Toronto transit fans gathered at Russell Carhouse at Queen and Connaught 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 bay door opened, and ALRV 4223 trundled out. We got on, and headed east...

This was one of the shots I took at Russell Carhouse. As a wide-eyed young transit fan, I was easily impressed. Yes, it's only a pick-up truck, but look at the trolley poles stacked inside.

The first stop on our tour was to be Bingham loop. As we turned from Queen onto Kingston Road, ALRV 4223 dewired and the driver had a long way to walk to put the pole back into place. My friend, Dan Kukwa, watched him work. Throughout the charter, we found that the ALRV didn't handle certain intersections very well, and some of us speculated that this was one reason it was so rare to see these vehicles elsewhere in the system...

We reached Bingham loop for our first official photo shoot. Of course, ALRVs were rare visitors to this loop in regular service, as the 502 DOWNTOWNER and 503 KINGSTON ROAD TRIPPER routes are just too infrequent to justify the extra-long cars.

We left Bingham loop, headed southwest on Kingston Road, then west on Queen, north on Coxwell, and east on Gerrard and Main to Main Street station on the BLOOR-DANFORTH subway line. 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 506 CARLTON does see, it would have been nice to grant it at least a couple of ALRVs in service. Some did show up on Carlton years later as 508 LAKE SHORE trippers coming off their early morning runs.

After Main Street station, we headed for Broadview station, travelling west on Gerrard, turning south on Broadview, west on Dundas, north on Parliament and east on Gerrard to catch the correct switch to go north on Broadview. At the station charter attendees got off and snapped pictures and shot video as ALRV 4223 used the loop-the-loop track to re-enter the station. Regular patrons were surprised to see the vehicle, and asked if the TTC was testing the vehicle for future use on 504 KING -- a prospect they were excited to see.

This picture is not a thumbnail. It was taken as ALRV 4223 paused at a stoplight outside Queen's Park station, showing people having difficulty imagining that anybody would want to charter a streetcar. We travelled with our rollsigns reading "CHARTERED", but people still tried to get on board. This led to anecdotes about people trying to board work equipment as they trundled along the streetcar system in years past, including snow removal equipment!

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.

These two shots of our visit to St. Clair West and St. Clair stations respectively illustrate a story about the Bathurst Street hill, which we used to get to St. Clair. Years before, I had heard that the TTC thought seriously enough about running ALRVs along St. Clair Avenue that they moved the stop of the 74 MOUNT PLEASANT trolley bus down the platform at St. Clair station to accommodate the longer streetcars. Despite this, no ALRVs arrived. When I asked a trolley bus driver why his stop had been moved, I learned the TTC didn't follow through with their plan because apparently the hill on Bathurst Street north of Bloor was so steep, the TTC discovered that ALRVs could not make that hill in rainy weather. At the time, I wonder how they found that out... the 'error' part of 'trial and error'? The reality, though, is the ALRV handled the hill just fine, and the problem the TTC encountered was a streetcar could not push or tow an ALRV that got disabled on that hill.

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 Dundas Square, this has to be one of the last instances of cobblestone insets in the system. These vanished soon after.

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 512 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 312 ST. CLAIR NIGHT Service, and 301 QUEEN, 306 CARLTON and 304 KING had these special signs. These signs, updated to reflect the presence of routes 508 and 510, also retained signs for defunct routes like 507 LONG BRANCH and 604 HARBOURFRONT LRT. They were so long, they took a long time to roll them into the desired configuration...

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 came back to attend a charter of a PCC later on (Sunday, June 28, 1998)...