Caption: Sporting a brightly coloured advertising wrap for Stonyfield Farm Organic Yogurt, TTC CLRV 4003 pauses to load passengers at the corner of Dundas Street and Bay in downtown Toronto, enroute to Dundas West Station in the Junction area. 4003 was one of the original six Swiss-built SIG CLRV streetcars (cars 4000-4005), which preceded the regular Canadian-built production CLRV's built by Hawker Siddeley/UTDC (4010-4199).
Nearly 10 years have passed since this photo, and the aging CLRV fleet that dates from the late 70's have managed to hang on longer than most have expected. There had been plans in the works years ago for a CLRV rebuild program, but that was nixed in favour of buying all-new replacement low-floor accessible cars, which were supposed to arrive much sooner and replace the CLRV fleet. When delivery delays and quality control issues arose with the new Bombardier LRV cars and delayed the TTC's replacement schedule, much of the CLRV (and ALRV) fleet was kept going longer than planned despite age-related reliability issues and cold weather breakdowns.
The final few CLRV's are expected to be retired by the end of 2019, but a few have managed to elude the scrapper's torches and ended up in museums. Car 4003 here (one of the six SIG cars), along with 4010 (the first HSC/UTDC Canadian-built car), 4039 and articulated ALRV 4204 have all been preserved at the Halton County Railway Museum in Milton. Car 4034 has been donated to the Illinois Railway Museum in the US (a relatively modern streetcar addition to their collection). The TTC has retained ALRV 4207, and it is expected that they will keep one, two or three CLRV's of their own when the final cars retire.
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