lethal cocktail on the roadbed. The cat- tle took this as a cue for a leisurely stroll and presumably ate the contami- nated vegetation, which led to
their
untimely, and early, demise. The cattle belonged to H.R. Osborne, the reeve, or town council president, of Sutton, On- tario, who contended that he was out $2,000 and that someone had better pay up. The TTC countered with $1,500 in compensation but, as Bromley men- tions, there is no record of how the “Case of the Careless Cows” was re- solved, if in fact it ever was. Once the run up to Lake Simcoe was
closed it can be assumed that the car would have been scrapped, as the need for ridding the right-of-way of weeds disappeared. This likely happened sometime after 1930 when the TTC had initially stopped the service. It was restarted a while later, this time under the auspices of TTC subsidiary North Yonge Railways, which ran until 1948, so the car may have survived until then.
Toronto can be a mite confusing and at times bewildering. Fortunately, there are numerous books and online re- sources that can help out the average fan. A very good primer on the subject can be found on the Transit Toronto website (another favorite of mine) and is simply entitled “A Brief History of Transit in Toronto” (
http://transit.toronto.
on.ca/ spare/
0012.shtml). While I am not certain, I am guessing
the car’s transformation to No. WK 921 was completed sometime around the date indicated on the photo, i.e., June 26, 1928, or possibly earlier, but not by much. This is based on the fact that the tanks, spray heads and supports look quite new in the photo and the number of VIPs gathered for the photo on what must have clearly been an auspicious day for the engineering department. This also seems to fit the timeline of the Toronto & York take over by the Toronto Transportation Commission. As part of the refit, the car, as well as any other equipment and trackwork that was acquired, would have been converted to TTC gauge which, at 4′- 10⁷₈″, is a touch wider than standard gauge. The reason why this odd gauge size was chosen for Toronto street rail- ways has been discussed many times, and typically there are two explana- tions offered: to prevent steam trains, which
would have been standard
gauge, from running on city trackage and/or to allow horse-drawn wagons to ride on the tracks, thus avoiding the dirt roads that were prevalent at the time. Of the two, there is historical evi- dence that when the Toronto Street Railway was chartered, provision was made for allowing wagons to use the
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN 47
tracks. Take your pick, though I am leaning towards the wagon-on-tracks explanation as the most plausible. The car was used to spray the right-
of-way on the Lake Simcoe line, for- merly the Metropolitan Railway right- of-way which connected Toronto to the town of Sutton on Lake Simcoe, about 50 or so miles away. While little
is
known about the car there is an anec- dote about it that Bromley mentions in his pamphlet. The story goes that someone had allegedly opened the gate that was fencing in a herd of cattle af- ter the car had passed and sprayed its
TTC No. 1 Since the car was unpowered, it was
paired with Toronto Transportation Commission Unit No. 1, a Baldwin Loco- motive Works-Westinghouse steeplecab electric. It not only provided motive power for the car, but also for the spray- ing apparatus via an air hose that snaked out from an opening in the side of the locomotive near the builder’s plate. As described in Joseph Strapac’s Interurban Electric Locomotives From Baldwin-Westinghouse, it was originally delivered in 1899 as Metropolitan Rail- way No. 1 and was the first to carry the
Built in 1899, Metropolitan Railway No. 1 was the first of what Baldwin-Westinghouse would refer to as a Class A electric interurban locomotive. The centered cab, full-width hoods, and lack of end ladders, handrails and steps was typical of most Class A locomotives, as was the access to the cab through centered side doors. Baldwin handled the construction of this locomotive in its tender assembly plant–using standard steel shapes for the frame and modified tender trucks–and Westinghouse supplied the electrical power system. Note the dual trolley poles and builder’s plates from both Baldwin and Westinghouse.
RAILROAD MUSEUM OF PENNSYLVANIA: BROADBELT COLLECTION NO. 01226: BALDWIN LOCOMOTIVE WORKS; SEPT., 1899
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100