Monday, November 3, 2014
Sunny and cold
Sunny and cold
A 1925 Photo of Ottawa (Canada)
with Cars and a Bus
My wife Heidi and I were Ottawa this past Sunday to celebrate the wedding of their son. He's the last of their three children to get married. We went on Saturday to do a bit of sightseeing, and roamed around the capital of our country Canada. The downtown area is where the pParliament buildings are, as well as the museums and the old market place. Sadly we also saw the War Memorial, where last week, one of of Canadian Solders was killed by a crazed man!
We really only got to walk around because we arrives about 12:00 P.M. noon, settled in, walked about,ate, and before we knew it, we were tires at about 4:30 P.M. Because the downtown core is small, its' easy to walk around and see the sights, without having to takes busses. What I also forgot is that Ottawa is a mere 170 kilometres (102 miles) from Montreal.
Sooner or later, I eventually had to show you what I looked like. I've been using the photo of Buddy, our poodle on my blog opening page. I'm 65 years old, soon to be 66, at the end of the month.
Below is a 1925 photo of Ottawa.
The empty space in the foreground is where the war memorial is now.
The large majestic Gothic looking buildings in the background are the Parliamentary Buildings,
but the real "treasures" for the blog are the cars in the foreground.
Heidi has a iPhone, and it takes amazing photos.
You can see the real car of the toy below just below the first light pole
at the top left part of the photo.
The A.C.Williams cast iron toy below is beautiful.
It's smoother than the one above, and the hand-worn shine (patina) is exceptional.
Here's another match of the top car to the toy below.
This bus photo was the most difficult to try and match up with cast iron toys.
Many of the toys that I found on Liveauctioneers had spare tires on the outside next to the driver, and the front right side where passengers entered the bus. Also, many of the buses had more than 6 windows.
But what I realized after looking and looking at the bus and even the toys, was that there were many doors to the bus. Instead of just one door at the front of the bus to embark and debark (get in and out), there were many doors. It's easier to see the doors on the toys than on the bus in the balck and white photo.
What's interesting with the rims of buses was that they were not spoke wheels,
like most cars of the day were.
One of the identifying characteristics of authentic cast iron toys is how the 2 halves were attached. Most of the time they used a smooth long metal shaft with a rounded head. The head would hold that half side of the toy to the other.The other end was cut down to slightly wronger than the width of the 2 halves, and then hammered with a special rounded head hammer called a pean hammer.
In the case of the Dent bus below, a threaded screw was used. Was the threaded screw originally used at the factory because the company ran out of smooth shafted shaft metal, or did someone replace the original shaft later on?
Below is a Skoglund and Olson Swedish toy.
Most cast iron toys were made in the USA, but here we see a fine example from Europe.
The casting was well done, and you can even see the silver-painted door handles.
Personally, I always like to match up toys with old catalogue illustrations or even photos.
However today's post was fun, and if I get the chance again, I'll try and do another post.
I could put the actual toys in the photos via photo-editing, but that might be too "corny"!
Thanks for dropping by, and as usual,
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be,
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com
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