We gathered at Connaught Carhouse around 11 a.m. to await boarding and departure. The TTC staff were courteous; I suppose they were used to seeing several characters toting cameras milling about. The carbarn provided a number of good photo opportunities and plenty of equipment to look at. Finally, at around 11 a.m., a door opened, and ALRV 4223 trundled out. We got on, and headed east...

Left is a picture of another TTC maintenance vehicle. I took this just before we left Connaught Carhouse. Yes, it's only a pick-up truck, but look at what it's carrying. The thumbnail doesn't show it clearly, but there are trolley poles stacked inside.

We had a dewirement at Queen and Kingston Road, and the driver had a long way to walk to put the pole back. We found that the ALRV didn't handle certain intersections very well, and perhaps this is one reason why it's so rare to see them elsewhere on the system...

Our first (scheduled) stop is Bingham Loop, or rather Victoria Park Loop when the CLRVs changed the roll signs (the 'Bingham' on the PCC rolls referred to the residential street that this car happens to be facing; Victoria Park Avenue is behind it). Despite its proximity to Queen Street, ALRVs don't serve Kingston Road. Likely that's because the 502 and 503 streetcar routes are the least used on the system, requiring only 14 minute headways between rush hours, and no service whatsoever during the evenings or weekends.

After going up Coxwell Avenue, our next stop was Main Station. We stopped and took pictures, mindful of the fact that, unlike Bingham Loop, we had streetcars behind us waiting to go. Fortunately, cars are assigned a good layover at Main Station, so we didn't tie up traffic. The ALRV had no problems handling the wide curves at Main Station, and given the traffic that Carlton does see, it might be nice to grant it at least a couple of ALRVs in service...

This shot is taken at Broadview Station, with car 4223 using the loop-the-loop track to reenter the boarding area. Because there are no west to north switches at Gerrard and Broadview, we got here by turning south on Broadview, west on Dundas, north on Parliament, east on Gerrard and north again on Broadview. We used some switches which clearly had not seen use in months, and the turns at the Broadview/Gerrard intersections were... interesting to say the least.

We had more people waiting for streetcars at Broadview Station, which led to some people thinking we were an in-service streetcar. Some were sure that we weren't doing this for fun and were actually testing ALRVs for the King and Dundas routes, saying they'd like to see such a thing happen. The picture left taken outside Queen's Park Station illustrates the difficulty some people have in imagining that people would want to charter a streetcar; here at Queens Park, our signs read 'CHARTERED', but still people try to board. This led to anecdotes about people trying to board work equipment when they trundled along the streetcar system more frequently -- including snow removal equipment! No thumbnail to click. This picture is as big as it gets.

These two separate pictures on our left give you some idea of our trip to Spadina Station, our next stop. It was a lightning visit; the TTC told us firmly that we were not to hold up traffic on their Spadina line. We were expecting bigger crowds than at Broadview, and so we were quite surprised at how few people greeted us as we entered the station. Another streetcar had just left, and it wasn't until a subway arrived that people began to show up.

I use these two shots (left) of our visit to St Clair West and St Clair Stations respectively to illustrate a story about Bathurst Street, which we used to get to St. Clair. At one point, the TTC thought seriously enough about running ALRVs along St. Clair Avenue that they moved the stop of the Mount Pleasant trolley bus down the platform to accommodate the longer streetcars. Despite this, no ALRVs arrived. When I asked the driver of a Mount Pleasant bus why his stop had been moved, I learned why the TTC didn't follow through with their plan: apparently, the hill on Bathurst Street north of Bloor was very steep -- so steep, in fact, that the TTC discovered that ALRVs could not make that hill in rainy weather.

I wonder how they found that out... the 'error' part of 'trial and error'?

From St. Clair Station, we went to Oakwood Loop, where we broke for lunch. It was nice visiting this loop, which I had never before seen. It hadn't changed much, it appeared, from the time when it serviced the Rogers Road and Oakwood streetcars.

At Oakwood Loop, we were pleasantly surprised to discover cobblestone insets between the rails as we entered the loop on Robina Avenue. Cobblestone insets used to be common throughout much of the system, but the emergence of different tracklaying techniques spelt the death of this distinctive pattern. Other than Wychwood Carhouse, and possibly (but not likely) Dundas Square, this has to be one of the last instances of cobblestone insets in the system... Click on the thumbnail to see the larger picture.

From Oakwood, we went to Townsley Loop on Old Weston Road. It's an odd property, located a couple of blocks from the end of the St. Clair line. One wonders why it is still around; it hasn't seen revenue service in years, and has limited use as a short turn service. Still, it was nice to visit a loop which dated back to the Dovercourt and Harbord services up to the early 1960s. The loop is extremely tight and has extremely close clearance -- indeed, the mirror just skimmed the left-most pole in this shot to produce a rather alarming 'twang!'

This picture doesn't show it well, but the sign on the states 312 SHORT TURN and is blue. The St. Clair Night Service, and 301 Queen, 306 Carlton and 304 King have these special signs. These signs, updated to reflect the presence of routes 508 and 510, also retain signs for defunct routes 507 Long Branch and 604 Harbourfront LRT. They've become very long, such that it takes a long time to wheel them into the configuration... Either picture will take you to the full shot of the loop, when clicked.

After Townsley loop, we travelled east along St. Clair, south on Bathurst, west on Dundas, north on Ossington, west on College, northwest on Dundas and west on Howard Park Avenue to High Park Loop. By this time, I was running out of film, so I was only taking pictures of our stops. High Park Loop was a popular site for its natural setting; indeed, compared to Townsley Loop, the difference is like night and day.

After High Park Loop, we returned to Lansdowne Avenue, using the loop to turn us back towards Dundas West Station, where we had a flying visit amongst 504 King and 505 Dundas cars. From there, we went south on Roncesvalles Avenue, sidetracking through Roncesvalles Carhouse (where I cursed myself for running out of film).

After a longer visit to Dufferin Loop at the west end of the CNE, we proceeded east along King Street, and south on Spadina, visiting Union Station. To our surprise, we found that the 604 route signs were available and we rolled up a panel. The Harbourfront streetcar line used to be numbered 604, but was renumbered 510 at about the same time that the CLRVs replaced the PCCs on the route. Then again, the new rollsigns boasted a number of defunct routes, so I suppose the TTC doesn't throw anything away. The loop at Union Station was tight, but the ALRV handled it with less 'swing-out' than a PCC or CLRV...

After Union Station, it was time to go home, so ALRV 4223 took us back to Connaught Carhouse via King and Queen Street. We rode the streetcar right into the yards, seeing the ladder track along Eastern Avenue. I wish I had more film to record all that I saw at Connaught Carhouse, but I am coming back into Toronto to attend a charter of a PCC later this month (Sunday, June 28, 1998), so perhaps photos from this trip will provide the basis for a page on the carhouse operations. It depends upon what the TTC allows me access to...