MONTREAL — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the Canadian government would invest more than $900 million into a new light rail system in Montreal. When complete, the Réseau électrique métropolitain will...
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2017/06/16-montreal-light-rail
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
My first visit to Montreal was in 1951, a weekend trip from Fort Monmouth, where I and Fulton Clark Douglass Jr. were Signal Corps officer cadets. We slept in sleeping bags overnight in the camping ground on The Mountain, reached of course by a steeply graded streetcar line. We spent part of one day on the "Golden Chariot" streetcar tour of the city, rode some of the streetcar lines, and enjoyed some good restaurant meals.
This was before I owned a car, or even had a driver's license, but Clark (he preferred use of his second name) wanted me to share the driving. Fortunatley, we were never stopped for any violation. We left the base as soon as we could and had to be back by roll-call Monday morning, so much driving was at night, with alternate sleep and driving for both of us. The radio was helpful in staying awake, but not too loud to prevent one of us sleeping.
Montreal had a truly great streetcar system at the time. The tracks on St. Catherine's Street were probably handling about 36,000 passenger's an hour, during rush hours in each direction. We were not there for a weekday rush our, but I saw films later. The typical streetcar was single ended, had a triple-width door at the rear, one boarded at the rear and then pased a conductor (or remained standing on the rear platform, allowed), paid or had a multi-ride ticket puched as one passed the conductor, and could exist at the front, or on some cars middle and front. In the film of a rush hour, six or seven cars would lined up at a stop light, boarding passengers, then when the light changed, they would move off almost as if in a train, with each motorman ("Garde-du-Moteur" i think on the caps) confident of what the one in front of him was doing. The next light cycle, the show would be repeated. Every two minutes.
When I rturned in 1959, the main routes had been converted to bus, with half of the St. Catherines Street routes shifted to Dorchester Avenue, which had no transit service previously, and only three routes left, Cartiaville, Milan, and Montreal North, operated by the smaller, and more modern one-man lightwiegjt safety cars that had provided service on these lines as well as the line to the Mountain.
Glad to know of the revival! Posting now corrected.
Holy smoke David, from Fort Monmouth NJ to Montreal for a weekend? That was one heck of a drive in those pre-interstate highway days! You guys had more energy than I did at the equivalent age! I'm surprised you didn't take the train from Grand Central.
Or was the mess hall at Fort Monmouth so lousy you just HAD to get away for a decent meal? When I was an officer candidate at Quantico in 1974 that was one reason I got out of there on weekends when we had liberty!
It was Clark's idea. Going, we did not drive straight through. We were able to leave around 8pm, and about 1AM we showed up at the New Hampshire girls summer camp (off Newfound Lake, near Bristol and Hebron, NH) where my sisters had been campers and then counselors and that was run by a distant relative of mine. I had been a camper at the boys camp and knew the layout, knew it would be unoccupied, and knew the watchman knew me. We had no trouble there, except that we were awakened about 6AM by my relative (unexpectadly on the premisis) and his huge dog, (I forget the breed.) He made some cracks about the hotel he was running requiring reservations. We simply had our sleeping bags on the floor of office's entrance hall, and I woke up with the dog practically on top of me with his eyes looking into mine. But we had a good breakfast and got to Montreal around one in the afternoon. We wore our ROTC uniforms (kakis, suntans, not fategues) all the time, and had no problems at borders or anywhere else. It was really a huge streetcar system, with two kinds of rear-loading two-man cars, one kind with railroad or deck roofs and one more modern with arch roofs, feeder lines, some using single-end and some double-end lightweight safety cars, and Cartieville at that time had at least one articulated three-truck car, and there may have been more. A shuttle at the end of Cartiaville had used single-truck Birnies, but they were gone by 1952, as was the shuttle. The trunk routes all ran on St. Catherans and had the two-man rear-entrance cars. The motormen were all very friendly, very expert at what they were doing, and those that spoke English full of information and glad to share it. I did use my highschool French to some extent.
The Golden Chariot had theatre-type seating with the guide-conductor using a megaphone or hand-held PA system in front, and was without a roof and with stepped sides at elbow height at each crossbench, each holding about five people with one stepped side-asile. I was about a four-hour tour, and covered all the major sights. I believe summer 1957 was the last time it ran, but I did not get back until 1959. I think there may be a Golden Chariot at Seashore.
In those days, and throughout my Army career, mostly at Fort Bragg, NC, I was not Observant and ate non-Kosher food. I do not remember what the quality of the food was like at Monmouth. The baracks were OK. At Fort Bragg, the officers' mess was pretty good, and I felt the food was as good as at the MIT cafaterias. (Now MIT has a Kosher kitchen, and I understand that food is excellent.)
The only time I tried Marine food was when I visited my sister and brother-in-law at Camp Lajuane, NC in 1945 and ate once at the officers mess there, since my brother-in-law was a Navy Chaplain. I think the food was similar to what I ate ten years later at Fort Bragg.
Ah, but that chicken dinner on the purple ACL diner on my private train from Wilson to Washington, courtesy steward Jim Masters!
Thanks for the response David, that's a good story. Still, leaving Fort Monmouth at 8 PM and arriving in New Hampshire at 1 AM is some serious driving!
You're being non-observant in the army reminds me of the reminicenses I read years ago of a Jewish gent who was a Doughboy in World War One. The first morning after arrival at basic training they marched the group to the mess hall and as he remembered..."they were serving ham and eggs, and oh boy they smelled so good! I decided then and there I'd put dietary law on hold for the duration!"
That's from a book called "Make the Kaiser Dance, Living Memories of a Forgotten War" by Henry Berry, a collection of interviews of World War One veterans published in the 1970's. Great book!
Again, the missing edit button is a real problem. My ROTC Summer Camp was in the summer of 1951, not 1952. Between my Sophmore and Junior years. My faculty advisor, Professor Karl Wildes, thought I could get a better job between Junior and Senior years, and I did, at EMD in La Grange, with the big excursion with Bill Watson and Ray DeGroot to the Iowa interurbans, and a long friendship with Bob Consbrook and a cab ride in a Little Joe on a CERA fantrip. In 1951, not only were there K4s on the New York and Long Branch but camelback ten wheelers and double-end Baldwin Centapedes. In 1954, at Ft. Monmouth Signal School before posting to Fort Bragg, less exodic diesels were on the CNJ, steam was gone from the CNJ, but the K4s still handled the Penn Station trains to South Amboy for swapping with GG1s. And in 1951 I rode behind an E-6 from Little Silver (Fort Monmouth's back door) to Princeton Junction, since the regular doodlebug was being serviced.
So my Golden Chariot excursion with Fulton Clark Douglas and my driving his Chevy without a drivers license was in 1951, not 1952.
Anyone know about the Golden Chariot at Seashore. And also, Montreal had one line that used PCC's, diverted during WWII from a large order placed by Toronto, used only on the Outremont line, which did not run on St. Catherins, and either scrapped or sold when that line went bus around 1957.
There is a Golden Chariot at the streetcar museum at Windsor Locks, CT- I rode on it about 25 years ago. There was at the time a Montreal streetcar, white with a red roof that was under restoration and a beautiful Perley Thomas from New Orleans. The had acquired it and restored it as fine as a show-winning Packard touring car and they said that N.O. wanted it back as they needed it. They told them to go somewhere.
Exporail outside Montreal includes a very comprehensive collection of Montreal streetcars, going all the way back through the eras to the very first one. They have two of the Golden Chariots. At least one was serviceable and often used on the museum loop when the weather was suitable. I believe at least two others are preserved in the US.
Do they have a PCC? An articulated?
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.