pal Jason Vanderhill went in search of the artist… and found Ron Love, a longtime architectural illustrator in Vancouver!
Ron was kind enough to let Jason take some photos of his early SkyTrain works, and Jason was kind enough to share with us here at the Buzzer :) Above is an early concept of the SkyTrain station environment: imagine what might have been at Waterfront!
A group of 33 conductorettes posing in front of the 16th Avenue streetcar at Prior Street barns in 1944. They were at first issued skirts as part of their uniform, but this image shows the transition to pants. Skirts were difficult to manage when climbing the trolley to reset the poles! Photo courtesy of the Coast Mountain Bus Company Archives. Click for a larger version.
Make sure you listen to the audio interviews with three conductorettes in that post—it’s fantastic to hear about their experience in their own words :)
Transit Museum Society volunteer Norm, photographed inside the restored B.C. Electric interurban car #1207.
I’m happy to welcome back Michael Taylor-Noonan, the newsletter editor for the Transit Museum Society (TRAMS), for another guest post! (He previously wrote a guest post about bus numbering in Vancouver.) This time, Michael has kindly contributed an interview with Norm, a fellow TRAMS member who rode Vancouver transit in the early part of the twentieth century. Read on for a look at how the system worked back then!
My Travels with Norm, by Michael Taylor-Noonan
Norm and I are travelling along Highway 1. We’re on our way to the Transit Museum maintenance shop near the Burnaby – Vancouver border. Norm no longer drives, so every second Sunday I take him to the shop. I’ve been doing this for quite a while, and each time I drive Norm, I first ask how he’s been in the intervening two weeks.
Pretty good for an old guy he says. He’s 86: a retired machinist who’s worked on many things throughout his working career from screws to ships. Now Norm is a volunteer with Trams. His skill machining small parts comes in very handy. He also has amassed a great collection of tools over the years, some of which he brings to the shop in four very heavy toolboxes. And every time he lets me carry his tools out to the car, he reminds me that he was born in 1924, one year after Vancouver’s first bus ran.
And so the conversation shifts to his favourite topic: life in that Vancouver of years past when buses, streetcars and interurbans all displayed one name: B.C. Electric Railway Co. However, I decide today will be different, I will just not listen to Norm’s stories, I will begin to record them, transcribe them, and post them here. Like any good storyteller at a party, he at first doesn’t want to tell me anything, but is eventually ‘persuaded’ to begin…. “Well, seeing as you asked….”.
A 1982 conceptual drawing of Nanaimo Station by Manfred Stein for the firm Architektengruppe U-Bahn. Click for a MUCH larger version!
Our recent foray into SkyTrain history prompted Buzzer pal Jason Vanderhill to seek out more conceptual SkyTrain illustrations… and he’s surfaced with two 1982 illustrated SkyTrain concepts from an German Austrian architecture firm!
For the full story behind the drawings, check out Jason’s post at Vancouver is Awesome, or his two posts over at Illustrated Vancouver (post 1, post 2). Here’s a quick quote of Jason’s I loved about the drawing below though:
I simply love how various Germanic subtleties work their way into this drawing – the two lovely Edelweiss girls, the German Shepherd pursuing the Pomeranian, the brand new Mercedes SEC Coupe, and to draw your attention back to the focal point of the illustration, a little red van in the centre of the page that looks very much like a German fire truck to me! I instantly swooned when I saw the drawing!
A 1982 conceptual drawing of a SkyTrain station by Manfred Stein for firm Architektengruppe U-Bahn. Click for a MUCH larger version!
And as always, check out the Buzzer blog’s Transit History category for more historical SkyTrain video, photos, and more. Happy 25th, SkyTrain!
A poster about transportation from the B.C. Electric files at the Vancouver Archives.
Here’s another gem I found in the B.C. Electric paper files at the City of Vancouver Archives, along with the classic transit ad I posted before. (The brown streaks are glue—the poster came out of a paper scrapbook.)
Unfortunately I do not have the exact item number, but it’s from some time in the 1950s I believe… and the message is still one that rings true in many ways today! If you can’t see the text, it reads:
Don’t laugh. Actual tests in some of the very large cities on this continent show that the average speed at which traffic moves through congested areas is less than it was during the horse and buggy days.
When you think of the effort and money put into traffic planning and control, parking schemes, new bridges, widened streets—it’s mighty discouraging.
Unless we profit from the experience of bigger cities where it has become dangerous and impractical to drive a car in the congested areas, we shall be faced before long with intolerable conditions.
Let’s get where we are going faster… let’s help hold down taxes and prevent more accidents. We can do this by taking our cars into congested areas only when vitally necessary.
By freeing the limited street space for commercial vehicles and transit vehicles, we make it easier for people to get to and from our business districts. We encourage the economic growth of our metropolitan area.
And just look at that list of sponsors endorsing the message from across the region!
The SkyTrain 25th anniversary celebration continues: here’s another fantastic SkyTrain promotional video from 1984, again shot by local video company JEM Productions!
This one stares into the future with a bit more seriousness than the past few videos, but this time with a killer synth soundtrack. (Seriously: I’ve got to make some ringtones.)
It traces the new SkyTrain route, gives us a glimpse of the SkyTrain attendants’ fabulous uniforms, and has a fairly exhaustive list of all the economic benefits and regional growth that Vancouver can expect.
And of course you can check out some awesome aerial shots of historic 1980s Vancouver!
If you’d like to see more, I’ve posted two other SkyTrain videos in the past, plus scans of photos and memorabilia. Check out the entire Transit History category for all of those and even more history tidbits. Happy 25th, SkyTrain!
Another quick post to point out another Buzzer that arrived in the mail a while back! This one is from 1943 and was sent in by Mike Conroy. The issue has a goofy article about a recent snowfall, which they’ve dubbed “stuff” instead of snow, and there’s assorted other great stories about riding transit in the Lower Mainland—including that big cartoon urging riders to move to the back! Download the full PDF here.
I asked Mike where he found this Buzzer and here’s his story: “I found them tucked into an old library book in UBC storage. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title but it was a textbook from the early 1930s.”
Thanks so much Mike! Again, if anyone else happens to find an old Buzzer in their holdings and you don’t know what do with it, please do send it in to TransLink: just write to the attention of the Buzzer editor, 1600 – 4720 Kingsway, Burnaby, BC V5H 4N2. We love collecting this sort of thing in our archives!
Up up and away: the SkyTrain Transformer helps kids learn to ride the system!
Why yes, that IS a SkyTrain Transformer! He’s the star of Up, Up, and Away on SkyTrain, a 1986 Transformers-inspired kids guide to the system, kindly shared by my colleague Bill Knight.
The Transformers made their debut in 1984, so we think that BC Transit was just trying to capitalize on what was popular with kids those days. The SkyTrain Transformer is clearly not an official Autobot or Decepticon, but it’s plenty charming all the same :)
And remember, you can check out the entire Transit History category for more photos, videos, and stories on SkyTrain’s history and more. Happy 25th, SkyTrain!
Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales at Patterson Station in 1986.
Aha — I’m pleased to present a story from Ven Rao, one of the SkyTrain attendants lucky enough to staff the train Princess Diana was on in 1986!
One of my fondest Skytrain memories was when I was one of the STAs selected to ride the train when Lady Diana and Prince Charles visited our city in 1986 or thereabouts. It was a wonderful experience to see royalty closeup and the fond memory still lingers on due to Diana’s death.
There were several STAs selected to ride each car. It was one of those anxious moments when we waited at Patterson inbound hoping our train will run without any problems. That morning, I am not sure of the exact date, the Royal couple officially opened a children’s playground at Central Park near Swangard Stadium, and following that they rode our SkyTrain. The very moment as they were coming up the escalator, we could hear all the clicking of the cameras by the news media people.
Once on the platform they were greeted by the then President of BC Transit Mr. Stu Hodgson. Indeed it was a moving experience to see the young royalty from closeup. We were given the protocol not to extend our hand, unless they extend to do the handshake. I recall Prince Charles was dressed in a suit and tie, while Diana was wearing a pearl white dress. Flowers that were given to Diana during the ceremony at the park were left on the train, we all shared and took them home. I remember taking a yellow rose and giving it to my wife.
Thanks to Jennifer Siddon from SkyTrain for passing along Ven’s story and the additional photos of Charles and Diana above. You can also see a couple more photos below of the prince and princess at Expo sent along by Jennifer, although this time they’re not at a SkyTrain station!
The banner unrolled after the ribbon cutting. Photo by Alan M.
What a bounty: Alan M has shared some great photos from the opening of Scott Road Station in 1990. No, it’s not 80s SkyTrain, but it’s still a part of SkyTrain heritage all the same!
He’s provided captions for each so, as before, I have just put them in and added no extraneous commentary. Click each one for a MUCH larger version as well. Enjoy!
