TTC CLRV/ALRV updates and discussion

[lip]

9 minutes ago, christine said:

Space is becoming a premium so they want them off the lot.

Dont buy that garbage from them, they have more then enough space to keep the remaining CLRVs that they have in fleet. They could easily hold onto 10 or so for whomever without any trouble if they wanted to.

[T3G]

4004 departed forever today.

[TTC4120fan]

4145 is back at Russell.

[dowlingm]

9 hours ago, lip said:

Dont buy that garbage from them, they have more then enough space to keep the remaining CLRVs that they have in fleet. They could easily hold onto 10 or so for whomever without any trouble if they wanted to.

You forgetting that Russell is gonna close for rebuild? My suspicion is that the left hand (the one writing the fleet plan) at TTC finally figured out what the right was doing - even with CLRVs being turned into razor blades they still have to put extra Fs on the night routes to keep yard space available.

[DepthOfField]

 

 

[81-717]

On 10/29/2019 at 10:05 PM, lip said:

If all CLRVs are going to retire by December why would they waste their time, energy, and money to mount an A/C unit that would be heading to scrap in 2 months regardless.

Not to mention that there wouldn't be any need to use the AC during the remaining 2 months with the weather getting colder.

[Wayside Observer]

18 hours ago, DepthOfField said:

It seems that the TTC only wants CLRVs and ARLVs going to the scrap yard.
I wondered if they'd ever be willing to auction them off privately to businesses and individuals (IE convert them into a diner, or someone that has lots of land)?

This is something I've wondered about occasionally but I think at this point we've got our answer.  I was wondering if we were going to see a repeat of the PCCs in farm fields, diners, burger shacks etc. that we saw decades ago when hundreds of PCCs were junked which is unfortunate.  The STM in Montreal made a big effort to get adaptive reuses for the MR 63 subway cars when those were retired and London Underground sold off tube cars that got reused but the TTC seems to have this vindictive bent on having the CLRVs not just sent to a scrap yard but destroyed immediately upon arrival.  That also means that if anybody has second thoughts later, buying one from the scrap dealer is off the table unlike when places bought Peter Witt cars and PCCs (don't buy two rear trucks for your air car by accident!) from junk yards.

An auction has overhead costs and logistical issues with it in terms of arranging the bidding process and having all the people interested in bidding all lined up to do it all at the same time.  It'd be easier to set a price and sell them off to whoever who can pay with a bank draft and get their CLRV off the property by the time the deadline after payment is received comes up.

Happy Halloween!  If anybody needs a suggestion for a prank tonight, maybe dump a junk CLRV in the woods next to the Peter Witt by the Haliburton Scout Reserve and let the next group of campers heading up there discover it.

[CLRV4002]

On 10/14/2019 at 10:43 AM, Downsview 108 said:

Anyone been on 4091 lately? I think there's something wrong with the compressor on that. Sounds like a jackhammer. 

I was on it today for the first time in a while and yes it’s quite loud. 

Also seeing the 2x2 seating in the back felt strange, I can imagine there aren’t many cars still active with 2x2 seating in the back. 

[christine]

59 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

The STM in Montreal made a big effort to get adaptive reuses for the MR 63 subway cars when those were retired and London Underground sold off tube cars that got reused but the TTC seems to have this vindictive bent on having the CLRVs not just sent to a scrap yard but destroyed immediately upon arrival.

Vindictive is right. And it's even more upsetting considering these were the only vehicles of these kind to be built and specially for Toronto. However, this is a Toronto tradition - get rid of/tear down something only to look back years later with regret. 

[Shaun]

It was already established that they are too expensive to repair due to the lack of parts, and not wheel chair accessible so why would we keep them? Plus we don't have space to store them as it is. So how would we solve that problem?

[T3G]

49 minutes ago, CLRV4002 said:

I was on it today for the first time in a while and yes it’s quite loud. 

Also seeing the 2x2 seating in the back felt strange, I can imagine there aren’t many cars still active with 2x2 seating in the back. 

The only remaining cars with 2x2 seating should be 4057, 4085, 4091, 4100, 4110, 4156. Technically all of the remaining SIG cars and 4010 also had that seating arrangement but the former two are historic units and heaven only knows what the status of 4010 is.

28 minutes ago, Shaun said:

It was already established that they are too expensive to repair due to the lack of parts, and not wheel chair accessible so why would we keep them? Plus we don't have space to store them as it is. So how would we solve that problem?

We're talking about preservation. More specifically, we're talking about how the TTC insists on all of the cars that they or HCRR themselves don't keep being fully destroyed upon leaving their property.

1 hour ago, Wayside Observer said:

but the TTC seems to have this vindictive bent on having the CLRVs not just sent to a scrap yard but destroyed immediately upon arrival.  That also means that if anybody has second thoughts later, buying one from the scrap dealer is off the table unlike when places bought Peter Witt cars and PCCs (don't buy two rear trucks for your air car by accident!) from junk yards.

I remember reading about the famous Woodham Brothers (Barry) scrapyard in South Wales. At the time I remember thinking that British Rail's terms that the scrapyard couldn't resell a complete locomotive to a third party, unless a levy was paid to them, was a bit odd, but that policy, in retrospect, seems downright liberal compared to the Langille's contract. Heaven forbid someone should want to salvage even a small thing like a roll sign off of one of those cars

[Wayside Observer]

37 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

We're talking about preservation. More specifically, we're talking about how the TTC insists on all of the cars that they or HCRR themselves don't keep being fully destroyed.

 

Quote

I remember reading about the famous Woodham Brothers (Barry) scrapyard in South Wales. At the time I remember thinking that British Rail's terms that the scrapyard couldn't resell a complete locomotive to a third party, unless a levy was paid to them, was a bit odd, but that policy, in retrospect, seems downright liberal compared to the Langille's contract. Heaven forbid someone should want to salvage even a small thing like a roll sign off of one of those cars

I wonder if Brit Rail thought their locomotives had more than scrap value as working machines and wanted to ensure they got a cut of the action on any future value if the junkyard sold complete units?  The other thing that comes up that leads to strange situations is taxation and legal liability concerns.  The fleet of prototype turbine cars that Chrysler put out for field testing in the late 1960s is a good example.  Most of those are stuffed and mounted with very few operational examples even though they were all in working condition when the program was wound down.  The IRS told Chrysler that if they sold them off as working cars, they'd be taxed not on the value of each car, but the entire turbine car research and development program divided across that little fleet which would've resulted in a staggering, eyepopping tax bill alone on each car never mind the sale price of each vehicle.  Chrysler decommissioned most of them and ate the tax costs on the few examples that were kept in working order.  The few museums and people who bought cars and engines had to agree in their purchase contracts not to make their cars operational again.

Another example I know of is the CTA cars that SETPA bought to boost the Norristown fleet when the N5 cars were delayed.  Someone got injured on one of those and sued the CTA who then refused to sell anymore cars to SEPTA.  Maybe the TTC is afraid of something like this happening but a lot, probably all of that can be avoided with adequate sales contract language.  And things like you mentioned like the rollsigns is theatre of the absurd.  Has anyone ever been injured by a rollsign ever and much less taken it up with the TTC or any other transit agency?  Honestly, it isn't like that trolleybus side sign is at risk of killing me, my cat, or anybody visiting my house.  And if it somehow did, I doubt my estate would take legal action against the TTC over it.

You might be interested in the story behind my quip about not buying two rear trucks for an air PCC from a scrap yard.  The first PCC Rockhill trolley museum had was a Washington DC car that they bought from a junkyard.  When it came to selecting the trucks for it, they bought the two best trucks they could find which was a perfectly reasonable thing to do but didn't realize until later when they were getting the car ready to go that they were both rear trucks which isn't a problem except for one thing: it meant there was no rigging to connect the handbrake on the carbody to.  This meant that there was absolutely nothing to hold the car in place unless the MG set was on keeping the car pumped up and it was completely 100% dependent on wheel chocks when not running.  Unfortunately, the total destruction policy means that the idea of getting a CLRV plus all the bits to make it go from the scrapper and making a working car like this, hiccups with the truck situation aside, or like the Peter Witt that HCRR got from a scrapper (2424?) is totally out of the question.

[T3G]

27 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

I wonder if Brit Rail thought their locomotives had more than scrap value as working machines and wanted to ensure they got a cut of the action on any future value if the junkyard sold complete units?  

It's possible, especially since quite a few of the Standard Classes were only a few years old when withdrawn from regular service and should in theory have been in alright shape, especially if they hadn't been at the yard long enough to have lost any parts.

27 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

 Maybe the TTC is afraid of something like this happening but a lot, probably all of that can be avoided with adequate sales contract language.  And things like you mentioned like the rollsigns is theatre of the absurd.  Has anyone ever been injured by a rollsign ever and much less taken it up with the TTC or any other transit agency?  Honestly, it isn't like that trolleybus side sign is at risk of killing me, my cat, or anybody visiting my house.  And if it somehow did, I doubt my estate would take legal action against the TTC over it.

I haven't seen the contract myself so I can't say for certain, but given that all of the buses they send out have had their TTC logos stripped, and the weird blocking out of 4002's numbers on that post from Langille's from a few weeks ago, I assumed it was a case of the TTC not wanting to be identified as being associated with the vehicles in any capacity, and the rollsigns, and other decorative bits like builder's plate, were a casualty of that because it's probably (a bit) easier to just dictate that the entire vehicle must be destroyed, rather than make exemptions for cosmetic bits.

I don't much understand that, either - certainly, the TTC gains a lot more negative press from uppity members of the public complaining about riding old vehicles than anyone that happens to see one heading out for scrap - but again, it's their toys, and they can be as paranoid as they like about them. We are, when all is said and done, sitting ducks in this situation.

27 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

You might be interested in the story behind my quip about not buying two rear trucks for an air PCC from a scrap yard.  The first PCC Rockhill trolley museum had was a Washington DC car that they bought from a junkyard.  When it came to selecting the trucks for it, they bought the two best trucks they could find which was a perfectly reasonable thing to do but didn't realize until later when they were getting the car ready to go that they were both rear trucks which isn't a problem except for one thing: it meant there was no rigging to connect the handbrake on the carbody to.  This meant that there was absolutely nothing to hold the car in place unless the MG set was on keeping the car pumped up and it was completely 100% dependent on wheel chocks when not running.

Interesting! So what did they end up doing? Were they able to get a correct front replacement truck, in the end?

Since you make reference specifically to air PCCs, does that mean that this was no longer a point of concern on the all electrics?

[CLRV4002]

Let’s not forget that even in their facebook post, Langille’s mostly blocked out the visible fleet numbers on 4002. I wondered why that was really necessary and whether or not the TTC specified that no information about scrapped cars should be shared. 

[Downsview 108]

2 hours ago, CLRV4002 said:

I was on it today for the first time in a while and yes it’s quite loud. 

Also seeing the 2x2 seating in the back felt strange, I can imagine there aren’t many cars still active with 2x2 seating in the back. 

I think there's another car with the old style seating arrangement. Forget the number.

EDIT: See pccguy's list.

51 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

 Has anyone ever been injured by a rollsign ever and much less taken it up with the TTC or any other transit agency?  Honestly, it isn't like that trolleybus side sign is at risk of killing me, my cat, or anybody visiting my house.  And if it somehow did, I doubt my estate would take legal action against the TTC over it.

 

I've gotten mylar cuts before. Take a paper cut and times it by a thousand.

[Wayside Observer]

35 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

I haven't seen the contract myself so I can't say for certain, but given that all of the buses they send out have had their TTC logos stripped, and the weird blocking out of 4002's numbers on that post from Langille's from a few weeks ago, I assumed it was a case of the TTC not wanting to be identified as being associated with the vehicles in any capacity, and the rollsigns, and other decorative bits like builder's plate, were a casualty of that because it's probably (a bit) easier to just dictate that the entire vehicle must be destroyed, rather than make exemptions for cosmetic bits.

I don't much understand that, either - certainly, the TTC gains a lot more negative press from uppity members of the public complaining about riding old vehicles than anyone that happens to see one heading out for scrap - but again, it's their toys, and they can be as paranoid as they like about them. We are, when all is said and done, sitting ducks in this situation.

Debranding retired vehicles is common.  Actually, the TTC used to do this on site and silver spray paint out the fleet numbers and logos on junked subway cars which is why most of the number plates out there from those are painted out.   It always amused me that they went to the effort of matching the spraypaint colour to the aluminum instead of using whatever was on hand or whatever was the cheapest to buy since the point was to blot out the numbers and logos on junk waiting to go to the scrapyard so the aesthetics wouldn't have mattered.

The immediate complete and total destruction's something else entirely.  I don't fault any junkyard operator for turning their cash outlay on scrap into revenue but the insistence on destruction is something else.  For one thing, it restricts the junkyard to earning money only on wrecked metal vs. any other opportunity from selling the junk in parts or in whole.  Then you have the additional outlay of labour and welding gasses to have staff chop the things up with oxyacetylene torches.  Either they're earning really thin margins scrapping CLRVs or the TTC's getting a very low price for them, or may even be paying them to take them away.  I'm not about to go digging for financial statements on the commission reports website to see what they're getting for scrap streetcars especially since that may not be in the publicly available documents due to commercial confidentiality terms.

I totally agree, the TTC's got far bigger, easier ways to get black eyes in public than dead streetcars sitting in a scrap yard.  Every time there's a major subway snafu during rush hour.  Every time those fare inspectors use excessive force.  Every time the special constables shirk work and write bums bogus tickets to cover for it.  Every time there's a big accident like that smashup that sent the low floor car up University Ave. or someone tries to take the top off a non-clearance bus at Warden, you name it.

35 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

Interesting! So what did they end up doing? Were they able to get a correct front replacement truck, in the end?

No, they ran it as-is which was fine with the caveat about having to be religious with blocking the wheels when the MG set wasn't spinning the air compressor.  My understanding is that by the time this was discovered the remaining PCC stuff at the junkyard had been scrapped.  The PCC was subsequently traded to National Capital Trolley Museum and it's being stored indoors pending restoration so getting a replacement truck or the parts to retrofit the existing truck is neither here nor there for now.  One possible source and now that I think of it, I'm going to have to ask around what became of this stuff would be the air car goodies that got stripped off the El Paso cars that went through Brookville.

35 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

Since you make reference specifically to air PCCs, does that mean that this was no longer a point of concern on the all electrics?

You're correct.  The handbrake on air cars was a glorified parking brake intended to hold them in place when they were shut off or the air system wasn't charged up by letting you crank the friction brakes on the front truck on.  This wasn't necessary on all electrics because the drum brakes were designed to remain applied with the power off and were more than adequate to hold the car in place.  The basic design criteria were that they had to be able to hold a fully loaded car on Pittsburgh Railways' worst case grade.

Westinghouse's design was elegant.  Their drum brakes were spring applied and used a solenoid to release them.  This means that shut off or if the car has a catastrophic failure of the low voltage equipment, the drums fully apply due to the spring.  Their mechanical release is nice too.  You can use the handle loop on a switch iron to pull the lever to release the drum actuator and then reapply it after.  A bunch of us had to do this one evening at a museum when putting a PCC away after one of my friends got it stuck on the section insulator at the trainshed door in order to push the thing back under energized wire.  The poor guy got needled pretty badly for that too because he's an actual transit employee.  The lights went out and the MG spun down and it was obvious what happened.  There we all were sitting in the dark and quiet groaning and I was doing my best Donald Trump "You're fired" at the guy.

All of us were happy it wasn't a GE car because as usual for General Electric, the gratuitous complexity is something to behold:  They're the opposite from the Westinghouse drum brake actuators.  The GE is spring released and electrically applied, and then there's another lever mechanism inside that activates to keep the brake applied when there's no power applied when you shut down the car.  Then when you start up, there's a toggle on the gang switch labelled "Brake Reset" that you need to lean on that energizes another solenoid that releases the latching mechanism otherwise the drums will stay applied when you move the car.  On top of all this, if you have a problem, you have to shove a handle into the mechanical release and crank it 50 times to get it to release.  If that isn't bad enough, restoring the brake actuator to normal operating condition can only be done over a shop pit.  So, no surprise that SEPTA reworked the GE cars that went through the GOH program to have Westinghouse drum brakes to get rid of this mess.  NJ Transit had to contend with this right through 2001.  The TTC never had to deal with this since the fleet here was entirely Westinghouse, every last one of those 745 cars they ever had.

Anyways, the bottom line is that both vendors designed their all electric drum brake systems to also function as a parking brake so that was the end of handbrakes on PCCs along with the distinction between front and rear trucks.  As a side note, trolley museums can be entertaining at times.  It always makes me smile when I see someone chocking the wheels on all electric PCCs especially when it's a Westinghouse car.  I always ask if the drums are out of adjustment or need relining.  If the answer's no, the next question is do you understand why this is unnecessary?  Then watch the eyes glaze over.  Aw man, shit disturbing's fun.  There was another time I asked a friend's kid if he knew what operators used to say on TTC PCCs?  He said no, so I propped up the sign and bellowed out "SHORT TURN!  EVERYONE GET OUT!"  They cracked up and the kid couldn't stop laughing and repeating that the rest of the day.

6 minutes ago, Downsview 108 said:

I've gotten mylar cuts before. Take a paper cut and times it by a thousand.

Heh, that's true!  Good thing that trolleybus sign is linen then!

[T3G]

49 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

Debranding retired vehicles is common.

Oh, I figured as much, I just figured that the whitening out of the fleet numbers was the next step. Someday I'd like to find out why they feel it so necessary to do that... but then, the TTC works in mysterious ways.

49 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

Every time there's a major subway snafu during rush hour.  Every time those fare inspectors use excessive force.  Every time the special constables shirk work and write bums bogus tickets to cover for it.  Every time there's a big accident like that smashup that sent the low floor car up University Ave. or someone tries to take the top off a non-clearance bus at Warden, you name it.

Maybe the solution to that is to not run any vehicles with logos at all!

49 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

Westinghouse's design was elegant.  Their drum brakes were spring applied and used a solenoid to release them.  This means that shut off or if the car has a catastrophic failure of the low voltage equipment, the drums fully apply due to the spring.  Their mechanical release is nice too.  You can use the handle loop on a switch iron to pull the lever to release the drum actuator and then reapply it after.  

I think this design was the one that was adopted for use in many European PCCs as well. Certainly, I know that this is what Tatra had on their PCC cars, anyway. Seems like a pretty logical system, though it didn't stop Bratislava from a) poorly maintaining their drum brakes, and b) running cars at unsafe speeds (speeds at which poorly maintained drum brakes wouldn't be able to bring it to a stop in time) which lead to a runaway of a car on a suburban street back in the 1990s. I read the anecdote from a driver who was on a car that had a total failure of the LVPS, and he was powerless to bring the car to a stop, sound the bell, or really do anything besides hold on for dear life as the drums feebly held onto the wheels, almost colliding with another one that was pulling out of the stop in front of him. Fortunately the grade lessened and the car ahead pulled away before any damage could be done.

I would hope that times are different now, and anecdotally I haven't heard of any runaways this millennium, except for one that was entirely driver error (during a power outage, a driver tried to accelerate, failed to, then abandoned the car with the lever in the "drive" position, so when the power came back, the married pair ran away, derailed and demolished both themselves and a stop shelter, somehow not injuring anyone in the process).

Actually while we're on the topic of this, what powered the bell/gong on a North American PCC? Was it fed from the LVPS or from the overhead?

49 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

 The GE is spring released and electrically applied, and then there's another lever mechanism inside that activates to keep the brake applied when there's no power applied when you shut down the car.

Is that lever also what activated the brakes in case of a LVPS failure as described above?

[Wayside Observer]

15 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

Maybe the solution to that is to not run any vehicles with logos at all!

Certainly they could wrap everything in yellow and have large lowercase letters say things like "streetcar" or "bus" or "subway" with a tagline like "may include foamers" except the TTC's lawyers would probably hear from the Loblaw Companies lawyers about that if they did it...

15 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

I think this design was the one that was adopted for use in many European PCCs as well. Certainly, I know that this is what Tatra had on their PCC cars, anyway. Seems like a pretty logical system, though it didn't stop Bratislava from a) poorly maintaining their drum brakes, and b) running cars at unsafe speeds (speeds at which poorly maintained drum brakes wouldn't be able to bring it to a stop in time) which lead to a runaway of a car on a suburban street back in the 1990s. I read the anecdote from a driver who was on a car that had a total failure of the LVPS, and he was powerless to bring the car to a stop, sound the bell, or really do anything besides hold on for dear life as the drums feebly held onto the wheels, almost colliding with another one that was pulling out of the stop in front of him. Fortunately the grade lessened and the car ahead pulled away before any damage could be done.

It was the Westinghouse equipment that was built under license in Europe.  I don't think General Electric ever had any export sales of PCC equipment since everything bought for Europe and then built there was Westinghouse and it was the same here with the TTC orders including the partial orders that got diverted to Montreal and Vancouver.

Yikes on the near accident in Bratislava!  PCC drum brakes are not self adjusting so they need to be touched up periodically as they wear; self adjusting drum brakes were on the ERPCC to do list when they wound down due to sales and royalties collapsing when street railways hit the bricks hard in the late forties and early fifties.  About the only thing I think that driver could do would be to throw the car into reverse which acts as an emergency dynamic brake but I'm not even sure if that would work without low voltage power present because the two contactors that set up coasting/braking are normally held shut by the battery and MG when not motoring.  I'm not sure what would happen if the car was moving and thrown into reverse with both the B and the M sets of contactors both sitting open.  I've been on PCCs where people have thrown them into reverse when they've been rolling forward at low speed and the dynamic braking even from a very gentle roll is pretty violent.  This isn't something I've ever gone and done myself because I don't want to chew up reverser fingers and segments unnecessarily.  I've also seen motor cutout switches on PCCs that have been burnt and chewed up pretty badly too because they've been opened during a low speed roll; either people forget that much of the control system on a PCC car is energized at all times when the car's moving or don't care when they do this sort of thing and it's rough on equipment.  If it isn't under power, it's either braking or it's coasting which also means that it's braking, just not very hard.  The only time there isn't power flowing through the 600 V side of the control system is when the motors are not turning at all because the car's at a dead stop and that's really the only time it's safe to throw motor cutouts or change directions unless you're throwing the reverser in an emergency.

15 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

I would hope that times are different now, and anecdotally I haven't heard of any runaways this millennium, except for one that was entirely driver error (during a power outage, a driver tried to accelerate, failed to, then abandoned the car with the lever in the "drive" position, so when the power came back, the married pair ran away, derailed and demolished both themselves and a stop shelter, somehow not injuring anyone in the process).

Was there no deadman mechanism or did the driver defeat it?

15 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

Actually while we're on the topic of this, what powered the bell/gong on a North American PCC? Was it fed from the LVPS or from the overhead?

From the battery, so low voltage, and still works if the MG set conks out.  There was a small cottage industry in getting gong coils rewound for 12 volt instead of 32 volt so people could use them in their cars when tons of PCCs were being junked here.

15 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

Is that lever also what activated the brakes in case of a LVPS failure as described above?

If the brakes were already applied.  I'd have to check my notes but I don't think the retention system on the GE drum brake actuators was able to apply them if they were released.  The idea was that you'd be stopped with the drum brakes applied when you switched off the MG set which would then cause the brakes to latch.  The problem is, with a two point failure with no battery power and no MG set, you could potentially end up in a no drum brake situation.  The bottom line is that unless you pay very, very careful attention to failsafe equipment design, if you ever encounter a situation where everything just goes wrong, you're screwed.  Westinghouse avoided that nicely in their design which is one reason why a lot of people prefer those over the GE and then there's the whole aspect of the manual release/reapply being implemented a lot more elegantly and easy to operate without requiring a shop visit to reset, and not requiring a Brake Reset to get them to release before moving the car otherwise you'll wreck the brake linings by dragging them.

[John Oke]

FYI: 4053 is the only car left with the old rear Blue Night back exposures on it

[bus_7246]

35 minutes ago, John Oke said:

FYI: 4053 is the only car left with the old rear Blue Night back exposures on it

No it is not. It lost the old font, tri colour rollsign a few years ago. It has a regular rear rollsign at the moment

[T3G]

16 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

Certainly they could wrap everything in yellow and have large lowercase letters say things like "streetcar" or "bus" or "subway" with a tagline like "may include foamers" except the TTC's lawyers would probably hear from the Loblaw Companies lawyers about that if they did it...

16 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

Yikes on the near accident in Bratislava!  PCC drum brakes are not self adjusting so they need to be touched up periodically as they wear; self adjusting drum brakes were on the ERPCC to do list when they wound down due to sales and royalties collapsing when street railways hit the bricks hard in the late forties and early fifties.  

I see. I've often wondered where they would've gone with the PCC design if the history of street railways had gone down a different road. Alas, it's all hypotheticals now.

The issue with the T3 brakes was also blamed for an accident in Kosice in 1978, where a pair of cars ran away and derailed at the foot of a steep grade, with great human cost. The original anecdote I relayed about the near accident in Bratislava was prompted by a discussion about that accident in particular, and the driver suspected that a similar cause was behind the Kosice accident. A full investigation was never done into the accident, as, tragically, the driver passed away in the accident, so the authorities of the time were content to just lay all the blame on her, as she couldn't defend herself. As maintenance was in a very bad way at the time, it wouldn't surprise me if that was exactly the culprit, however. A horrendous and ugly story

For my part, it's been a few years since I did my reading on that accident, but I followed up with the Bratislava driver about his runaway and he said that if the cars had been in good shape than they would've been able to come to a stop (and if not in good shape, then certainly if the speed limit had been set appropriately for the deferred maintenance conditions), but at the time well maintained drum brakes were about as common in the city as Tyrannosaurus Rex.

16 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

Was there no deadman mechanism or did the driver defeat it?

There was no deadman (this was an early generation Tatra T6A5). Later orders for that type of car did come with a deadman mechanism, but I guess no one at the time of the first order felt this was necessary. After the accident, the fleet was retrofitted with such a mechanism, though unlike the regular practice, which was to have a spring loaded master controller that returned to neutral if you let go of it and applied the brakes after 5-10 seconds or so, they instead opted to replace one of the two pedals on the floor, previously used to operate the gong, to a deadman pedal. The other pedal was used to operate the sanders, and the controls for the gong were relocated to the dashboard.

16 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

The problem is, with a two point failure with no battery power and no MG set, you could potentially end up in a no drum brake situation.

Wow!! From what you've told me about the GE set up, it's hard to imagine why any property would go for that one instead of WH at all.

To try to bring the topic of this post back to the CLRVs a little bit, I went and made some edits to the wiki page last night. I haven't been able to do the full scale edit I was hoping to do (I hope to find the time to do that tomorrow night), but I did add some information about the causes of retirement for various cars. I grabbed information from this thread leading up to April 10 of this year and filled in that information on the wiki according to info supplied by bus_7246, as well as additional information I recently gained from a conversation with Robert Lubinski:

4011 was retired due to a spongy floor
4117 was retired due to accident damage
4120 was selected to be a yard mule due to a leaking roof and subsequently retired
4130 last operated on November 10, 2017 on the 504 (this was pre-TransSee vehicle history)

The thread also has various causes of retirements for ALRVs, but I have yet to update that page. That will come in short order, too.

Big thanks go to them both!

EDIT: Per Facebook, 4132 made her last departure yesterday (i.e. October 31, 2019).

[CLRV4002]

4141 is MIA.
4156, 4086, 4119 and 4191 haven’t run in a few days. Based on tracking data it seems like they tried to run 4085 on Tuesday, but they didn’t get very far with it. 

[CLRV4094]

Today is the Royal Winter Fair, and so far the 511 Bathurst route has remained all CLRV for the event. Will be nice riding one down there to the event tomorrow unless Flexity extras are out. There's always a high sprint of excitement going down there on a CLRV, probably because as we know they will soon be all gone. 

 

Also 4034 has returned to Russell.

[John Oke]

8 hours ago, PCC Guy said:

4011 was retired due to a spongy floor

Probably due to a leaking roof it had during 2018 which kept it out for most of the year while it was repaired. 

Might go to Russell on Sunday and post what cars are in the Dead line that I can see.

[T3G]

42 minutes ago, John Oke said:

Probably due to a leaking roof it had during 2018 which kept it out for most of the year while it was repaired. 

Might go to Russell on Sunday and post what cars are in the Dead line that I can see.

Wait... what? I don't see what the relationship between these two items was. As you said, 4011 was repaired and ran in service for another 11 months before the reaper caught up with her.