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Greetings everybody. My thanks to all of you for your concerns and for wishing me well with all my exhausting burdens. Some significant weight has been taken off my shoulders in the last week or so and I'm finally getting some time to enjoy the spring again. Hopefully, this will last for a while.

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Welcome to picturesque Roncesvalles Village in the west end of the old city. TTC Red Rocket 4140 trundles westbound to High Park Loop at the end the Carlton Line (Route 506). Looking at this photograph, I still can not imagine why anyone would get rid of a clean, quiet streetcar line in favour of lumbering, fume belching buses. Still, some of these so called leaders continue to push for the death of trams in Toronto. Once every decade or so, they seem to gain the upper hand but they've always been pushed back at the last. It came maddeningly close a year ago but Toronto will stay a streetcar town for times to come. That being said, soon will arrive the end of a transit era. Not of streetcars, not in Toronto - in spite of the wishes and plots of the city's current low road populist mayor. Indeed, a new and 21st Century model of the tram - two hundred of them - is slated to appear on Toronto's streets as early as next year - bigger, accessible, energy efficient. By mid-decade, the long and natural retirement of the TTC's fleet of CLRV trams will begin - one or two will be retained for historical reasons. By the time they end their revenue service, the CLRVs will have served the city for over forty years. Two-and-a-half times the natural life expectancy for a fleet of buses. And with the CLRVs, Toronto and the TTC will say goodbye to the roll sign. 'Linens' as they are called - once made from dyed cloth but now printed mylar sheets. Buses abandoned the roll sign by the early 90's. Originally for ugly, low resolution magnetic flip disk displays which could not be read from a distance or in the dark. Then for the less egregious LED panels. Somewhat of an improvement but nowhere near the quality and clarity of back-lit text on a roll sign. Roll signs are visible at night and readable during the glare of the day. They might have been static but this did force the transit services to be concise. These days, roll signs are all but forgotten in every transit town save Toronto with its enduring fleet of 70's vintage streetcars. Designed when roll signs were all pervasive on transit vehicles, the CLRVs narrow display compartments were not made for and could not be retrofitted to the bulky electronic panels. And as noted above, streetcars greatly outlast their rubber tire cousins so maintaining the linens has been a surviving TTC practice up until now. Not that the TTC has had much cause to update streetcar signage in the CLRV era. Expansion was stymied by NIMBYism and delusions of grandeur - everybody wants their own subway guys. There had been more than one occasion where I have witnessed a streetcar sporting a clearly torn and dirty destination linen worn out after years of heavy usage. Most CLRVs linens have been updated only twice in their history. The last time when the Harbourfront Line (as Route 509) came into service to the Exhibition terminal in 2000. Some readers will correctly point out that many Toronto subway trains sport mylar roll sign along with the streetcars. This is indeed true, but the TTC has already begun the process of phasing out these trains in favour of new train sets with LED display signs. It seems to me that this process will be completed long before the CLRVs are retired from revenue service. I for one will miss them and their neatly typeset panels.

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Notes: TTC: Toronto Transit Commission CLRV: Canadian Light Rail Vehicle LED: Light Emitting Diode

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