Ottawa Men's Shed Members had a private tour of a multi-year refurbishment project of the Canadair North Star, which is a 1940s Canadian development, for Trans-Canada Air Lines(TCA), of the Douglas DC-4. It is located in a Closed to the Public Hangar at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
Instead of radial piston engines used by the Douglas design, Canadair used Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engines to achieve a higher cruising speed of 325 mph (523 km/h)[2] compared with the 246 mph (396 km/h) of the standard DC-4. Requested by TCA in 1944, the prototype flew on 15 July 1946. The type was used by various airlines and by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). It proved to be reliable but noisy when in service through the 1950s and into the 1960s. Some examples continued to fly into the 1970s, converted to cargo aircraft.
For more details see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadair_North_Star
71 were built. The one at the museum is the last. It was left out in the weather on the museum's runway for almost two decades before an outside group, Project Northstar, was formed to refurbish it.
On 18 March 2024, from 10 am until noon, 20 Shedders toured the aircraft under refurbishment, the various machining, sheet metal and wood working shops available, and visited with four of the team working on the project.