Caption: Night Owl Trip: Operating on an all-night fantrip, TTC PCC 4732 (one of the 48 1947 Pullman-built A13-class cars acquired secondhand from Birmingham, Alabama) poses for a night-time photo op by the streetcar stop at the corner of Bay Street and Albert Street in downtown Toronto. The car is turning on City Hall loop, an on-street loop of track off Dundas running clockwise from Louisa-James-Albert. Lurking in the shadows of early 1970's street lighting are the Old City Hall (dark, to the right), Eaton's Annex store (to the left), and Eaton's flagship Queen Street Store (in the distance at Albert & James). At this time, Albert Street still ran all the way from Bay to Yonge. Also worth noting is the blue illuminated street sign, which started appearing on main Toronto thoroughfares in 1967.

It had been common since the 1960's for railway societies and individuals (both local and visiting) to charter streetcars for private trips touring around the city, posing for photos, and to visit different transit carhouses, garages, terminals, loops, etc along the way. Standard practice during a photo stop was to sign a car up for past and present routes that operated in the area. In this case, 4732 has been signed up as a Dupont car bound for City Hall (loop), even though the Dupont route vanished almost a decade earlier in 1963 when the University subway line opened (see the Bill Thomson's photo here).

In the coming years, the new Eaton Centre development would close some of the local streets and eliminate City Hall loop. The Eaton's Queen St. store would get demolished to make way for further mall expansion (once the new flagship Eatons store at Dundas was opened), and Albert Street would be truncated at James.

Robert D. McMann photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.