RE: Fwd: More sad news from Toronto
  Greg King

Yes Matthew, I lived near Toronto for a year and saw what it was like and also had to maintain my car against the salt. But, you are right, they should never have let them get that far but, they still could to temporary repairs, they also should have allocated a number of cars as ready reserve, with the new Leslie Barns, they certainly have the space.

But politics is the biggest killer, the previous Ford shambles where he hated streetcars with such a passion he made Clem Jones look pro-tram! He and his brother Doug (now Premier) had a traffic report during the mornings and even if a street that had no trams had a hold up, it was always the streetcars fault! Until he came along, they were pretty functional, it has gone down hill ever since and it was only the belligerence of some of the councillors that saved the cars. The current Mayor does not know which way to turn and basically makes it up as he goes along. Ford now Premier, is trying to take over the Subway part of the TTC, if he succeeds, the surface transport (read streetcars) will be next and, don’t think that new streetcars will save them, with all the BS that has happened with the Bombardier contract, any lingering love for the cars by the public has been as seriously corroded as the CLRV’s!

Greg

From:tramsdownunder@... [mailto:tramsdownunder@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Geier
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2019 9:24 AM
To: TramsDownUnder tramsdownunder@...>
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] Fwd: More sad news from Toronto

On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 at 08:56, Greg King transitclassics@... mailto:transitclassics@iinet.net.au > wrote:

What confounds me is, they cry that there are not enough cars and yet they are scrapping the ALRV’s and CLRV’s with indecent haste. I think there is only about 5 ALRV’s left on the property. They may not be what they want at the moment but it seems bloody minded to remove them before the rest of the new fleet are in service!

They stopped doing any serious maintenance on the cars when they ordered the replacements. They also salt the roads - the withdrawn cars had rust holes you could put your hand through.

So the old cars are unreliable and full of rust.

You could argue they shouldn't have let them get into that condition in the first place, but it's done now and between Bombardier's broken promises and a poor political situation they are stuck.

I gotten workshops tours of 2 major European operators where it snows in winter. A major part of their heavy overhauls is corrosion repairs. Major amounts of welding at the 10-year overhauls - particularly the undersides.