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CITY OF TORONTO ARCHIVES; TTC FONDS, SERIES 71, ITEM 5954 (WEED KILLER NO. 921, INTERURBAN SERVICE, ROLLING STOCK DEPARTMENT): HILLCREST SHOPS, TORONTO, ON ; JUNE 28, 1928


A worker poses with TTC’s home-built weed spraying car. The sprayer was powered by compressed air from the locomotive. Note the air hose running from the opening in the side of the steeplecab


near the builder’s plate to a fitting on the deck at the end of the car. Also, note the spoked wheels used in one of the trucks. Presumably, the 47400 lbs. stenciled on the car indicated the fully loaded weight.


TTC steeplecab No. 1 and weed killer car No. WK 921


Old photos recall some interesting equipment/Vince Pugliese; with drawings by Ken Lawrence I


really wasn’t looking for anything in particular that afternoon while browsing the City of


Toronto


Archives website. The site, a favorite of mine, serves up many, but not all, of the photos and drawings in its collec- tion, and, being Toronto, there


are


many views of its rich rail and transit history. As an example, I came across photos of this weed sprayer car and steeplecab locomotive. Festooned with all of its piping and sprayer heads, I immediately thought it would make a great subject for a prototype feature. To that end, I forwarded the links to the crew at RMC and mentioned in my note that, while I couldn’t find much in the way of operational history or di- mensional data, a capable draftsman like RMC stalwart Ken Lawrence should be able to draw up a set of plans using the photos. In other words, while the article might be a bit thin on text, the archival photos and drawings could be enough to satisfy the readership. While waiting for the highball from the editors, I went back to the site and


46


found a nice, clear shot of the steeple- cab


locomotive without the weed


sprayer. When the editors saw this ad- ditional photo, the directions were plain and simple–the article would feature both the weed sprayer car and the locomotive. “Great,” I thought, “now I have two obscure pieces of equipment to docu- ment. What have I gotten myself into?”


TTC weed killer No. 921 According to John Bromley’s book,


TTC ’28 - The Electric Railway Services of the Toronto Transportation Commis- sion in 1928, the weed sprayer started life as Toronto & York Railways flat trail- er (flat car) No. 11, one of several such cars owned by the company. It was renumbered Toronto & York No. 921, which in turn became No. WK 921 once the conversion to the weed killer was completed. While the construction de- tails of this specific car are unknown, the Toronto & York Railway was a “radial,” or interurban, railway formed in 1904 with the consolidation of several electric


railways–namely the Metropolitan Rail- way, the Toronto & Mimico Railway, and others which served the suburban and rural areas around Toronto. In 1922, the Toronto & York was ac-


quired by the City of Toronto and was operated by the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario as the Hydro Electric Railways: Toronto & York Divi- sion. By 1927, control was transferred to the Toronto Transportation Commis- sion, which had been formed in 1921 as a number of electric lines, among them the Toronto Street Railway Company and the Toronto Civic Railways, were brought under its control. This was truly the age of consolidation for elec- tric railways in Toronto, with much of the equipment and trackage being ac- quired by the Toronto Transportation Commission. One last reorganization occurred in 1954 with the formation of the Toronto Transit Commission. While it shared the same “reporting marks” with it’s predecessor, it was a some- what different entity. Truth be told, the history of transit in


APRIL 2012


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