FAST TRACK FOR SKILLS
Shop students help return vehicle to the rails for its 100th birthday
Rideau High School student Sang Thang Plong works on a restoration of Ottawa Streetcar 696, part of a special shop class project.
Thirty high-school students got a hands-on history lesson Friday as they worked on the restoration of Ottawa Streetcar 696 — which from 1917 to 1959 carried passengers between Rockcliffe Park and Britannia.
The Rideau High School shop students have since September spent about 1,300 class hours helping an existing group of volunteers by fashioning wood and metal items, such as hinges, doors and window frames, for the restoration of the 600-series streetcar.
On Friday, about 10 students were lined up along the 15-metre length of the vehicle in an OC Transpo garage on Colonnade Road. As some sanded the metal body in preparation for painting, another five were working to resolve a problem with the installation of a door they had made. Another pair were ensuring the windows they had built in the shop at Rideau were the right fit.
“It’s a lot of fun to do it, and it’s great that we can work on such an amazing piece of history,” said Christian Joyal, a 15-year-old Grade 9 automotive student.
A group of about 20 volunteers, many retired OC Transpo workers, began the 696 restoration in 2000, 41 years after the vehicle was taken out of service and sporting so much rust and rot they weren’t at first sure it could be restored.
After thousands of hours, the group was anxious to see the restoration completed and the car back running on Ottawa rails to mark its 100th anniversary and the 150th
It’s a lot of fun to do it, and it’s great that we can work on such an amazing piece of history.
birthday of the nation.
They approached woodworking teacher Bob Aucoin, 55, who brought on auto shop teacher Mark Backmann, 43, and a partnership was born.
“I think the students will remember this more than anything else they do at Rideau,” said Aucoin, who has been at the St. Laurent Boulevard school for 25 years. “And they’ll learn more today than they would in my shop.”
Some of what they are learning in the shops, however, they likely wouldn’t learn anywhere else.
Backmann, who has been at Rideau for 14 years, said they are, as much as possible, using the practices, procedures and materials workers would have used to make the original parts in the Albert Street assembly plant of the Ottawa Car Company.
At the moment, for instance, the teachers are looking for a blacksmith to help with some of the fabrication using solid metal stock, a material they had to special order and that needs to be cut, threaded and pounded by hand.
“One hundred years ago, it was commonplace to work with this type of metal,” said Backmann. “Now, we are out of the mainstream. It is not often we get to do something we love like this.”
Rideau’s involvement has been a boon to the restoration group, but the project has benefits beyond learning metal- and woodworking skills for the students.
The project has helped “get the talents out of the kids,” said Rhéaume Laplante, 58, a retired OC Transpo metal worker and the coordinator of the restoration, which has so far cost about $300,000 — most of it in donated materials — and is expected to have cost $500,000 upon completion.
Laplante said the 696 is about 50 per cent restored, and he’s committed to the 2017 completion date, with Aucoin and Backmann and their students’ continued participation.
“The students are eager to learn, they have a unique project to work on and a chance to close the gap between the generations,” said Laplante.