Profile time again...Profile II : Peter Joyce.

Peter is one of our administrators who will lend a hand to any aspect of the 696 project. Peter is an retired officer from the Canadian Armed Forces which explains his love of orange and red. After all those years wearing drab browns and greens Peter has come out of the closet (wardrobe wise) since retirement. I feel I don't have to post a picture of Peter because he is easily spotted in all the previous photos in this blog...just look for "le grand orange".

Peter Joyce: administrator, greeter, sales star, helper, modeller, answer guy, story teller, painter, Bruce Dudley's commander and chief

Peter the Timetable Printer?

Pete the Track Supervisor  Photo Bruce Dudley

Sales Manager Pete 

Photo: Barry Thomas Collection 

Pete the Administer. Photo: Barry Thomas Collection

Peter is from Montréal and is a big fan of the Montreal & Southern County Railway. He also is a modeller and has scratch-built a beautiful model of a M&SC car.

M&SC Rly  107

Pete works all our fund raising events like Railfair, Open Doors and promotes the 696 project at OVAR meetings. 

He is always on hand to partake in our field trips to the Halton County Radial Railway Museum...working by day and operating their streetcars by night.

Always fearful on missing "coffee break" at Timmy's, Pete the Timekeeper always makes sure we all know the time is 20:45 and the clean-up process must commence. Once we are all gathered at Timmy's, Pete the Story Teller regales us with stories of his military experiences all over the world...these stories I enjoy immensely.

Pete the Painter and his painted Peter Witt car. Photo: Peter's Photography

Peter the PCC car operator.  Photo: Bruce Dudley

Other things I do besides just taking great photos!

As I mentioned in the last entry, Georg is working on the trucks at the east end of the shop; one streetcar length away is my work area. We have no drawings for the car so the first thing I want to do is transfer the all the components from the old 696 beams to the new 696 beams.  With the aid of old photos, new photos of other Ottawa streetcars I have taken plus looking for old rust stain marks on the 696's beams I was able to figure out where the air compressor, brake cylinder, air cooling rad, line switch and resistor grids should be mounted. I have proceeded to drill the holes in the beams where they will hang from.

Ottawa Car 854 at the Canada Science & Technology Museum

854's rusty underbelly. Here is one half of the set of saddles that hold the air reservoirs, and above that is the radiator which cools the compressed air from the compressor before the air reaches the reservoirs. Westinghouse recommends at no less than 25 feet between the two points.


The shot below is where the line switch hangs, just ahead of the air compressor on our car 696.

By doing things this way I will be able to hang the individual parts and in a manner of speaking,"connect the dots" with black pipe (air system) or wire (electrical). Because the sides of the car still in need a fair amount of work before the floor can be installed, I am using 2¼ inch shims in the interim. These shims are equivalent to the thickness of the car's floor.

Here I have started the transfer process. The little wedges between the carriage bolt heads are the shims I'm using to make up the difference of the thickness of the floor. This is the new rad and air reservoir saddles.  The shot is from the top this time and not from the bottom like the one I posted from car 854.

Mike is giving a hand to mount the brackets from which I'll hang the air compressor from. He loves making holes in things. Photo: Bruce Dudley

The National Research Council re-wound the electrical end of the compressor for the group.  I still have to attend to the air end of the compress with a good cleaning and oil change. Photo: Barry Thomas Collection

Westinghouse HD-16 bungalow type motor driven air compressor.

This is the plate from where the main brake cylinder will hang from.

It was a great feeling to finally start adding things to the car rather than taking pieces off.  As the next two photos show, I get to connect the various components to each other with black pipe.  This will involve a little time as the pipe has to be cut, threaded and fit.  I will not be using the pipe dope just yet as the final assembly will take place after the floor is installed.

This shot is of the same assembly but this time taken from under the car. The wooden saddles for the air reservoirs have not been installed yet but I have hung the air compressor and started to "connect the dots" with new black pipe.

The air compressor with its 8" suction strainer installed.  The wooden saddles have also been installed. Once the new air reservoirs have been fabricated I will cut the arches in the wood and make the straps that hold the tanks.

The line switch has been added complete with new base-plate. The switch cover has been removed in order to make the photo interesting. When the cover is on the switch looks like a black box...very uninspiring!