Buses_3152_3726

Look Twice . . . . It's not a trolleybus using its battery to ford a gap in the overhead. It's a Triesel. It's a what? Triesel means "once a trolley now a diesel." After Expo, the property converted surplus E-800 trolleys to diesels. The Triesel was perhaps the least esteemed of Vancouver's many contributions to the art of electric propulsion. Drivers disliked them. They were underpowered and had trouble on hills when fully loaded. Some had exhaust fumes in the passenger space. The 3151 and 3152 kept their poles and retrievers and were used for applying deicing fluid. The triesels were renumbered after I made this 35mm photo in February 1990. TRAMS has preserved 3151 (factory E-800 #2649). The 3152 was working the new 44 route and is turning off Burrard onto Pender. Visible is the brown Marine Building (an Art Deco landmark) and the old Customs House.

"10 10th-UBC via BLVD" . . . . Today the trolley overhead goes all the way to UBC and loops in the middle-left distance of this view. The 4 and 17 trolleys now serve the onetime domain of GM "New Looks" like 3726. This guy returned as a 14/34 Hastings Express. A recent comedy play on Vancouver stages, "Bus 14", finds a few hee-hees in what was in reality a grim run. The 3000 series had all the Vancouver diesels: 3100-3300 were Flyer, 3400 was Brill, 3500 was 35-foot New Look, and 3600-3800 were New Look 40-footers. The 3900s were S8H53xx, mostly two-door transits with suburban interiors. A handful numbered 3980-up were single-door reclining-seat speed jobs. I saw the needle of an S8H speedometer pass 70 on Hwy 99; at Ladner the female operator went necking in the bushes. Some of the 3600 series were spartan, with sheet metal walls, centreline fluourescent lights, and seating for 53 passengers instead of 49 as was more usual for New Looks on this property. Vancouver's New Looks got scarcer and scarcer after 1990 when GM Classics and Flyer D-901As arrived.

New Look Zenith . . . . In 1990 I got a job in an electronics lab located on the North Vancouver route that this bus was serving when I photo'd it in 1977. The North Van job was a "new look" for my engineering career. Indeed, North Van was New Look country. All were 4000-something. The 4909 was 40-foot S8H with 8-cylinder power, soft seats and reading lights. (As was usual on this property, the 35-footers got their own number series, 4500.) Buses coming downtown via Ironworkers Bridge ran past this point where Burrard Street crosses Melville. The rail tunnel between Coal Harbour and the CPR yard on False Creek runs under here. Because SkyTrain was to utilize the tunnel, this building was pulled down to make way for Burrard Station. Here in 1985 I commissioned the tunnel's leaky-feeder radio system. The construction workers locked up the site unexpectedly and I had to hop the fence with a heavy Cushman CE-50 test set to get away.

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