The Ottawa Car Company: 1892-1948

During the streetcar era from the early 1890s through to the beginning of the Great Depression the Ottawa Car Company was the pre-eminent independent Canadian builder of street cars. Although the streetcar era in North America lasted until after the Second World War, new streetcar construction, with the exception of the PCC design, declined rapidly during the 1930s, and ended altogether in the late 1940s. In the 1930s the Ottawa Car Company turned to products such as busses, and aircraft to survive. This provided a base for its aircraft, aircraft parts production and aircraft engine overhaul activities during the Second World War. It had the distinction of producing the last of the traditional streetcar designs in 1948 before it disappeared.

This book is an introduction to the streetcars and railway equipment built by W. W. Wylie in 1892-1893, the Ottawa Car Company 1893-1913, the Ottawa Car Manufacturing Company 1913-1939, and the Ottawa Car and Aircraft Company, 1939-1948, which occupied the premises located at the corner of Slater and Kent streets in Ottawa. These builders are identified as the Ottawa Car Company in this history.

The pictures have been chosen as far as possible, to show the cars in the condition that they emerged from the factory, rather than when “in service” or as rebuilt. They have also been chosen to illustrate the development of the streetcar and the range of vehicles produced by the company. It is a tribute to the original quality of Ottawa Cars that at least 47 of the approximately 1,700 cars built by the company have survived to the present day. Many survived until their original owners were abandoned and some were sold on to surviving companies until they too were abandoned. Some of the cars in museums in Canada and the United States are still in operating condition.

The company delivered new cars in various states of completion ranging from new bodies, complete except for electrical equipment, which was to be installed by the customer, through to fully equipped and ready-to-run vehicles. In the early days the Ottawa newspapers occasionally noted that a car for a “foreign” city had been tested on Ottawa Electric Railway trackage, and there is a picture of a car in Moose Jaw livery in front of Laurier House on Laurier Avenue in Ottawa. Fully equipped streetcars for “foreign cities” sometimes made the short trips to Ottawa railheads under their own power over the tracks of the Ottawa Electric Railway. Ultimately Ottawa-built cars ran in cities from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia.