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Greetings. Seventeen (17) months ago I proclaimed in this gallery that 'The iON Is Coming To Caroline Street'. The iON is the livery name for Waterloo Region's new light rail transit system (LRT). Currently under construction, it is scheduled to begin operation in the summer of 2017. Back then however, there was little iON infrastructure to speak of save for small billboards pinpointing the location of future tram stops. Construction had only just started in the more out of the way sections of the line. Rail had yet to be manufactured let alone delivered. And it was just over three (3) months prior to municipal elections which might well have overturned the whole project. Some opponents of the iON had become candidates campaigning on the position that, up until the tracks go into the street, the LRT could be stopped with little cost to the community. It was sorrily untrue assertion but the same ploy had worked in places like Ottawa and Toronto in previous years. LRT friendly councils had been replaced with low road populists hell bent on returning sole ownership of the roads back to the cars. I must admit, I was very wary watching from the outside. Well, in Waterloo at least, the elections came and the opponents lost. And today ladies and gentlemen, the tracks are in the street! Indeed, embedded track has now been laid in three areas of Waterloo region. And much more will be installed next year. Tracks started being laid on Caroline about three (3) weeks ago, after underground utilities were upgraded and rerouted. Indeed it was that underground work which took the most time and caused the most headaches rather than actually track construction. If this project had just been about new sewers, I doubt very many people would have complained at all. This photo is of Caroline Street looking north with its newly installed embedded tram tack. On the right you can see the foundations for the Willis Way station. On the left there are the bases for the new catenary poles which will support the overhead electrical power for the trams. In the background on the right is the back end of Waterloo Town Square shopping mall - it used to look much worse. And in the left background is the Seagram Distillery and Museum. Further to the left is the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) campus. The LRVs will travel southbound (towards the viewer) on the west side of Caroline separated from other traffic. Northbound transit will be on the east side of King Street one block to the east in Waterloo's core district. Old Waterloo's streets are too narrow to support a two-way transit right of way (ROW) while retaining two-way private and service vehicle access. Interesting historical sidebar: iON LRT will be the return of in-street rail service on Caroline. The Grand River Railway used to run freight service up the middle of Caroline Street until the mid-eighties - electrical passenger traffic (interurbans) ended in the fifties. Indeed, I believe that I saw the very last freight train to travel up Caroline prior to track removal. It was a hot muggy Sunday afternoon back in the days when small downtowns like Waterloo's were empty of people on a Sunday afternoon. The sun baked, faded and maybe even listing train crawled, creaked and groaned along what were worn, sixty (60) year old tracks. The behemoth slowly merged into mixed auto traffic with its shocked and terrified drivers - imagine having a diesel locomotive riding your rear bumper. The train, which I feared might tip over at any time, made its way up Caroline and crossed into an all but abandoned rail yard just to the south of Waterloo Park. In a way, it almost seemed lost, wandering out of a previous era of the region when rail of some form littered nearly every major roadway. Or maybe it was some forty years late reaching its destination. The new iON tracks will, however, not be carrying freight. Cheers!

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