A short-lived business located in Halifax. Opened in 1907, with assistance from the City of Halifax in the form of tax breaks, it was reorganized as the Nova Scotia Car Works in 1911- which became the Eastern Car works the next year. I wonder if they ever built anything.
In 1909 they delivered a couple of electric passenger trams to Nova Scotia Light and Power's transit division, numbers 54 and 56. Those are the only documented deliveries I can find. There are undocumented tales of the company building "several large freight car orders for the Intercolonial, Canadian Northern and Canadian Pacific, and built sixteen passenger cars for the Intercolonial and 22 for the Canadian Northern. In addition, they built a number of single-truck street cars for their native Halifax" but who knows; the industry was in it's heyday and they may have been built by other companies and rebadged and sold by Silliker so he could continue to get all those loans and tax abatements.
ReplyDeleteSilliker was a lumberman by trade and it looks like his insistence on continuing to build cars out of wood after steel came in vogue led to the demise of the company.
Thank you! I'm much impressed with your research. I expect the whole business would be much more interesting to those who business and political students who study graft and fraud.
ReplyDelete