As you all know, the TTC is replacing their older streetcars with new longer Bombardier streetcars. Or at least they are trying to 🙂 Because they are longer, they don’t fit into existing “garages”, hence the new Leslie Barns facility. Located on Leslie St., south of Queen, it is the new streetcar “home”. It is where streetcars are parked, maintained and repaired. It has been in operation since Nov 2015 but the first chance the public got to peak inside the finished complex was at Doors Open on the 28th of May.
below: While waiting for a streetcar at the corner of Queen and Broadview on the way to visit the Leslie Barns, I saw this renovated TTC streetcar from the 1950’s.
below: The streetcar tour involved riding a new streetcar through a maintenance bay in the building and then around the parking lot out back.
below: Exterior, parking space for at least 100 streetcars
below: Special bays have been constructed with space for workers to access both the underneath and the top of the streetcars. Because the cars have been designed to ride low, a lot of their workings such as the HVAC and propulsion systems are built into the roof of the car.
below: It’s a big space! …. 17,510 square metres (188,500 sq ft) in fact.
below: A spic and span shiny paint room
below: A myriad of colour coded pipes
below: There were renovated vintage streetcars on display. On the left is a 1921 Peter Witt streetcar and next to it is a PCC streetcar from the early 1950’s.
below: Interior of a refurbished Peter Witt streetcar with its wood trim. The Witt cars were built for the newly formed TTC in 1921. They entered service on Broadview in October of that year. By 1923 they were operating on seven routes. The last Witt streetcar was retired in 1963.
below: Looking out the window of a PCC streetcar built in 1951. PCC stands for Presidents’ Conference Committee, which was a group of operators from the USA and Canada who got together in 1938 to design a new electric railway car. By the late 1950s, the TTC owned the largest fleet of PCC’s in the world. The last one was retired in 1995.
below: Streetcar wire maintenance truck.
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