North America's Transit System of the Year - Part I

Our Toronto Field Reporter Thomas Slater sends this report, the next chapter following Zach's story of a trip to our neighbors to the north...

After spending Saturday at the Halton County Radial Railway museum, the car shop crew spent the day in Toronto to experience what the city had to offer in public transit. As a continuation of the Winterfest festivities, we went on a tour of one of the Toronto Transit Commission’s streetcar shops. So, after waking up bright and early and grabbing breakfast at Tim Horton’s, we made our way to the city and the Leslie Street car barn on the east side of the city.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by a line of the TTC’s newest streetcars, the Flexity Outlook, all waiting for their operators to go into service. The Flexities were built by Bombardier with the first car going into service in 2014. These cars are still being built by Bombardier to eventually replace all the older CLRVs and ALRVs on the system.

Leslie car house is the newest and most state-of-the-art shop on the TTC. The front entrance of the building gives the impression of a new, modern shop. But the real treat was inside the shops themselves.

As you can see in these photos, Leslie car house is quite impressive. It was built specifically with the intention of being equipped to service the new Flexities on the system.

This car had just been freshly delivered and has not yet seen a day of service. It’ll never be this clean again!

The first track in the barn is dedicated to truck maintenance. Here we see several of the Flexities trucks.

For comparison, the first truck is off of a CLRV while the second is off of an ALRV.

Here we see the pit and the overhead walkways for servicing the cars.

This section of the shop is dedicated for prepping cars for painting. Although the cars are soon destined for the scrapper’s torch, one of the aging CLRVs is seen here taking a trip through the paint shop, presumably for some touch ups. Out of view of the photo was the paint booth which was closed while we were there, so nothing to see really.

Although, you could take a selfie with the gray paint booth door.

The last track in the building contained the wheel lathe for truing wheel profiles. Our docent told us that the track was the designed to be long enough that a Flexity could get each of its 3 trucks worked on without opening the end doors.

Another interesting aspect of the shop was the Flexity training simulator including a replica operator’s cab and several large rear-projection screens.

Outside the car barn was their storage yard. A number of CLRVs and ALRVs are stored here. And while they may look decent from a distance, a closer inspection revealed that these cars will likely never turn another wheel in service.

Many of these cars are being picked over for parts to keep to healthier cars in service. Note some of the poles are up on a few of the cars. You could hear a few of the car’s converters humming away to keep the batteries charged.

A humorous mishap was pointed out to us in the storage line. Car 4239, an ALRV, was shopped and painted about a year ago. But within a day and a half of service…

It met a car the hard way and bent the frame, making it unfit for service. It looks great though!

While walking through and inspecting the cars, we managed to stop and get a group photo.
As it neared lunch time, so did the end of our tour of Leslie Barn. But, our day in the city was not over as we then ventured into downtown Toronto. Stay tuned for part 2!