Last week, I said that I would publish the current version of the five-year track reconstruction program, and although this is a bit later than I claimed I would get to it, here it is.
Note that this info may appear to be for the serious railfans among us, but this also affects things like the overall condition of the streetcar infrastructure and future service disruptions. Nerdy yes. Trivial, no.
I will spare the more delicate among my readers the gory details by placing them after the break.
The following list is taken from the detailed 2009-2013 Capital Budget and, as always, is subject to change depending on the whims of various local utilities and other demigods.
2009
- Queen from Connaught to Coxwell plus the runaround track on Connaught
- Special work at the east exit from Russell Yard, the south end of the carhouse and at Queen and Vancouver (west exit)
- Coxwell Loop
- King from Queen to Close (the last remaining “old” track on King)
- Roncesvalles from Dundas to Queen (the final street design is still not settled)
- Queensway transit lanes extended east to Roncesvalles
- East-to-north left turns with signal priority (for transit, I hope) at Glendale, Sunnyside and Roncesvalles
- New farside stop eastbound at Queen and Roncesvalles
- Removal of E to SE channel at Queen and Roncesvalles
- Bathurst from south of the rail corridor bridge to Fleet (this may become embroiled in a possible redesign of the bridge itself)
- Wellington from Church to King and York
- Intersections of York at Queen, Richmond and Adelaide
- St. Clair from Caledonia to Gunn’s Road including reconstruction of Gunn’s Loop and removal of Townsley Loop
2010
- Shaw from King to Queen
- Ossington from Dundas to College
- Victoria from Adelaide to Dundas
- York from King to Queen (note that intersections are done in 2009)
- Adelaide from Charlotte to Bay and from Yonge to Church (this track has been inoperable for years and will finally establish another eastbound diversion route between Spadina and Church)
- McCaul from Queen to College including McCaul Loop
- Richmond from east of Yonge to York
- Spadina from Sussex to Bloor Portal and from King to Queen’s Quay
- Spadina and Adelaide
- Spadina and King
- Bathurst and King
- Queen and Parliament
- Queen’s Quay from Spadina to the portal west of Bay (this will eliminate the “old” noisy track on the Harbourfront line) (note also that 2010 is the anticipated construction date for the Queen’s Quay redesign and possibly of the Harbourfront East trackage.
- Roncesvalles Carhouse tracks 5-10 and 29 and SW exit
- Dufferin from Springhurst to Queen including Dufferin Loop
This is an extremely aggressive schedule for one year given the leisurely pace of recent construction projects. A lot of work is concentrated downtown and it will be interesting to see how traffic behaves as one by one each of the streetcar “sidestreets” is shut down for construction.
2011
- Kingston Road from Queen to Victoria Park including Bingham Loop
- Roncesvalles carhouse tracks 11-14
- Spadina Circle
- Spadina and Dundas
- Spadina and Queen
- Queen’s Quay Loop
- Gerrard bridge
- Long Branch and Kipling Loops
- King and Parliament
- Wolseley Loop
- Dundas and Roncesvalles
2012
- Roncesvalles Carhouse tracks 15-17
- Bathurst and Dundas
- Queen and Victoria
- Adeaide and Charlotte
- King and Charlotte
- Queen’s Quay and Spadina
- Howard Park and Roncesvalles
2013
- Dundas and Parliament
- Dundas / Victoria / Dundas Square
Somewhere in all of this I appear to have missed Parliament Street itself which clearly and rather desperately in places needs reconstruction.
I am troubled by the inclusion of intersections on Spadina that are less than 20 years old and don’t (at least superficially) appear to be falling apart.
We will see how the TTC copes with bus substitution on one of its heaviest routes and whether it is capable of completing this trackwork quickly.
At the end of all of this, the TTC will have finally completed the reconstruction of the streetcar infrastructure into a robust format, a process that has spanned nearly two decades. The annual expenditure on trackwork is expected to drop substantially in future years.
Steve Munro 
Most curious that the TTC failed to rebuild the tracks on Parliament between King and Gerrard this year, along with Church Street. Both were on this year’s list. This section of Parliament Street is in particularly rough shape and the city had listed it as one of essential road projects this year.
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I don’t think it is a good use of resources to rebuild such a long stretch of Adeaide. While it may provide an alternate route during problem, it would be better to focus expanding the system. If the effort was put into building the Exhibition-Dufferin connection, that would make a significant improvement for every day use.
“The annual expenditure on trackwork is expected to drop substantially in future years.”
Actually it is fortunate that track rebuilding is winding down just as Transit City construction will be ramping up.
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I’m quite surprised to see Ossington on the list for 2010. It really isn’t that old and does not see heavy daily service. Parliament should be way ahead of Ossington on the priority list.
Steve: Yes, the list seems to be based more on age rather than condition, and some of the non-revenue trackage really can be put off into the future. I suspect the list will see some trimming before we actually get to 2010.
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I thought 65 Parliament is a bus and not a streetcar. Was it ever a streetcar? Kind of like the Spadina bus going into a streetcar but in reverse.
Steve: Parliament was a streetcar up until February 1966 when the Bloor-Danforth subway opened. The line ran from Parliament Loop (at King) to Viaduct Loop (at Bloor, now a parkette). It is regularly used for short turns and diversions.
I think there are tracks on Bay street, and on Adelaide/Richmond and those are covered by the 6 Bay and 140’s.
Steve: The track on Bay from College to Dundas is a remnant of various routes including Bay (Ferry Loop to St. Clair and Lansdowne via Davenport and Avenue Road), Dupont (City Hall Loop to Christie Loop via Davenport and Dupont), and Dundas (to City Hall Loop or Ferry Loop).
Steve, just out of curiosity … you must have so many reports maps and other transit items … do you have a link or in your computer locally of the full streetcar tracks, loops, tracks not used regularly, repair/garage tracks, and how they get the streetcars up for the 512 St. Clair from the rest of the rest of the streetcar system all the way from downtown areas.
Steve: You can find a lot of info about old routes on the Transit Toronto website.
St. Clair cars get into service from Roncesvalles carhouse via Bathurst, and have done so since the carhouse on Wychwood closed three decades ago.
Other non-revenue trackage includes:
Coxwell from Gerrard to Queen: Formerly used by the Coxwell car (Danforth to Queen) which was replaced by the 22 Coxwell bus in 1966.
Church from Carlton to Wellington (sb only below King): Formerly used by the Church car, the Danforth tripper and various bits of other routes. Now used by routes 503 and 508 on a scheduled basis, many others on an unscheduled basis.
Victoria, Richmond, Adelaide and York: All of the downtown trackage is a remnant of the pre-subway days when many, many routes fed into downtown and needed streets to spread out all of the streetcar traffic. The odd choices of curves at various intersections reflects the routing arrangements of the 1940s.
The Bathurst car ran into downtown via Adelaide (the tracks used to go as far as Bathurst) bothways looping via Church, Richmond and Victoria when Adelaide was a two-way street. When it changed to one-way eastbound, the route was changed to run east on Adelaide, south on Church and west on King. This operation ended in 1966. Service to the CNE was provided by the Fort car.
Spadina as a streetcar route ended in 1948 with the retirement of the double-ended cars. It ran from a crossover at Bloor (just south of the current triangular parkette) to just north of Front. The Harbord car (of which no other trackage survives) ran on Spadina between Harbord and Dundas until 1966.
Tracks on Shaw and on Ossington are remnants of the Dovercourt car which was replaced by the 63 Ossington trolley bus, now a diesel route. The Dovercourt car ran from a wye at Davenport south to Bloor, east to Ossington, south to College, east to Ossington, south to Queen, east to Shaw, south to loop via Adelaide, Crawford and King back to Shaw. Rush hour service ran east on King to Church.
Dufferin from Queen to the CNE never had a route of its own, but some exhibition services ran to the western gate (Kingston Road via Queen to Dufferin, and Dundas from Runnymede to Dufferin via King). The Kingston Road Tripper (now 503) once ran west to Dufferin rather than turning at York and Wellington.
Finally, the little piece of track on Lansdowne is all that remains of the Lansdowne route (St. Clair to Queen).
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All the track on both Church and Parliament was on the schedule for 2008 and in fact the TTC started welding long rail lengths on Front Street for a few days in the summer (these are now stored under the Gardiner at Yonge Street!). Both projects were apparently stopped, obviously at the last minute, because the City decided to remove all the lead water pipes on both streets first. I assume they are not on the 2009 or later schedule because they are seen as ‘holdovers” of 2008. (Just as the remaining bits of St Clair are seen as ‘holdovers” from 2007, and are still ongoing.) The track on both streets is terrrible so I hope the work will happen in 2009.
On a related note, I see they are presently redoing the overhead on Adelaide from Victoria to Church – a ‘diversion route ‘ which seemed to get very little traffic – and have just installed new poles on both York and Victoria.
The last word I had was that the work on the Bathurst Street bridge is now scheduled for 2010 so I bet the Bathurst track there will not be done until then. (In fact the TTC recently repaired a stretch of it.)
I hope the TTC look at all the intersections they are rebuilding to see if they should add curves. Parliament at both Queen and King would seem candidates for allowing turns in additional directions.
Steve: At one point, there was a proposal to reactivate Parliament Loop for streetcars, but this was cancelled for budgetary reasons. Curves in the northeast quadrant at King would be very difficult because the curve is greater than 90 degrees and widening the intersection is impossible.
There are some locations where curves are missing because they would conflict with existing manholes, but the biggest problem seems to be an inconsistent approach to budgets. We have three grand unions within walking distance of each other, but don’t have curves that would have been useful such as east to north at King and York (another victim of budgets). It will be interesting to see whether Adelaide and York will get the two obvious curves it should have, or simply a diamond.
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Back to Ossington – from my own recollection, it was redone after 1995 so it should be the current type of track construction and not up for renewal. In terms of Darwin’s comment – aren’t the budget buckets for track renewal and expansion separate?
Steve: No. Both are capital projects, although Transit City expansions may have access to a different pot of capital than ongoing system maintenance.
Adelaide should be relatively easy since it would only be a single track whereas a Dufferin-Exhibition Loop connection would have to be double track, through the CNE grounds, including a bridge over the railway tracks, which alone would probably cost a lot more than the single track on Adelaide.
Steve, I recall reading a post way back that you had a chart or record of when various track sections were last redone. Any chance of that eventually being put into a format that could be posted?
Steve: I regret that (a) I have not kept it up to date recently and (b) it’s in a format that would need some tidying up for general consumption.
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With all these intersections being rebuilt, I hope they will have come up with a fix for all of those switches as well, instead of just rebuilding them the way they are.
I find it odd that they are planning to rebuild the Roncesvalles Carhouse tracks, won’t the yards be good enough until a new Carhouse is built for the new LRV?
Are there no plans for the tracks on Dufferin? they appear to be unusable, and the road itself is in bad shape as well, or at least this was true the last time I was on Dufferin.
Steve: Dufferin is in 2010.
Many CLRVs and ALRVs will remain in service for at least a decade, and we won’t even have the full complement of new LRVs for many years. We have to deal with some proposed expansions (waterfront) on the downtown system as well as a backlog of service improvements. Also from a network point of view, it would make more sense for Roncesvalles to be the surviving carhouse as the older properties start to shut down.
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Hi Steve. I had thought that the Bathurst Street bridge was going to be done this year. What happened to that project, or is it being being put off until they decide about Bremner Blvd?
It also seems interesting that Kingston Road is being left to 2011. That track is noisy.
I have also notices that some of the new rail is beginning to develop corrugation. Are there plans for a railgrinder?
Steve: The Bathurst Bridge project is now embroiled with neighbourhood design issues as well as the need to raise the structure to provide for GO electrification. Stay tuned.
As for Kingston Road, the service is so infrequent that on an hourly averaged basis, it is actually very quiet (this is a joke). Seriously, it would be intriguing to know how noisy the buses are climbing up the hill. They run far more often than the streetcars.
For some reason best known to the TTC, this route has far better evening and weekend service than weekdays. Just another example of how the Queen Street corridor has systematically been starved for streetcar service.
Railgrinder? What’s a railgrinder?
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What does “Removal of E to SE channel at Queen and Roncesvalles” mean?
On Adelaide, are they replacing both sets of track or just one? Also your schedule explicitly excludes Adelaide between Bay and Yonge, where I believe the tracks are severed by roadwork.
Steve: There is a turn lane for eastbound traffic to veer from Queensway directly onto King. This will be removed to make room for a new east-to-north left turn lane roughly where the existing safety island is located.
I think that the track is now intact between Bay and Yonge, but this might be tied up with construction of two major towers there.
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Queensway transit lanes extended east to Roncesvalles
-East-to-north left turns with signal priority (for transit, I hope) at Glendale, Sunnyside and Roncesvalles
-New farside stop eastbound at Queen and Roncesvalles
-Removal of E to SE channel at Queen and Roncesvalles
Hmm. This implies that there will be a traffic light at Sunnyside.
Also, I would be in favour of a farside stop westbound. With the current arrangement, someone waiting to travel westbound from Roncesvalles is unlikely to be able to catch a 508 car (should such a beast appear), and if any car goes into service westbound from the carhouse to fill in a gap, one can only watch it trundle off from the other side of Roncesvalles.
Also, in one of the comments:
“The Harbord car (of which no other trackage survives) ran on Spadina between Harbord and Dundas until 1966.”
Even ignoring bits of Broadview and Gerrard trackage shared by the Harbord car with King and Carlton respectively, Dundas east of Elizabeth was Harbord-car-only trackage right up until the Harbord route disappeared.
Steve: I meant to say no other non-revenue pieces of track — ie track that is not still in use on a regular basis by existing routes.
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Wouldn’t some sort of E to SE trackwork at Queensway and Roncesvalles be needed if the Waterfront West LRT uses the Queensway and part of King Street West?
Steve: The connection for the WWLRT will not be at Roncesvalles (even though some plans showed this as an option) because they would have to demolish the Polish war memorial. Also, the intersection is complicated enough as it is without bringing in another leg that needs its own dedicated green time.
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The streetcar track from Bay to Yonge on Adelaide WAS all there until a few months ago but they are now building the PATH extension under Adelaide from the Bank of NS Centre to the Bay-Adelaide Centre and it recently seems to have been torn up in that area. I suspect the TTC will get it replaced/rebuilt by the BAC folks so that may explain why it’s not noted on any of the lists.
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I have always thought that the tracks on Adelaide and Richmond could be used for a downtown circulator route to take some pressure off of King and Queen, for example cars could run a clockwise loop like Richmond, Spadina, Adelaide, Parliament (or Church).
Steve: For the benefit of those who don’t know the downtown trackage well, there is no track on Richmond west of York, and no track on either Adelaide or Richmond east of Church. Adding this would be a considerable expenditure for a local circulator that makes only tenuous connections to the subway lines.
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Coxwell may well be non-revenue, but at certain times of day, the service is still more frequent than the once every 8-minute Coxwell bus. I’ve taken many a streetcar down Coxwell to Dundas or Queen in the last couple of years.
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I work in the construction site that DavidC is referring to. They will be eventually tearing up the entire street.
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Is Coxwell loop the one where you can’t exit from the loop onto Queen Street, only north on Coxwell? Will this interesting bit of trackwork be retained?
Steve: Yes, that’s the loop and no, I don’t know but assume so. This is also one of the very tight curves on the system that will challenge any new LRVs.
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If the connection from the eastbound Queensway track to the southeast track heading onto King is removed, how will the 508 car operate? The 508 requires that connection to get onto King Street.
Steve: That track does not go through the road channel that will be removed.
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So will these new track replacements end the stop-and-go approach for streetcars? I notice that a lot of the streetcars on Spadina bunch up way too much due to this.
Steve: No. That idiocy is due to the fact that the TTC has not yet replaced the unreliable electronics that control the automatic switches. In response to some open switch incidents traced to malfunctioning switches, the TTC implemented a stop and proceed rule at all facing point switches regardless of whether they are electrified or not. This causes all manner of slowdowns at intersections.
Do they fix this? No. The problem has existed for years, and a project to correct this has yet to get off the ground (so to speak).
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I believe the trailing point track switch at the Coxwell Loop exit is unique in that it is the only switch in the system that is fully curved throughout both branches and the points themselves. That’ll be an expensive custom piece of special work to replace!
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Even though no trackwork exists on Richmond between York and Spadina (and never did, for that matter), I always thought that if they did retain the same on Adelaide (as they seem to be doing), they should add it to Richmond, not because I’ve got a symmetry fetish or anything, but that it just seems weird to dump westbound cars onto York when quite often it’s stuff on University that blocks Queen or King (for e.g. the Santa Claus parade).
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More on Adelaide
I asked some more questions at work. I found out that the two “strips” that cross the road are as much “tearing up” of the street as they are going to do, and the tunnel will be built underground without disturbing the remainder of the street. None of the workers I spoke to seem to care about the streetcar tracks, but that could just be their personal opinion, but it does not seem to me like they have any intent of replacing them. Then again I note that this entire section of Adelaide (beyond Yonge and beyond Bay) does not have any overhead wires anyway.
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Kristian said, “I believe the trailing point track switch at the Coxwell Loop exit is unique in that…”
It is unique because it is NOT a switch. It is a piece of “gauntlet track” – when two tracks come close enough together that vehicles on both tracks cannot pass each other at the same time, you have a gauntlet. Some restrict the definition of gauntlet track even further, but stipulating that there are rails that actually cross, as is the case at Coxwell and Queen.
As asked by David Youngs and answered in the affirmative by Steve, “Is Coxwell loop the one where you can’t exit from the loop onto Queen Street, only north on Coxwell?”
The loop enters Queen westbound and its left rail crosses the right rail of the westbound Queen track. This is done with a frog like on a switch, but unlike a switch, the rail does not continue to connect with the left rail of the Queen westbound track with a point. The track continues to curve into its turn to northbound Coxwell and the left rail crosses the right rail of the westbound Queen track again with another frog.
Gauntlet track is more often used when it is not economical to widen an overpass or underpass for two tracks, but there is no need for installing full track switches. On TfL’s Croydon LRT system, there is an underpass where a gauntlet track is used (see the photo at http://lrt.daxack.ca/London/hires34.jpg for an idea of what this looks like).
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Ottawa’s old streetcar system used a fair bit of gauntlet track on a number of narrow sidestreets and bridges (and probably wish they still did, too! i.e. “WHY did we ever abandon streetcars!”)
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Re the Coxwell Loop – all this being said, there is a switch where the gauntlet track connects with the west-to-north track coming from Queen St. since you can make the right turn from west Queen to north Coxwell.
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Yet more on Adelaide… As Nick J Boragina notes, there is no overhead on Adelaide at the moment. The wires west of Victoria were removed quite recently (in the last month or so) and the TTC are presently stringing new wires from Victoria to Church. It is actually a good thing the overhead west of Victoria was removed (I think it was removed between Yonge and Bay a while ago) as there are several gaps in the remaining track and it is actually quite dangerous where it crosses University.
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Re Adelaide & University – this intersection has been dug up so many times in the past few years it’s amazing that there is any track across there. Currently there is a gap in the rails of at least 20 feet/6 metres and it has been filled partially with concrete and partially with asphalt, so it’s been completely severed. I hope the TTC has agreements with Enbridge and others to repair the track the next time they come through and dig it up after it’s been rebuilt.
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In reference to the faulty switches, and in all fairness, at least two of the accidents (one on Fleet, and the one on Queens Quay approaching Spadina) were as a result of excessive speed and the operator not ensuring that the switch was set for the correct route. In both accidents, the speed of the car was so high that the lead truck of the car was on the point when it received the signal to change, and so the car split the switch.
That’s not to say that they’re perfect – they are far from it – but it seems to me that the stop-and-check ruling has more to do with trying to prevent avoidable and careless accidents than it does with faulty equipment.
Dan
Steve: The detailed project sheet in the capital budget explicitly talks about problems with reliability. In my travels on the system, the frequency with which operators must set switches manually is much, much higher than was the case with the old overhead contactors.
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Hi Steve:-
There are a number of gantlet track locations on the old Pittsburgh Railways, now the ‘T’ Light Rail System. This is where double track narrows for the many high bridges between South Hills Junction and Castle Shannon on the old Interurban lines to Library and Drake. They used a parallel trolley wire too, coming within about a foot apart, where the pole only traversed one wire in each direction thus not needing trolley frogs as well as not needing track switch points. I believe that the pantograph using cars that traverse these routes now also use the two wires, but will contact both as they move over the bridges.
Dennis Rankin
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Hi Steve:-
To further Dan Garcia’s point of causes of accidents at facing point track switches; a number of derailments and crashes have happened over the years at manual switches too, where the Operator of a previous car using a diversionary route or heaven forbid even a maintenance Switchman’, has not restored the switch for the main route. The following Motorman has forgotten or ignored the fact that a switch may be set for the ‘wrong’ direction for their need. The rule to stop and check is in place not only because of the electric switch unreliability, but because of potential inattention by a following Operator. It is a safety issue for more than one reason.
Dennis Rankin
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Steve said:
Finally, the little piece of track on Lansdowne is all that remains of the Lansdowne route (St. Clair to Queen).
I do believe that the Lansdowne car ended at Dundas Street, not Queen. Also did it not require a two man crew so that the conductor could reset the derail at the hill above Davenport for the south bound trip.
Steve: Correct on both points.
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Does the St Clair West project really seem to be on time?
Can it really be complete by 2009?
I was thinking we would have to put up with buses continuing into 2010, given that the current work started so late in the year.
Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to be pleasantly surprised by streetcars running west of St Clair West subway at any time!
Steve: It is claimed that it will be finished this year. I don’t believe them based on past experience.
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What about Kingston Road’s extension to Scarborough Village and does the track reconstruction on Kingston Road coincide with that project at all? I haven’t heard anything about the Kingston Road extension for a long time now.
How come Spadina and King, and Spadina and Adelaide are being being done in separate years as Spadina and Charlotte, and King and Charlotte? The same routes are affected by both, wouldn’t it make much more sense if the whole Charlotte Loop was treated as one whole single entity?
The same applies to Queen’s Quay Loop being done in a different year than Queen’s Quay and Spadina, which is in yet another year from Queen’s Quay between Spadina and the Ferry Docks portal… this is non-sensical and causes far too many repeated service disruptions and supplemented bus services, repetitions that should be avoidable… easily.
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Dear Mr. MacMillan:
Chair Adam Giambrone has forwarded your email of recent date.
The Commission’s track reconstruction work on both Church Street and Parliament Street has been delayed as a result of a decision by City Council to include replacement of watermain and lead water services throughout the City on any projects which affect the road or sidewalk. Both of these projects have extensive underground work to be completed on or near the streets affected by the track reconstruction. Coordination for this work has resulted in the work on Church Street being rescheduled to 2009 and on Parliament Street to 2010. The TTC is working closely with the City of Toronto and other utilities to deliver its programs with the least amount of disruption to the community as possible. The City continues to monitor the state of the road on Parliament Street and will conduct any measures necessary to maintain the safety of the roadway for motorists and pedestrians. In addition, the TTC continues to regularly monitor rail conditions on these streets and schedules repairs accordingly.
Thank you for the opportunity to respond.
Sincerely,
Diego Sinagoga
Community Liaison Representative
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Hi Steve:-
Two points come to mind in his post following the comments. One is the “railgrinder” question. The present TTC management has been given the cock and bull story that the last grinding train that we had had in use on the surface track was ineffective. Not true, but someone has been giving out horse puck sandwiches to the new believers in ‘all that was old was crap’.
True the old PCC grinding train was inefficient and definitely slow to perform its tasks, but definitely not ineffective, for perform its designed task it did!
We are told by the present TTC powers that be that the new rubber embedded track will not develop corrugation, ever, given an engineering model that says so. None of the track layed with the rubber surround had been in service long enough to prove the engineering model correct until after the grinding train was disposed of. Well guys and gals, corrugation has rereared its ugly head on the TTC’s new super rubber embedded surface track. Disposing of the grinding train was short sighted, since much of the old ‘thunder track’ as you’ve coined it, is still in place and particularly on the Kingston Road. Here we have one of the worst cases of corrugation the TTC has ever allowed to grow! 2011 is now the projected target date sighted for the noise generation here to be eliminated! It will only get worse, as once corrugation starts to grow, it gets deeper and shorter in frequency with every passing streetcar, thus it gets louder, unless dealt with by grinding.
The lack of any initiative at present to deal with the costly, annoying problem of corrugation on the streetcar system is disheartening. When one considers the major srtrides that the TTC has taken in developing the best streetcar track construction in the world and then ignores some basic tenets of railway track, that is never knowing for sure where or when pesky corrugation will grow is a sad statement by those that should know better. I’ve said over and over, that forgetting or dismissing the past can prove one to appear foolhardy. The state of the Kingston Road proves this point. I’m truly surprised that the residents along and within ear and vibration shot of the Kingston Road put up with it.
And when will the present growing corrugation on the projected 30 year lifespan new track be dealt with? Do residents have to go to the ivory tower on Yonge Street carrying torches and pitchforks to persuade track maintainers do the job they’ve been hired to do?
As to the Coxwell-Queen streetcar loop, there is indeed a trailing (or run-off in TTC parlance) switch in the loop’s exit that is part of the gantlet track too. There is no location on the TTC system where even trailing switches are not complete switches. This trailing switch is located in the west to north curve of the Queen and Coxwell intersection. The switch is in the inner rail and the mate on the outer.
Dennis Rankin
Steve: I am reminded of claims that the SRT would not suffer from corrugation because the wheels were not used to transmit mechanical energy to the track. This shows how much the ICTS proponents knew about track dynamics. Corrugation comes from wheels bouncing, and bounce can be started by anything — a track join that’s a bit out of alignment, but more likely by flat wheels. Flat wheels, you ask? Of course! The LIM does most of the braking but at very low speeds, dynamic braking does not generate much energy and the final stop is done through the wheels. Sometimes they slide.
The RT wheels are a smaller diameter than subway wheels, and so they have a higher rpm at a given speed. Hence the higher pitched whine of SRT corrugations which, of course, the TTC grinds off all of the time to placate the neighbours.
It’s amazing that they don’t understand that if the RT, with track that is laid on ties and ballast, can get corrugations, then so can surface track laid in rubber.
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There is also the current track replacement on Bathurst between Dupont and Davenport (although I understand that this is a city project). Does all this nice new track and track bed mean that we may be seeing northbound streetcar service on Bathurst or will it still be just for getting streetcars to and from Hillcrest for southbound service from Bathurst station?
Steve: As far as I know there is no plan to restablish regular service on this trackage. It is only a connection track to Hillcrest and to the St. Clair line.
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I will be really sad to see the Townsley Loop go at St. Clair and Old Weston Road. Over the years I have seen Streetcars divert there the odd time because of traffic accidents at the intersection of Keele/Weston and St. Clair. What a shame.
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