- Trams Downunder

Fwd: Toronto, ON: GTA Track of dreams: 24-year-old transit fan buys himself an old TTC streetcar
Greg Sutherland

The Star

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/07/30/track-of-dreams-24-year-old-transit-fan-buys-himself-an-old-ttc-streetcar.html
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/07/30/track-of-dreams-24-year-old-transit-fan-buys-himself-an-old-ttc-streetcar.html

Track of dreams: 24-year-old transit fan buys himself an old TTC streetcar | The Star https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/07/30/track-of-dreams-24-year-old-transit-fan-buys-himself-an-old-ttc-streetcar.html
Like many young men who decide to buy a used vehicle, Alex Glista has ended up with a bit of a clunker. The papers that come with it attest that “scratches, dents, dings and rust are present ...
www.thestar.com

Dave
GTA
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta.html

Track of dreams: 24-year-old transit fan buys himself an old TTC
streetcar
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/07/30/track-of-dreams-24-year-old-transit-fan-buys-himself-an-old-ttc-streetcar.html

ByBen Spurr https://www.thestar.com/authors.spurr_ben.htmlTransportation Reporter
Thu., July 30, 2020/timer/4min. read

Like many young men who decide to buy a used vehicle, Alex Glista has ended up with a bit of a clunker.

The papers that come with it attest that “scratches, dents, dings and rust are present,” and describe its condition when the last owner was done with it as “not working.” It’s in such bad shape Glista can’t even drive it off the lot and will have to have it hauled away.

But to Glista, everything the vehicle has been through is part of its charm. The 24-year-old self-described transit enthusiast is the proud new owner of a decommissioned TTC streetcar that, when it’s trucked away from the Russell Carhouse on Queen Street East**Friday morning, will be the last of its kind to leave the transit agency’s property.

Glista, who recently graduated from Dalhousie University with a masters in urban planning, admitted it was an unorthodox purchase.

“It’s obviously a crazy thing to do. Not everybody buys a streetcar, let alone during a pandemic,” he said.

The TTCretired the last of its iconic old-model streetcars https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/12/29/one-last-ding-ttc-riders-savour-final-trip-on-iconic-streetcars.html, known as Canadian Light Rail Vehicles (CLRV), in December. While most of the 40-year-old fleet was scrapped, the TTC decided to auction off 10 of the vehicles.

Glista lives in Oakville, but spent many summers working in Toronto and riding the TTC. Like many people, he came to see the old red-and-white streetcars as a symbol of the city, and when he heard last month the TTC was putting some up for sale he couldn’t resist making a bid.

“You kind of get sad when you see so many of these things going off to scrap. I wanted to save it” and give it “a home where it’s loved after all it’s done for the city,” he said.

Although he knew he wanted the car, there were some logistics to sort out and he left the purchase until almost literally the last minute.

On June 26, with just 90 seconds left in the online auction, he logged on and put in the TTC’s minimum asking price, $3,400. As the seconds ticked down he realized there were no other bidders. He was going to win.

“I had a bit of a moment of, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I done?’” he said.

The vehicle he ended up buying, streetcar number 4187, entered service in 1981 and made it all the way to the final day of CLRV service last year.

By Glista’s calculations, over its lifetime the car travelled a distance equal to going to the moon and back twice, and carried a number of passengers roughly equivalent to the population of Ontario.

As Glista discovered, buying a streetcar isn’t necessarily the hard part. You also have to find a place to put it, which is no easy feat considering the vehicle is 15.4 metres long and weighs more than 22,600 kilograms.

Luckily, Glista’s family owns a farm in Priceville, Ont., about 150 kilometres northwest of Toronto. Glista and his father spent last weekend hammering spikes into a short section of track they’ve installed on the property to hold the car.

Including the bid, taxes and the cost of having the streetcar hauled to the farm, Glista is spending about $8,000 on the vehicle, an amount he acknowledged is “not inexpensive” for someone his age.

He said that while he had some help from his father, he was able to pay for most of it by using his savings, which he accrued with the help of academic scholarships.

While Glista is excited about his purchase, he was surprised to find there were few other people similarly eager to own a piece of Toronto transit history. Of the 10 CLRVs the TTC put up for sale, it sold only six.

Two went to the Halton County Radial Railway Museum and three were sold to a recycler. Four will be scrapped by a recycling company the TTC has under contract. Glista’s will be the last to leave the TTC’s carhouse when it’s picked up Friday morning.

With the delivery ofits new Bombardier streetcar fleet complete https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/12/30/after-years-of-delays-bombardier-to-deliver-the-last-new-streetcar-just-days-after-deadline.html, the transit agency intends to keep just four CLRVs out of an original fleet of about 200. Two, car numbers 4001 and 4089, will be preserved as “legacy pieces,” which the agency exhibits on special occasions. Two more, 4081 and 4124, will be converted into work cars.

The TTC is also keeping one of the longer versions of the old cars, known as Articulated Light Rail Vehicles, as a legacy piece.

_._,_._,_
(From Dave drum118@...)