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TTC CLRV/ALRV updates and discussion


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1 hour ago, Wayside Observer said:

Listening to 680 News the other day made me think of this:

You could always pick up CLRV chopper sound on the AM radio when you were driving under streetcar wire.  I'm going to have to follow one down Bathurst St. with a video camera or a phone rolling and scroll around the AM band to find where the chopper noise peaks and get a video of this because it's something unique to those cars and the ALRVs but a lot more subdued with those.

You need a special combination for this to happen.  You need brushed DC motors to make a broad spectrum of RF garbage and you need chopper control to modulate it, and that didn't exist before the CLRVs and it isn't going to exist after they get retired either so the days for this phenomena are just as numbered as the cars that create it.

Just posting it in case anybody wants to take a drive and a listen before it's gone.

I thought I was the only one who did this.?

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1 hour ago, Bus_Medic said:

I thought I was the only one who did this.?

I used to do this over fifteen years ago with my old Sony Walkman. I did it more over on the H5s, H6s and on buses. It definitely explain why was hum imitating buses sound in my early teen years lol

(this goes way off topic. I do apologize mods)

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17 minutes ago, bus_7246 said:

I used to do this over fifteen years ago with my old Sony Walkman. I did it more over on the H5s, H6s and on buses. It definitely explain why was hum imitating buses sound in my early teen years lol

(this goes way off topic. I do apologize mods)

Same here with my RCA cassette only walkman with it running without a tape 21 years ago LOL.

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38 minutes ago, bus_7246 said:

I used to do this over fifteen years ago with my old Sony Walkman. I did it more over on the H5s, H6s and on buses. It definitely explain why was hum imitating buses sound in my early teen years lol

Definitely did this back when they were running the H5 & H6s on Yonge in the 1990s I think?

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Back when I was a kid, I distinctly remember using the recording feature on my DS to record the static from the CLRV on the 512, 511 or 510 while my dad was listening to 680 news. I may still have some files of it, but if not looks like I will have to do it soon again.

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4 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

Listening to 680 News the other day made me think of this:

You could always pick up CLRV chopper sound on the AM radio when you were driving under streetcar wire.  I'm going to have to follow one down Bathurst St. with a video camera or a phone rolling and scroll around the AM band to find where the chopper noise peaks and get a video of this because it's something unique to those cars and the ALRVs but a lot more subdued with those.

You need a special combination for this to happen.  You need brushed DC motors to make a broad spectrum of RF garbage and you need chopper control to modulate it, and that didn't exist before the CLRVs and it isn't going to exist after they get retired either so the days for this phenomena are just as numbered as the cars that create it.

Just posting it in case anybody wants to take a drive and a listen before it's gone.

Wait... so all you need to do is turn to some random AM station and it will play back the CLRV choppers? :o

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1 hour ago, PCC Guy said:

Wait... so all you need to do is turn to some random AM station and it will play back the CLRV choppers? :o

Yes, or even in between stations, but it's a fairly weak signal so you'll need to be in a car under the wire fairly close to a CLRV or on board one with a portable radio, but it'll only play the sound of the propulsion chopper.  You won't hear the LVPS running.

Ideally, for best results with this, you want to be near the CLRV with the worst set of motors for out of adjustment/worn sparking commutators.  DC motors have always been bad for radio frequency interference due to the commutators sparking but they only generate radio frequency noise by themselves so things like PCC cars and Peter Witts never did anybody's radio reception any favours by adding to the RF noise floor but there wasn't any audio content to listen to.  The chopper changes that by cycling the power feeding those RF noise generating DC motors at that low frequency buzz you hear which causes the RF interference they cause to be cycled at the same audio frequency.  That's amplitude modulation and the detector in your AM radio recovers the audio of the chopper buzz off the swath of RF interference being generated by the traction motors at whatever frequency your radio's tuned to.  It doesn't work out with the LVPS since there shouldn't be any radio frequency stuff passing through that to get modulated so you only hear the propulsion chopper when you're listening to Radio CLRV.

The other good one that comes to mind was with Go trains at Clarkson.  The PA system on Go cars used to blare CFRB as the train would pass through an area of strong signal strength coming off the four towers at the transmitter plant south of Clarkson station.  There was some high gain stage built around a bipolar junction transistor somewhere in the PA system that was the problem where the base-emitter diode junction was rectifying the strong CFRB signal and acting as an unintended detector feeding CFRB's audio straight into the PA system.  I remember being told that Go solved this one by adding some RF bypass capacitors to dump the signal right to ground and keep it out of the rest of the circuit.  I guess adding shielding wasn't an option.

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25 minutes ago, splendidwizardplayer said:

I wonder if a CLRV will get put up for display?

Not sure what you mean by display. 4003 and 4010 are hibernating for the winter. They said it’s possible that 4039 would be running for the winter shows, but that they would have to do some test runs first. Not sure after that.

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Looks like 4089 is retired since it is now stopped tracking and hasn’t been in service for a month. I think it was at hillcrest for parts for 4001.

Also 4091 is still running. If this is the last of CLRVs on the 506, 4091 is the last one.

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