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TTC CLRV/ALRV updates and discussion


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14 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

I can confirm that I have a chicken on the rotisserie in the barbecue right now, but it isn't in Philadelphia, no CLRV is involved, and my place isn't a restaurant.

Who knows what number would be in Philadelphia - if any. I'm not sure they can count that high. Not quickly at least ... :)

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  • 2 months later...
On 1/16/2021 at 9:44 PM, MK78 said:

Nice that it's still moving under its own power after sitting this long.

For sure.  As much as running equipment long and hard causes it to wear out, sitting unused is equally unkind.  I guess you guys have all heard the horror stories about PCC cars that've sat for too long acting up and running totally lopsided after sitting unused for too long, right?  So, I'm glad that 4001 was still in working order and that the trip to Hillcrest caused it to be taken out on the road and run for a bit.  Does anyone know what the reason for bringing it to Hillcrest from Russell was?

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59 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

For sure.  As much as running equipment long and hard causes it to wear out, sitting unused is equally unkind.  I guess you guys have all heard the horror stories about PCC cars that've sat for too long acting up and running totally lopsided after sitting unused for too long, right?  So, I'm glad that 4001 was still in working order and that the trip to Hillcrest caused it to be taken out on the road and run for a bit.  Does anyone know what the reason for bringing it to Hillcrest from Russell was?

Weren't they going to renovate or demolish Russell?

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1 hour ago, Orion VI said:

Weren't they going to renovate or demolish Russell?

They're definitely not going to "demolish" Russell; however, there were plans to reconstruct the yard tracks (similar to what was done at Roncesvalles back in 2018-19). This was the quoted reason for why all the retired CLRV cars were needed to be removed from the property, although construction did not start after the deadline.

I have no idea if this is why the heritage cars were relocated to Hillcrest, however.

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30 minutes ago, Articulated said:

They're definitely not going to "demolish" Russell; however, there were plans to reconstruct the yard tracks (similar to what was done at Roncesvalles back in 2018-19). This was the quoted reason for why all the retired CLRV cars were needed to be removed from the property, although construction did not start after the deadline.

I have no idea if this is why the heritage cars were relocated to Hillcrest, however.

Were all of them moved to Hillcrest?

I do remember hearing that the inside of at least part of the carhouse building was going to be renovated as well to make working on more parts of the low floor cars possible, i.e. better access to the rooftop equipment than what they have there now, but I don't know if that was a plan that was being debated or a committed project.

The fact that the CLRVs are now heritage cars.  Ouch.  I almost got kicked off a PCC charter once during a photo stop at Neville Park because these guys from Michigan who hadn't seen me on board from the start of the trip when we left Connaught Ave. thought I was too young to be on it.  I ended up explaining that no, I wasn't too young to remember PCC cars and heck, I remembered 4500 from before it was rebuilt, before it was a historic car, back when it was just another regular beat up rusty regular service car.  That prompted a really interesting discussion about how it's all relative because these two guys were originally from Detroit and they remembered when they were young when the streetcar system was abandoned and the PCCs were sold on to Mexico City so to their minds, only people around their age would remember them.

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  • 1 month later...

Units #4001, and #4089 were last tracking on TRANSSEE at Hillcrest in January and February respectively.

To my knowledge these are the heritage units. Have they been upgraded with VISION? Or is it the remnants of the TETRA/TRUMP trackers?

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  • 4 weeks later...

3 months ago, I received a photo of the Peter Witt at Harvey shops from a friend. However, that wasn't what caught my eye. 

On the right corner features a paint-stripped CLRV. Either this is 4089 ungergoing some sort of restoration, or we'll soon be seeing the other 2 running around in a yellow livery like their PPC Rail-grinder predecessors several year's ago.

But I'm not one who can confirm everything and anything. I'm only sharing what I see/think. Have a great April Fools :D

image0-4.jpg

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4 minutes ago, MRD10 said:

3 months ago, I received a photo of the Peter Witt at Harvey shops from a friend. However, that wasn't what caught my eye. 

On the right corner features a paint-stripped CLRV. Either this is 4089 ungergoing some sort of restoration, or we'll soon be seeing the other 2 running around in a yellow livery like their PPC Rail-grinder predecessors several year's ago.

But I'm not one who can confirm everything and anything. I'm only sharing what I see/think. Have a great April Fools :D

image0-4.jpg

4089 isn’t paint stripped, it’s actually still wearing a wrap for a tea brand it’s had since it went out of service.

My sources say that the unit has been barely touched since the unit arrived at Hillcrest sometime in late 2019.

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4 hours ago, TTC4120fan said:

4089 isn’t paint stripped, it’s actually still wearing a wrap for a tea brand it’s had since it went out of service.

My sources say that the unit has been barely touched since the unit arrived at Hillcrest sometime in late 2019.

I can confirm that 4089 is wearing a wrap since that was I used to visit Harvey shops last year

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  • 1 month later...
19 hours ago, Tom1122 said:

Did the TTC ever run the CLRVs in service on PCC trucks? 

No.  For many reasons.

Just curious, what prompted this question?

Did someone start up the nonsense going around Philadelphia about 10 years ago about taking CLRVs and SEPTA Kawasaki cars and stripping the existing equipment and putting PCC gear on them so trolley museums can maintain them, again?

 

3 hours ago, Bus_Medic said:

I think the immense weight of a CLRV would make that a non starter.

 

....and the whole cam vs chopper control, 2 vs. 4 motor issue.

Let's keep the list going:

-  The bottom of the CLRV would be practically scraping along the road surface with the reduced height of the PCC trucks and smaller wheel diameter.

-  Adding to the two vs four motor issue, the PCC motors are series machines but the CLRV's are separately excited so the field coil winding requirements and connections are totally different.

-  If we're talking all electric PCC trucks, how do you accommodate CLRV friction air brakes and electric drum brakes on the PCC trucks?

-  If we're talking air PCC trucks, you've got a nice plumbing job ahead of you to interface the two types of brakes.

Interestingly, cam vs. chopper isn't that big of an issue.  The original SETPA PCC-II RFP was to get a chopper package to drive the existing PCC motors on those cars but Brookville proposed the Vossloh Keipie motors + package as a complete turnkey replacement.  From what I understand, the El Paso PCCs got a DC to DC chopper though, and SEPTA did get Keipie to build a chopper package for the Broad Street B-IV cars to replace the GE camshaft controller that GE dropped support for after 10 years but keeping the original GE traction motors on those cars.

Edited to add:  Tom1122:  the TTC would have had ZERO reason to attempt running the CLRVs on PCC trucks even without the laundry list of problems getting in the way since the CLRVs were already running on CLRV trucks on the Orbe-Chavornay railway in Switzerland before even arriving in Toronto!

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Uh, yeah. ^what he said.?

I’ll stick to fixing the stinky bus end of things, whatfor making the noise from the dinosaur squeezins.

I probably would have gone into rail, too. Had the geezers at Halton not drove me off 25 years ago. Oh well, coach tech’s more transferable anyway.

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On 5/4/2021 at 5:07 PM, Bus_Medic said:

I’ll stick to fixing the stinky bus end of things, whatfor making the noise from the dinosaur squeezins.

I probably would have gone into rail, too. Had the geezers at Halton not drove me off 25 years ago. Oh well, coach tech’s more transferable anyway.

You gotta have dinosaur juice.  Someone once told me the bus and coach people at TTC were paid more than the rail counterparts because it's the more transferable skill set so you might be financially better off for it too if the part about the pay difference is true.

GEEZERS at HCRR, holy crow, it's been ingrained in the corporate culture there for so long it's been handed down the generations.  Funny story time.  So I decided to stick my neck out a bit a few years ago after a pretty serious troubleshooting session on one of the cars south of the border I've helped out with the maintenance and repair on over the years because hey, I do meet the eligibility requirements for the trolley museum winterfest and signed up for it for the first time in a decade.  No problem there, shoot the breeze with someone online before going, and everything's fine so far but I have a plan B to bail out if things get ugly.  Anyways, I roll into the parking lot of the museum that's doing the event just as one of the streetcars is arriving and for crying out loud, it's being piloted by the same HCRR jerk that reamed not only me but one of my best friends for showing up at the previous one I went to.  I'm looking out the windshield thinking about it but I decided that I'd already paid my money and driven all this way, I'm not invoking plan B before I even get out of the car.  Luckily, when I wandered into the train shed, I bumped into a couple of people I knew right away which was great, safety in numbers and all that.

The rest of the weekend was great, I had a great time, even if I did feel like I was walking on eggshells a bit from it being my first time out to one of these in many years.  Near the end of the weekend, a bunch of us were on one of the last cars of the day figuring out who'd done a trip in which direction on the line with the idea of setting up the last few runs so that people could do a trip in the opposite direction to what they'd done before, so they could operate a full round trip before things finished up.  This one guy in the huddle says he's already operated four trips.  So he was getting ready to do number five meanwhile everyone else in the group had only done one. I think he read the room on that because he shuffled off to the back of the car pretty quickly but I got a look at his nametag.  Museum affiliation?  HCRR.  Sheesh.  Of course.

Anyways, after that all finished up, I was shooting the breeze with someone I hadn't seen in a very, very long time by the entrance to the gift shop when someone walked in the door, looked around, and asked, "Is there anyone here from Ontario?"  I said yes and groaned inwardly because the next question's got to be, "Are you from Halton?" and I'm starting to think about how to explain that when he says, "I think I just hit your car in the parking lot."  Oh.  Ok, that's not what I was expecting.  We go outside and this poor guy's totally beside himself because it turns out he had hit my truck and dragged the side of his rental car down the corner of one of the bumpers.  The car had a long dent down much of the side of it where it scraped against the corner of the bumper but the bumper wasn't damaged, just scuffed up a bit.  I told the guy not to worry about scuffing it up, it's trivial compared to the damage to the rental car which got off much worse, don't worry about my truck.  I hope the poor guy had the car rental company's insurance on it so he could drop it off and walk away from it after the weekend with as little a headache about it as possible.  But there I was, the friends who were there with me when this happened still laugh at this, going oh crap how do I explain this expecting the HCRR question, when it was just to find out whose vehicle got banged up in the parking lot.

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The rail vehicle analyzers recently got bumped up to wage group 12, same as the coach techs, about the time the Flexities arrived. As it is, the way my sector is hybridizng and electrifying, less and less separates the two skill sets.

Total gap before was only about 2$ an hour.

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11 minutes ago, Bus_Medic said:

The rail vehicle analyzers recently got bumped up to wage group 12, same as the coach techs, about the time the Flexities arrived. As it is, the way my sector is hybridizng and electrifying, less and less separates the two skill sets.

Total gap before was onlmight have prompted the TTC to change the gap is those

It is interesting how the two skill sets have slowly been converging in some ways over time.  The Flexities arriving might have also nudged the TTC to close the pay gap as well because all of a sudden, those are a transferable skill.  K-W.  Whoever does the maintenance on the Eglinton fleet.  Finch West or Mississauga, whichever doesn't end up with the Alstom cars, possibly Hamilton depending on how the dust settles there, if the dust ever settles there.  More generally, rapid transit vehicle skills are transferable to any of the LRT projects in the province so it made sense for the TTC to close the pay gap.  That ~$2 per hour on a 40 hour week, even after taxes, does help put a dent in those people's grocery bills which is good.

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  • 2 weeks later...

1877258938_CLRV4151LansdowneLoopwithoperator.thumb.jpg.4974e12113f2cf52a9202c6d9a8198f6.jpg

While I was scanning black and white film, I dug around a bit in the colour medium format picture folder looking for this one of 4151.  It's one of those pictures that's stuck with me ever since I took it.  It was a late summer or early fall day that I walked the west end of St. Clair with my Bronica SQ-A taking CLRV pictures because the new streetcar order had been placed recently which meant the start of the long countdown was on.  I've always liked this candid of the operator and her machine both taking a break in Lansdowne loop.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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