Clang! Clang! Clang! Went the Trolley! -- A Trip Down Memory Lane

Did you just hear Judy Garland singing? 

 

That title brings back memories of Judy in Meet Me in St. Louis, of course, but this day-trip excursion brought back all kinds of memories from my early life -- memories of growing up as a kid in Toronto.

 

  

This picturesque place is the Halton County Radial Railway, located in the forested countryside northwest of Toronto and Burlington, just a few kilometres away from the village of Rockwood. It sounds a bit remote, but is actually easy to get to with a bit of driving -- about 15 minutes, or a bit less, northwest along Regional Road 1/Guelph Line from Highway 401.

  

Source: Google Maps

 

This volunteer-run preservation and display museum, originally founded in 1954 and first opened to the public in 1972, covers a wide range of the streetcars which used to form the backbone of public transportation in Canadian cities before World War Two, although a large part of the collection comes from Toronto. Also included are historic buses and subway/interurban railway vehicles.

 

The centrepiece of the Halton County Radial Railway is an actual working railway, a two-kilometre stretch of track which was once part of the Toronto Suburban Railways. This fully electrified working rail line includes turning loops and stations at each end, and rides through the woods are offered throughout the day, using an assortment of vehicles, whenever the museum is open. 

 

These photos show the rides being operated on the day I went. The first is #2984, a "Peter Witt" streetcar which was the backbone of Toronto public transit between the two great world wars of the last century.

 

  

This Peter Witt car would almost certainly have been retired before I was old enough to notice. One of the last great strongholds of the Witt cars was the Yonge Street streetcar line, and it gave way to Canada's first subway when I was just a few months old. By the way, the Witt looks like a double-ended vehicle but actually is not. These cars were often known by the nickname "Red Rattler", and you can get a bit of an idea from the soundtrack of this video clip, showing the car going around the loop at the far east end of the museum's line.

 

  

The other two rides were PCC cars, and I rode on this one, # 4611, twice. 

 

 

 

The initials PCC stand for "Presidents' Conference Committee," a consulting body of leaders of major transit networks which set the basic design. These vehicles began coming into service just before World War Two, and in the end Toronto operated more of them than any other city -- nearly 800 vehicles in total. Many came to Toronto, used, from other cities where streetcar tracks were being ripped out and replaced with buses -- Cleveland, Kansas City, and Birmingham, to name just a few. These were the streetcars as I knew them when I was a child. 

 

 

Did it look like this inside when I was young? Definitely not. These cars were given a full rebuild on the interior half a dozen years before they were retired for good, as the 1990s-vintage seats and the dark brown paint and woodgrain-laminate side walls clearly show. The dome lights, the "No Smoking" sign behind the motorman, and the railings by the entrance stairs are all old original design. My favourite feature in childhood was always the single seats along one side, and I was sitting in one of them as I took this picture. Buses and subways certainly didn't have seats like that when I was young -- only the streetcars!

 

One of the key design goals for the PCC was to make these new cars quieter than the noisy Red Rattlers. I'll let you judge for yourself how well this goal was achieved. 

 

 

But the PCC cars were definitely faster! They became the first generation of street railway vehicles in Canada to achieve a top speed of 80 km/hour, and thus earned the new nickname of "Red Rockets."

 

Although you will buy tickets earlier at the gift shop or on line, your ride starts at the Rockwood Station, a genuine old railway station. Originally built in Rockwood in 1912, it was moved the 6 kilometres from the village to the museum on a large flatbed truck in 1971. The gift shop sells  admission tickets, which allow you to ride all day, as well as snacks, souvenirs, drinks, and ice cream (that last item especially popular with kids of all ages). At the east end turnaround loop, the smaller Meadowvale Station also has a snack and ice cream bar. You're welcome to get off there and walk around, visit the decorative garden inside the turning loop (that's where I took the video footage), sit at a table, and enjoy the sun until you get the urge to hop on a streetcar for the ride back.

 

The rides are the highlight, but the property also has a number of large car barns, where volunteers work on restoring and rejuvenating many vehicles, some for riding, and some for display only. Barn # 4 is the static display hall, and the collection there is even more diverse. Here are just a few examples.

 

First up, # 327, a working replica of one of the very earliest electric streetcars in Toronto. The design of # 327 is basically a powered adaptation of the open-sided horse-drawn summer streetcars which predated the electric age. 

 

Another prized exhibit is # 4500, the very first PCC streetcar in Canada. This one is beautifully cared for indeed, and with good reason -- it just joined the museum's collection a year ago and is now almost 90 years old. Compare to the pictures of # 4611 above and you'll see multiple differences in door design, destination signs, and window size and shape. The basic PCC template went through many such variations in different cities, and quite a few of those different looks ended up in Toronto.

 

 

Another relic, an open-air summer car from London, Ontario, presents a wild contrast to the sleek streamlining of the ALRV articulated car behind it, a type which has only been retired from service in Toronto for a few years. 

 

This oddly-coloured PCC vehicle, # W-30, was used for track inspection and rail grinding to keep the entire system moving as smoothly as possible. Again, you get the contrast with the ALRV directly behind.

 

But back to my memories. The prize of the whole collection, for me, is the presence of just two of the original Toronto subway cars of 1954 -- the only two survivors of these old originals. And there it is -- the best seat on the train, the seat right beside the driving cabin, which was always a favoured destination as soon as you got on the train. As kids, we used to run down the platform to get to the front end before the train arrived so we could get that seat -- and then enjoy the view throughout the ride. 

 

 

The whole look of the car, from dome lights to plush upholstered seats, from narrow aisles to green-painted walls, is worlds away from today's successors. Speaking of successors, these remain the heaviest subway cars ever to serve in Toronto, even though they are considerably shorter than all subsequent subway vehicles. Helps to explain why these eight-car solid steel trains were so much louder than trains made up of their aluminum successors, trains which are the same overall length but with only six cars.

 

I completely forgot to take an exterior picture of these landmark vehicles. But all is not lost! Here is a picture I took in 2011, fifteen years ago. 

 

 

 

It's a pity that you can't go out for rides on this one any more -- it was used for rides when it first arrived at the museum, but is looking a bit the worse for wear now.

 

As I was leaving, after several fascinating hours, I made an impulse decision to go north to Highway 7 before heading home. Just as I was driving into the village of Rockwood, I saw multiple walkers strolling along the shore of a lake at the roadside. That hooked me, and in short order I was walking myself in the Rockwood Conservation Area.

 

This lovely park has multiple campgrounds, plus hiking trails, picnic areas, and the beauty of the lake -- which is actually a reservoir, controlled between dams at the upstream and downstream ends. The various mills in Rockwood thrived in earlier days on the water power of the fast running waters here.

 

Without further ado, a quick picture show of my walk in the park, starting with a video panorama of the lake taken from the west end.

 

  

 Although I'd never been there before, it was late enough in the afternoon that I settled for just a short stroll, as I still had the 80-minute-or-so drive home to contend with. But I definitely want to return for a much longer walk -- and another visit to the streetcar museum wouldn't go amiss either!

 

These links will take you to get the detailed information about both of these attractions:

 

 

Halton County Radial Railway

 

Rockwood Conservation Area 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Europe 1975: A Throwback Memory

I've been travelling independently for well over half a century. From my earliest trips, I have scattered memories of incidents here and there. This week, I got hit out of left field by a memory from my first independent trip to Europe in 1975, thanks to Instagram's random selection of stories that the software thinks might interest me. That picture so intrigued me that I promptly went digging for more. Here's the photo that IG turned up for my consideration -- a rather unusual sight by anyone's standards.

Let's face it, it isn't every day that you see a passenger train charging across the apron at an airport terminal. The location was the airport at Le Touquet - Paris-Plage in northern France, right on the coast of the English Channel south of the ferry ports at Calais and Boulogne. The scene was the transfer point between two legs of an unusual rail-air hybrid service that used to connect Paris and London three times a day -- "The Silver Arrow."

Since this was 1975, there was of course no Channel Tunnel to speed up rail travel between the two capitals. The available options were using rail at each end to connect with the ferries across the Channel from Calais and Boulogne, or to fly from Paris (Orly or Le Bourget) to London (Heathrow or Gatwick). The all-air option was fearfully expensive, while the traditional ferry crossing would take 5 hours or more (including train times) and laid you open to the notoriously rough seas of the English Channel, one of the most seasick-prone sea crossings on the planet.

I'd just spent four weeks touring on the continent, and would soon be heading back to England for my flight home when I saw an ad (while browsing a bookstore) for the Silver Arrow. I had a vague memory of having heard of it earlier, but wasn't aware of the details. However, the price was right and I booked it with no hesitation, having had my own baptism by rough water when crossing the North Sea from England to Norway several weeks earlier (that ranks as one of the most miserable travel experiences of my entire life).

The journey began at the Gare du Nord, the same station in Paris where Eurostar expresses now depart for London via the tunnel. The train, shown in the first photo at the top, ran express to Le Touquet with only a single stop in the northern city of Amiens. As we approached Le Touquet, the diesel train left the main line on a branch. This ran north-westwards into the airport property, crossed two active taxiways, and then curved around to west and ran right across the apron into a station platform attached to the end of the small airport terminal. The track across the airport has been paved over now, but you can still see traces of the route today on aerial photographs marked here with several "silver" arrows!

As we were rolling into the airport, I was seated on the right-hand side of the train, and so completely missed a grandstand close-up view of the aircraft as we rolled in.

 

Considering that this train would go no further than the airport before returning to Paris, it was far bigger than any possible need. The plane only seated fifty people; the train probably had space for three times that number. And indeed, the train had loaded up with the inbound passengers and departed back to Paris before we'd even boarded the flight.

Check in went very quickly, and so did the security check. And then we walked out to the plane. Ah, the good old days!

The name of the airline was British Island Airways, one of a sizable collection of independent airlines in the British Isles which flew smaller turboprop aircraft like this one in and out of smaller airports at various cities beyond the big metropolitan centres of the United Kingdom. The aircraft was a real rarity, one of a number of aircraft types produced in the 1950s and 1960s by the British civil aviation sector which saw only limited service with non-British airlines. This one is the Handley Page Herald. It was one of several different types built at the same time by various British manufacturers, all seating around 50 passengers, and all powered by the ubiquitous Rolls-Royce Dart turboprop engine. The Herald struggled to make sales, and only 50 of these aircraft were completed.

Oddly enough, one Canadian airline operated the Herald around the same time period. Eastern Provincial Airways, the regional airline of the Maritime provinces, operated this type into a number of smaller airports from their main hub at Halifax.   

The two pictures shown so far were of BIA's final colour scheme, so they must have been taken a few years later on, perhaps on one of the final runs of the Silver Arrow. Here's one more picture which dates from an earlier year and shows the colour scheme as it appeared on my flight. 

 

Attribution:

Ken Fielding/https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenfielding

 

Once we were all aboard and seated (and the plane was not full), the engines were fired up with that memorable plaintive whining tone unique to the Dart engines, and we taxied quickly out to the runway. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the flight to London Gatwick airport took only 35 minutes, a great advance over the 90-minutes-plus that a ferry would take from Calais to Dover. We flew at a fairly low altitude and had a great view.

Why Gatwick? London Gatwick had a feature that was nearly unique in 1975, although it's now seen as more or less essential in Europe and much of the rest of the world. This airport had direct rail access to the city with a station on the main line from Brighton up to London Victoria. Once we deplaned at Gatwick, it was a quick walk through the terminal, across the footbridge over the tracks, and down to the platforms. Our ticket included travel on the premium-priced Gatwick Express service which ran into London nonstop in a matter of 35 minutes.  

I was saddened a few years later to find out that the Silver Arrow was no more. It wasn't the Channel Tunnel that caused the demise of this unique service -- that still lay years in the future. It was something completely different in the world of ferries.

 

 Photo credit: Andrew Berridge, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons  

 

  

Photo Credit: Bachcell, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

These monsters, the SRN-4 hovercraft, could carry 450 passengers and 100 cars at a time, "flying" across the waters of the English Channel a short distance above the waves, and (most significant) were capable of crossing in wave height conditions up to 3.5 metres (11.5 feet). The hovercraft service was already in existence in 1975, and I admit it was a tough choice, but the unusual aircraft won out over the exotic hovercraft. I never did get a chance to cross the Channel in this way. Pity.

 

European Circle Tour # 12: Touring Outside of Lisbon

Our port call in Lisbon lasted barely 9 hours, and that was a real shame. I can think of few cities better suited to an extended two-day port call, not least because the ships dock right in the heart of the city, and not miles away as in Barcelona or (worse) in Rome or (worst of all) in London.

 

But you take what you can get. Having spent time in Lisbon on my last too-short port call, in 2022, I opted for this visit to broaden my horizons. There are many smaller towns around the city that could well be worth a visit, but two in particular draw the attention of many visitors. In part, this is because both of these places can be easily reached by train from Lisbon, so taking a day-long coach tour or paying an eye-watering taxi fare are not the only options.

 

It's also down to the differences in character between these two places, although both are fascinating. The first is the old central district of Sintra, a smaller town up in the hills. Small, old, crammed with shops, cafes, bakeries -- in a phrase, a tourist trap -- but a beguiling and lovely one all the same. Sintra has CHARACTER, all in caps and bold faced italic like that!

 

The old centre of this village gives you the feeling that it didn't so much grow as it happened by accident, with each successive builder squeezing in wherever they could get a footing. Streets that are wide enough to be used by motor vehicles are a rarity.

 

 

Yes, the alleyways in the old part of Sintra really are that narrow -- and that steep. The fiendish white and grey cobblestones which become slippery like ice when wet are everywhere too. When the alleyways get really steep, they've built in some steps -- but the steps still slope underfoot, just not quite as steeply as the alleyway would slope without steps. Truth be told, Sintra is definitely not the place for you if you are unsure of your footing or dependent on crutches, canes or wheelchairs. 

This is a good place to mention that Princess Cruises (and Holland America, my other favourite line) rate the tours they sell as Easy, Moderate, or Strenuous. This one was rated "Strenuous", and Sintra was the reason why. We had one couple on our coach walking slowly with canes, but I don't think they got far at all. The steep cobble-stoned alleyways are not for the faint-hearted or mobility-limited.

 

Among the alleyways, you can come across architectural treasures. Our tour guide started us on the square in front of the Palácio Nacional de Sintra. It's a good focal point, and was just a short distance up the road from the spot where our coach let us off. The oldest parts of the palace were built by the Moors back in the twelfth century.

 

Other architectural details and treasures pop up here and there. In order to see them, of course, you have to be able to take your eyes off the cobblestones and shop window displays. As in so many places in Portugal, brightly coloured paints and patterned ceramic tiles are popular methods of finishing the exterior of a building.

 

Oh, those shop window displays. Tempting, and in some cases downright dangerous. I've been known to gain 2 kilograms (nearly 5 pounds) just by looking into the window of a Portuguese bakery.

 

 

The people in our group who tried the Queijadas gave them a unanimous two-thumbs-up!

 

I automatically thought of a friend of mine who loves to wear colourful socks.

 

My late husband, Massi, would have made a beeline for this shop as soon as we got off the coach, not because he saw it but because he sensed its presence in some other mysterious manner -- and he probably would have bought one of these cute ceramic cats. "Cats call me, you know." That's what he used to say and it happened more than a few times in our travels together.

 

 

We had an hour of free time to explore the historic district. Then we returned to our coach and drove south, some twenty minutes or so, to the city of Cascais on the north shore of the ocean bay into which the Tagus River empties. 

Interlude: Language Lesson

Our guide took a few moments to explain to us how Portuguese uses stressed and unstressed vowels, also known as long and short vowels. He didn't mention the other key detail, but Portuguese pronunciation tends to soften many hard consonant sounds by combining them with an "h". The results sounds a bit slushy by comparison with languages that make extensive use of hard consonants. Which brings us to the city we were now going to visit.

 

"Cascais" is pronounced, more or less, as "Kesh-KYYYY-sh." That's how the guide said it, and I'm willing to take his word for it.

 

Now that we were at the shore of the ocean, Cascais was a much more level place, and that made it a lot easier to walk and really get going, which I did. The main landmarks in Cascais are the expensive seafront hotels -- some very modern, some quaint and old-fashioned but beautiful none the less.

 

Most of these hotels are grouped around the plaza in the centre of town which faces the bay and its beach. Perfectly turned towards the south, and the heat of the sun, it's no wonder that Cascais is such a popular area for a beach getaway from the big city. Even on an early spring day with the temperature only reaching 20°C (68°F), the beach had its sunbathers and there were even some people a bit later on getting right into the water and swimming or relaxing at length. Of course, the water could very well have been warmer than the air!

 

And yes, the sunshine was very warm and pleasant. As a by-the-way hint, cruise lines love to identify the tour groups on their tours with these stickers. It's best to wear utilitarian clothes which can't be damaged in any way by the stickum on the labels. I once had one become permanently glued to a synthetic t-shirt, and couldn't remove it.

 

One feature of Cascais, which you also can see in many public spaces in Lisbon, is the placement of the light and dark cobbles in this peculiar wave pattern. My guide in Lisbon back in 2022 swore that some people would get motion sickness from walking on them. 

My most lasting memory of Cascais, without a doubt, was the flower gardens. The city really puts an effort into maintaining these public gardens with their diverse varieties of colours and patterns in the blooms. Most of all, it reminds me of going to Niagara Falls during the spring and summer, and seeing the similar range of floral displays in the parks along the river. Here, the city's coat of arms is ringed by a flower display at the main traffic circle in the centre of town.

 

 

Later on, I saw these flowers bedded out at the square behind the beach.

 

Those dazzling colours were on my mind for much of the remainder of the day.

 

Lisbon was our final port call of the cruise. The tail end of the nine-day voyage was a stretch of two days at sea, from Lisbon north past the Bay of Biscay, and then up the English Channel to the port of Southampton. The Bay of Biscay and the English Channel are both names respected by sailors and experienced cruise passengers alike as notorious generators of rough weather. In this case, we had no real problems at all. We certainly encountered waves with heights of 5-6 metres (16-20 feet) but they are at enough of an angle that they didn't affect the ship much at all, just the odd moment of quivering. Of course, a cruise ship like Emerald Princess, at 113,000 tons, takes a really big wave to make it begin to shift in any noticeable way. For anyone concerned about weather and motion, bigger is better -- and time of year matters a lot too. Spring and summer are much more user friendly than fall and winter. Here is a sample white water picture from the first sea day.

 

By the evening of the same day, the sea had calmed down even more, the sky remained clear, and we got a glorious sunset at sea after dinner. I can think of no better place to enjoy a sunset spectacle. It's one of the biggest reasons I'm always looking for another cruise!

 

Once we docked in Southampton, I transferred straight up to a favourite hotel at Heathrow Airport, ready to fly home to Canada the next day. Looking forward to my next trip, and to having you join me on it!