Yonge streetcar line

Yonge streetcar line

Passengers board a Peter Witt car at Yonge and College in 1937
Overview
Status	discontinued
Locale	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
First service	1921
Last service	1954
Successor	Yonge Subway line
Former operator(s)	Toronto and York Radial Railway; Toronto Transit Commission

The Toronto Transit Commission operated a Yonge streetcar line, on Yonge Street, from its creation from earlier private systems, in 1921, until the line was replaced by a heavy rail subway line, the Yonge Subway line, in 1954.^[1][2][3] The TTCs Yonge line was its busiest and most congested, and the subway that replaced it was not only Toronto's first, but the first in Canada.

History

In 1885, prior to the TTC era, the Toronto and York Radial Railway introduced "radial" streetcar service that connected Toronto to smaller municipalities north, of the city.^[4] By 1909 this service had stretched all the way to Sutton, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Simcoe. The TTC continued to operate the radial service until 1930, planning to serve northern municipalities with diesel buses. However, the municipalities of Richmond Hill and York Township sponsored the resumption of service as far as Richmond Hill.

For the last several decades of streetcar service the TTC operated the Yonge line using Peter Witt Streetcars.^[1] Even when the TTC operated a large fleet of more modern PCC streetcars they continued to use Peter Witt streetcars on Yonge. Peter Witt cars could be operated in pairs, using special cars called "trailers".^[5]

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  The TTC operated a carhouse at Yonge and Eglinton to store and maintain the streetcars that ran on Yonge.

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  To help address congestion the streetcars on Yonge were often slaved in pairs.

References

1. Neilson, Ray. "Torontos Yonge Line, from Trailer Trains to subway". GPS Video. Retrieved 2014-02-20. Yonge Street was one of Toronto’s first horse car lines to be converted to electric street cars in 1890.
2. Filey, Mike (1996). "From Horse Power to Horsepower: Toronto: 1890-1930". Dundurn Press. p. 74. ISBN 9781554881734. Retrieved 2014-02-17. Over the years this route was extended westerly, first to Runnymede Road, then, two years after the TTC was formed, the new JANE loop that opened on the last day of 1923.
3. Filey, Mike (2008). Toronto: The Way We Were. Dundurn Press. p. 168. ISBN 9781550028423. Retrieved 2014-02-17. Many long-time Torontonians will remember when streetcars--often in the form of so-called M-Us (multiple-units consisting of a pair of coupled PCC streamliners)--would shuttle between the two legendary streetcar loops, Jane on the west and Luttrell on the east. They were usually jammed to the doors. The Jane-Luttrell (or if you were headed in the other direction, Luttrell-Jane) service was introduced in the mid-1920s and remained in its entirety until the Bloor-Danforth subway opened in 1966.
4. Filey, Mike (2012). "Toronto Sketches 11: "The Way We Were"". Dundurn Press. pp. 175–176. ISBN 9781459707658. Retrieved 2014-02-17.
5. Filey, Mike (1997). The TTC Story: The First Seventy-five Years. Dundurn Press. p. 62. ISBN 9781770700796. Retrieved 2014-02-17.