TTC 100th Anniversary

[GTAmissions1]

3 minutes ago, PCC Guy said:

https://www.ttcshop.ca/collections/featured-product/products/ttc100-coffee-table-book

The 100th anniversary book is here.

$50 is a lot of money for one book. A digital version exists for $10.

https://www.ttcshop.ca/collections/ttc-100/products/ttc100-coffee-table-book-digital-version?variant=39520356335697

Seeing how expensive it can be to acquire the limited edition merchandise. $15/poster with one covering each decade. Some collectors are definitely going to be buying it. I once ordered a similar book years ago from Capitol Records for their 75 year anniversary which cost $150 US before shipping. 

Some people prefer physical goods versus digital copies. 

[Bus_Medic]

2 hours ago, GTAmissions1 said:

$50 is a lot of money for one book. 

Apparently you don’t own many.

[Mark Walton]

On 9/23/2021 at 6:33 PM, MCIBUS said:

Mark

Can you send me the link for the book? I did receive that e-mail from CTHF for some reason?

A Century of Moving Toronto: TTC 1921-2021 - Canadian Transit Heritage Foundation

[Wayside Observer]

7 hours ago, GTAmissions1 said:

$50 is a lot of money for one book. A digital version exists for $10.

https://www.ttcshop.ca/collections/ttc-100/products/ttc100-coffee-table-book-digital-version?variant=39520356335697

Seeing how expensive it can be to acquire the limited edition merchandise. $15/poster with one covering each decade. Some collectors are definitely going to be buying it. I once ordered a similar book years ago from Capitol Records for their 75 year anniversary which cost $150 US before shipping. 

Some people prefer physical goods versus digital copies. 

Wait until you see what textbooks cost once you hit post secondary education or trade school.  And if it's trade school, add in good tools.

[GTAmissions1]

12 minutes ago, Wayside Observer said:

Wait until you see what textbooks cost once you hit post secondary education or trade school.  And if it's trade school, add in good tools.

I felt the pain of buying textbooks. Especially physical textbooks which of course has a higher markup despite electronic options available. Don't get me started on how the editions change every few years with the same content rearranged plus online access packaged in to deter used textbook sales. 

[Bus_Medic]

12 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

Wait until you see what textbooks cost once you hit post secondary education or trade school.  And if it's trade school, add in good tools.

Mine came to 700$ in 1999. Books only.

[Wayside Observer]

12 hours ago, GTAmissions1 said:

I felt the pain of buying textbooks. Especially physical textbooks which of course has a higher markup despite electronic options available. Don't get me started on how the editions change every few years with the same content rearranged plus online access packaged in to deter used textbook sales. 

Bundled lab kits was another good method for forcing people to buy new books.  You could buy the used textbook no problem but you couldn't buy a used copy of the textbook with an unused lab kit, which you needed for the lab section of the course.

9 minutes ago, Bus_Medic said:

Mine came to 700$ in 1999. Books only.

That's pretty much exactly what I spent around the same time.  I worked full time for a couple of years after, then changed tack and went back and I (mis)budgeted a bit more than the same not realizing that book prices had gone up a lot more than I expected, close to 50%, plus I had to buy tools, not too too bad since I already had some of them, plus this school issue parts kit for the labs.  Miscalculating that one hurt...a lot...and by the time the book list and other information about the tool and parts kit requirements came out, there wasn't a lot of runway left to change the financial planning for first year.

[Bus_Medic]

The upside was my entire tuition for that year of full time study at Centennial was 450$. The rest was subsidized by the S.A.E. , due to the shortage of technicians entering the workforce. All I had to do was pass a rudimentary aptitude test, buy my books, the 450$ and I was in. 
Coming out the other side, I dropped about two grand in my first year, on rudimentary tools that I still carry in my kit. (Craftsman, crappy tire pro series and princess auto- no snap-on here, save for  my three 3/8” ratchets which have survived 20 years of continuous use without any issues or rebuilding). I conserved the bigger coin for quality air tools and meter in year two.

I’m happy to see the shortage is as great as ever. I’m also convinced there’s still an institutional bias amongst guidance councillors to herd as many suckers (err, students) into the university stream to keep the machine going, hoovering up parent’s hard earned dollars in bad faith. 
 

But, I’m getting off topic.

[AnalogPentium]

On 9/29/2021 at 8:07 PM, Wayside Observer said:

Wait until you see what textbooks cost once you hit post secondary education or trade school.  And if it's trade school, add in good tools.

Currently learning this the hard way.

[Doppelkupplung]

16 hours ago, Bus_Medic said:

I’m also convinced there’s still an institutional bias amongst guidance councillors to herd as many suckers (err, students) into the university stream to keep the machine going, hoovering up parent’s hard earned dollars in bad faith. 

Combine that w/ existing cultural bias. I felt a lot of students in my year even looking down on uni programs that had partnerships with colleges, i.e. Mohawk, let alone college programs themselves. 

The removal of the academic and applied streams in the first years of high school is a good first step.

13 hours ago, AnalogPentium said:

Currently learning this the hard way.

I think I paid around $1250 for my first year of uni, which was 5 courses, not even six.

[MCIBUS]

Well I received my copy of A Century Of Moving Toronto: 1921-2021.

 

Although I've only briefly gone thru the book, all i can say is:

 

 

WOW & BEAUTIFUL!!!

One of the best books

On The TTC!!!

 

The book is large and has both color & Black White photo's. It's broken down by 10 year segements.

From what I briefly saw it tells the story of Street Cars, Trolley buses/buses, subway and few other things.

 

Now grant you I can't say where the pitures where taken as I breifly skimmed the book but says where they where taken at bottom of picture. Not being from the GTA so don't know where the places are.

 

For a book that's $50 + shipping it's well worth the cost.The book itself appears to be well published & Layed out.

 

I highly recommend this book to all transit fans especially to those in the GTA. A beautiful land scape of the TTC?

[Mark Walton]

On 10/7/2021 at 3:39 PM, MCIBUS said:

Well I received my copy of A Century Of Moving Toronto: 1921-2021.

 

Although I've only briefly gone thru the book, all i can say is:

 

 

WOW & BEAUTIFUL!!!

One of the best books

On The TTC!!!

 

The book is large and has both color & Black White photo's. It's broken down by 10 year segements.

From what I briefly saw it tells the story of Street Cars, Trolley buses/buses, subway and few other things.

 

Now grant you I can't say where the pitures where taken as I breifly skimmed the book but says where they where taken at bottom of picture. Not being from the GTA so don't know where the places are.

 

For a book that's $50 + shipping it's well worth the cost.The book itself appears to be well published & Layed out.

 

I highly recommend this book to all transit fans especially to those in the GTA. A beautiful land scape of the TTC?

I got mine last week. Lots of good photos but the text is basically a précis of each decade.

[T3G]

1 hour ago, Mark Walton said:

I got mine last week. Lots of good photos but the text is basically a précis of each decade.

I felt the same way. Very happy with the quality of the photos chosen (the original H5 interior in particular was really nice to see) but I did find myself, as a fan of vehicles, wishing there had been some more information given on that front, especially when it came to vehicles built in the lost half-a-century since Bromley. The H5s and T1s were only lightly referenced (not by name, I don't think), the H6s may as well not have existed, no references made to prototypes like 5796 or 4041, or the failed CLRV rebuild and what factored into that not happening. I didn't necessarily expect a text as detailed as 50 Years of Progressive Transit, but there was much more to the TTC story that I would've liked to see.

Maybe it's high time I put my own journalism training to good use...

[Wayside Observer]

On 10/13/2021 at 7:24 PM, PCC Guy said:

I felt the same way. Very happy with the quality of the photos chosen (the original H5 interior in particular was really nice to see) but I did find myself, as a fan of vehicles, wishing there had been some more information given on that front, especially when it came to vehicles built in the lost half-a-century since Bromley. The H5s and T1s were only lightly referenced (not by name, I don't think), the H6s may as well not have existed, no references made to prototypes like 5796 or 4041, or the failed CLRV rebuild and what factored into that not happening. I didn't necessarily expect a text as detailed as 50 Years of Progressive Transit, but there was much more to the TTC story that I would've liked to see.

Maybe it's high time I put my own journalism training to good use...

It's a rapidly narrowing pie slice of people that are interested in the details of the vehicles and it gets really narrow when it comes to infrastructure things like permanent way, the signalling, the communications, the power distribution etc.  It'd be interesting to see something put together about things that have come and gone like the PAX phone system or some of the older streetcar substations where the equipment inside these old buildings has been turned over several times because of technological change but there isn't much interest and getting the material, if it exists, to put together a softcover book would be very difficult.

On a completely unrelated note with respect to the 100th anniversary, I have it on good authority from several TTC employees that the historic cars were towed by LFLRVs to Roncesvalles.  I thought they were moved under their own power but apparently they were towed which means my inquiring mind has a question.  What I want to know - and those of you who know me know I've got my mischevious grin on right now - is this:  Did someone remember to cut out one or both trucks on 4549 before towing it across town or did they have success with getting half of the wheels to spin backwards?

[T3G]

On 10/17/2021 at 10:15 AM, Wayside Observer said:

It's a rapidly narrowing pie slice of people that are interested in the details of the vehicles

I'm not necessarily sure I agree, but only because I keep asking myself the question... what would the people who would be dropping $50+ on the history of the TTC want to read about? Surely you can only read "And then a politician arrived and proposed a new plan. And then a new politician arrived and scrubbed that plan and proposed his own" so many times before you to start to go mad. Of course there are other things that happened too, but without these vehicles they wouldn't have been able to provide the service that they did. They are central to the TTC story in my opinion, not a side detail.

For the general public? Sure, I wouldn't expect anyone who's been parroting the TTC = Take the car joke for the last 15 years to show the slightest of interest. But I would expect that anyone who thinks the history of the TTC is interesting enough to buy a book on it wouldn't necessarily turn their nose up at fleet information.

[tomsbuspage]

I can't help comparing the TTC's 100th anniversary book with the STM's 100 ans de bus à Montréal.  While I'm quite happy with my copy of TTC 100, the Montreal book is much thicker, at 500 pages, and it is full of photos, fleet information, and route histories, although completely ignoring the Metro and streetcars except in the ways they affected the bus network.  To top it off, the Montreal book costs only $39.99 plus tax.  Heck, I ordered it even though it's not available in English!  So for me, the TTC book is nice to have, but the STM book is an encyclopaedic resource for any transit fan.

[smallspy]

22 hours ago, PCC Guy said:

I'm not necessarily sure I agree, but only because I keep asking myself the question... what would the people who would be dropping $50+ on the history of the TTC want to read about?

This is the problem - you're assuming that they actually want to "read".

 

This book is meant as a "coffee table" book, to be left out and impress your friends and family when they come over. And in that case, it very much succeeds - the presentation is top-notch, and it is very, very well put together.

 

But it is not meant as some sort of historical tome on the whole of transit in Toronto. There are other books better suited to that.

 

For the record, $50 for a coffee table book is very, very affordable.

 

Dan

[Doppelkupplung]

^ that

[T3G]

It appears I may have misunderstood what the intention was behind the creation of the book, which is fair enough.

I have to ask, though - are there any books which cover the 1971-present period? I have all the big old era ones - Bromley, Pursley but I don't know of any text dedicated to more recent history besides Mike Filey's The TTC Story, which is lovely, but light reading. I'd be happy to find I've just overlooked something, of course. The closest I've come upon in my searches is Subways of The World by Stan Fischler which devotes a chapter to the Toronto subway - not hugely detailed, of course, but it did have some nice late Hawker photos in colour which did not go unappreciated.

[Wayside Observer]

On 10/18/2021 at 10:40 AM, PCC Guy said:

I'm not necessarily sure I agree, but only because I keep asking myself the question... what would the people who would be dropping $50+ on the history of the TTC want to read about? Surely you can only read "And then a politician arrived and proposed a new plan. And then a new politician arrived and scrubbed that plan and proposed his own" so many times before you to start to go mad. Of course there are other things that happened too, but without these vehicles they wouldn't have been able to provide the service that they did. They are central to the TTC story in my opinion, not a side detail.

For the general public? Sure, I wouldn't expect anyone who's been parroting the TTC = Take the car joke for the last 15 years to show the slightest of interest. But I would expect that anyone who thinks the history of the TTC is interesting enough to buy a book on it wouldn't necessarily turn their nose up at fleet information.

Fleet information would be the big seller, relatively speaking.  What I was getting at was the more boutique you get off the beaten path away from the relatively mainstream stuff like the vehicles and system history, the narrower the pie slice gets.  I don't know of any thorough books on the TTC's history from 1970 to present day either.  I get the sneaking suspicion that none have been written.

 

[smallspy]

13 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

Fleet information would be the big seller, relatively speaking.  What I was getting at was the more boutique you get off the beaten path away from the relatively mainstream stuff like the vehicles and system history, the narrower the pie slice gets.  I don't know of any thorough books on the TTC's history from 1970 to present day either.  I get the sneaking suspicion that none have been written.

There are several books and articles that touch on aspects of its more modern history. Mike Filey, looking your way....

 

And to be honest, a lot of the current reporting of things like historical fleet data has been taken over by the likes of forums such as this one. That's not just the case for the TTC, but also a lot of organizations within and even outside of transit.

 

But a singular, over-all look at the full history of the TTC up to the current present day? No, nothing like that exists. Yet.

 

Dan

[Mark Walton]

TTC stopped publishing its own Transit in Toronto in 1995. I have several editions of that.

[Wayside Observer]

Here's a question I've been tossing around a bit:  Have any of you spoken with someone who remembers when the TTC started up in 1921 and took over the private operators?

All of the elderly people I knew who were old enough lived in the UK at the time and the Canadian ones were born in the early 1920s just after the TTC came into existence so I never had the chance to hear from anyone who had firsthand experience with the changeover.

[Mark Walton]

Ted Wickson gave a great presentation to the Bytown Railway Society last night. About a 15-minute delay getting his Power Point and audio to interface with Zoom, but once he got going, well-paced and lasted about an hour. Here's a recording of it.