Calling all Ottawa railfans: If you’re feeling nostalgic or have an extra few thousand dollars just lying around, you could be the owner of the city’s old O-Trains.
The City of Ottawa is selling three of the original Bombardier train sets that ran on the O-Train Trillium line when it opened in 2001. The trains were taken out of service three years ago and are being maintained in storage at the Walkley Yard.
Over their lifespans, the trains each covered more than 1.4 million kilometres of track over the course of roughly 20,000 hours of use.
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Bidding starts at $100,000, and removal is entirely the buyer’s responsibility.
The post on govdeals.ca went up this past Monday, according to the city, and will stay up until April 25.
The city won’t say if it has received any bids yet or what will happen to the trains if nobody makes an offer. Chief procurement officer Will McDonald said in a statement that the city won’t comment during an active bidding process.
He did confirm that the bid was posted on Jan. 29, but other online sources suggest this isn’t the first time the city has tried to sell the trains. They were also up for tender through Merx on a post dated Dec. 23, 2016, but that notice appears to have expired.
A post on Ottawa’s Reddit page yielded a few creative suggestions for the trains’ fates, with users suggesting they be put on display at the Canada Science and Technology Museum or on Sparks Street, or converted into a functional restaurant.
