The streetcar is Toronto Transit Commission number 4034, a CLRV (Canadian Light Rail Vehicle) built in 1979 by Hawker-Siddeley of Canada. The CLRV was designed in the mid-1970s as a modern streetcar that could replace aging PCC streetcars in the few North American cities that had not replaced their streetcars with buses. It was one of the last single-unit streetcars built, as newer streetcar systems have instead used multi-car articulated light rail vehicles. The CLRV was a remarkable success, with nearly 200 of the cars carrying passengers in Toronto until this year.
Car 4034 is more than 30 years newer than IRM’s next oldest streetcar, a PCC streetcar built for Chicago in 1948 and known as the “Green Hornet.” It is the only streetcar at the museum to have operated in street railway service into the 2010s. As such it represents the latest chapter in a streetcar story that starts with a horse-drawn streetcar built in 1859 and continues through cable cars, early trolley cars, and the “Red Rocket” Chicago streetcars that were so ubiquitous in the early 20th century. The museum intends to operate its CLRV in demonstration service for museum visitors following work to adapt the Toronto car to IRM’s track gauge.
–From an Illinois Railway Museum press release
Overlooked by this website is the donation of three other CLRVs to the Halton County Radial Railway Museum near Toronto, as well as the retirement and preservation of these cars’ larger cousins, the ALRVs. I’d like to see more coverage of the Toronto streetcar system on this website in the future.
Rode these in the early-middle 1980’s when relatively new and was impressed.
This is a 1970s? Why do I think 1950s?
Roger and Jeffrey,
“One of the last single-unit streetcars…” does not mean it is the last one or even part of the last ones, it only means it is 1(one) of the last ones, that would still count the Kawasaki cars for Philadelphia as being part of that equation. i.e.: Both the CLRV and Kawasaki cars are part of the last single-unit streetcar(s), they key being the “s” at the end of streetcar.
Philadelphia’s SEPTA system received 141 single-unit streetcars from Kawasaki in the early 80s in both single and double-end configuration. They are still providing service almost 40 years later.
http://www.phillytrolley.org/1980Kcars/1980Kcars.html
“One of the last single-unit streetcars….” SEPTA’s Kawasaki-built LRVs for the various City Subway and Media and Sharon Hill suburban lines were delivered in 1982.