Red Rocket #4193 is about to start its eastbound run from the Earlescourt Loop to St. Clair subway station following the St. Clair Line (Route 512). I took this photo on a rare, bright sunny afternoon in mid-February of this year. It was c-c-c-cold and my poor fingers nearly snapped off as I struggled to get "the shot" of this very special scene. St. Clair is a busy street, even on the weekends, and auto traffic would build up to block the exodus of transit vehicles (and my line of sight) from this venerable TTC loop. My vantage point: the median of St. Clair Avenue, standing on the yet to be used and surrealistically quiet tracks of the new (all too much maligned) St. Clair streetcar right-of-way. I photographed the (then recently opened) eastern segment of the right-of-way back in 2007. TTC CLRV 4170 On St. Clair Avenue That photo depicted a segment of the line between St. Clair subway station on Yonge Street and Spadina Avenue just south of the big houses and private schools of Forest Hill. A far cry from the businesses and working class neighbourhoods of the Earlescourt area. I say that this scene is special because the Earlescourt Loop is not often used these days except for emergencies and exceptional events. But for now, the western portion of the St. Clair Line has been truncated to this terminus as construction continues on the right-of-way from Lansdowne Avenue to Gunns Loop further west. The last segment of a project that will provide transit vehicles on St. Clair full separation from mixed traffic. A recreation of a transit right-of-way which used to exist up until the Depression Era of the 1930's. Curiously, Earlescourt Loop is not on Earlescourt Avenue at all. The loop actually straddles the south-west corner of St. Clair and Lansdowne Avenues. Indeed, the now plastic destination 'linens' on the streetcars read '512 LANSDOWNE' when scheduled to turn at this loop. Curving south onto Lansdowne for a few metres and then west, off-street, behind and around a squat 1960's era suburban office building that now sports walk-in pizza and ice cream parlours. Earlescourt itself is one block to the east of Lansdowne but is the last westbound on-street stop before turning into the loop. There are six loops on the St. Clair Line. Traveling east to west, they are:

• St. Clair Subway Station (at Yonge Street)
• St. Clair West Subway Station (near Bathurst Street)
• Oakwood
• Earlescourt
• Old Weston Road (used even less than Earlescourt)
• Gunns (signed as "512 KEELE")

This high density of turns harkens back to an era when the streetcar was the king of any transit system. In Toronto many (sadly, now abandoned) north-south lines concluded their runs along St. Clair Avenue at the northern reaches of what was then the old City of Toronto. The track on Oakwood, Landsdowne, Yonge, Old Weston and Avenue Roads are all gone - ripped up to give space to fume belching cars, trucks and buses. But the loops used by these fallen flags were kept and maintained all through the decades to today. But sadly there used to be seven loops on the St. Clair Line. As late as the mid-70's the trams would travel further east beyond Yonge Street to Mount Pleasant Road. There they would curve north along Mount Pleasant to a loop just above Eglinton Avenue in the Uptown business district. But even the St. Clair Line was not completely spared the ravages of streetcar abandonment. As always, my thanks to you for taking the time for a quick view of my handiwork. Have a great weekend! NOTES: TTC: Toronto Transit Commission CLRV: Canadian Light Rail Vehicle