Quote:
Originally Posted by ns_kid
Thanks, Mark. All of those photos bring back memories. The trolleycoaches (that was NSLP's preferred name for them) were clean and quiet, but a challenge for operators given Halifax's tight turns and steep hills.
When I was a kid, my dad worked in the head offices of NSLP (or "Nova Scotia Light" as he preferred to call it), on the upper floors of the old Capitol Theatre Building. His office looked directly down on the intersection of Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road. I loved to visit his office after hours (riding up in the antique Otis elevator with its manually-operator scissor gate) so I could stand at his window and watch the trolleycoaches navigate the corner. It was not uncommon to see the trolley shoe lose contact with the wire, requiring the operator to get out and reset the pole using the "trolley retriever", the spring loaded cable at the rear of the coach.
With 87 coaches, NSLP had what was said to be the largest all-trolleycoach fleet in North America from 1949 until 1963, when they added 12 GM "New Look" diesel buses. All but six of the trolleycoaches were Brill-designed T-44 and T-44A coaches built new for NSLP by Canadian Car and Foundry in Fort William (Thunder Bay) ON. When Halifax Transit took over on January 1, 1970, they bought only the GMs. NSLP did sell off some of the old coaches to people to use as camps and sheds. (In fact it was to try to avoid that fate that NSLP sadly scrapped all of its old Birney tram cars when it abandoned the street railway in 1949.) One trolleycoach was donated to the Seashore Trolley Museum in Maine but, as far as I know, it was not preserved and when I visited there a few years ago no one could tell me its fate.
There are more great photos of NSLP trolleycoaches here. I recommend Leger and Lawrence's excellent 1994 book Halifax: City of Trolleycoaches to anyone wanting to know more about transit in Halifax during the period.
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I just reread your post when this thread popped back up to the top and I started thinking of the old trolleycoaches that were turned into storage that I recall seeing.
Two specifically come to mind:
1) Years ago I had to go to Conrad's gravel pit in Dartmouth to pick up a load of crushed stone, and I recall seeing one in the yard, surprisingly. I'm assuming they must have used it for storage at one time.
Don't remember its exact location, but I think it's in the middle of
this shot from Google Maps...
2) There used to be one beside one of the homes on Highway 2, just off exit 7 of the 102. I believe it's long gone now, but it was in the general area of this link:
https://goo.gl/maps/Y7nbWdTnjWYD3tC29
Regarding the one at Seashore, I did find a couple of pics on the net, at this link:
http://www.sfu.ca/person/dearmond/ph...fax.photos.htm
The first shot looks like it was taken years ago (web page was last updated in 2011):
The second photo is the same unit (based on identical front panel damage) shot apparently some years later and does not look good:
Given my experience with the antique car hobby, a restoration of a rare vehicle such as this, which has deteriorated so badly would be extremely labour intensive, and parts would be virtually impossible to find. Based on that, I would say the chances of its survival would be very small, unfortunately.