Last Update: July 1, 2010

A light update this month. I've created another new Canada Coach Lines page, this one on the MCI TC40-102A bus fleet. Thanks once again to the folks at the Maritime New England Bus Page for the photos.

David O'Reilly made a real find, discovering that another HSR trolley bus survived the scrapper's torch. HSR 739 was sold to a private owner, and by the mid 90's was in a field near Cardinal, Ontario. If anyone out there knows what happened to the trolley bus, please let me know. As a result of the find, I've made minor updates to both the T-48 and the Final fate pages.

Hamilton Transit Headlines

  • (June 15) I've made a fairly major online discovery. Buried in a 1918 documentary on fruit growing in Grimsby, is actual footage of Hamilton Terminal Company freight motor #675. This is the only piece of film of any of the Hamilton area radials in action that I've been able to locate, online or not.

    HTC #675 was built in 1906 by the Russell company. It was bought by the HTC in 1913 from an unrecorded previous owner. Used as a freight motor in the summer, in the winter large snowplows were installed for snow clearing. The clip shows HTC #675 hauling one of the Hamilon Radial's flat cars, HRER #393-398. These cars were originally ordinary flat cars, and had sides installed and a beam mounted at the top of the car running lengthwise, so that a tarp could be placed over the cargo like a tent.

    There are two places to see HTC #675. I first found the clip in the Grimsby Museum's online collection. HTC 675 appears in the last 10 seconds of this portion of the documentary.

    The documentary is the property of the National Film Board of Canada. A brief search of their site turned up the documentary in better quality. I've not been able to figure out how to link to a specific clip, so here's how to find it using the search engine:

    • on the NFB page, click 'Advanced Search' in the upper left corner

    • in the field 'Shot ID', type 27708.

    • The full documentary is 9 minutes, 15 seconds. HTC 675 appears at about 12:05:31:00 (for some reason this clip starts at 12:00:00:00)

    If you've got some time, dig around in the NFB archives, there is tons of stuff from the last 100 years

  • (June 1) The first of the 1000 series of HSR D40LFs have safely been delivered to St. Catharines.

    No, that's not a joke. The bus construction contract specifies that the buses were to be delivered after July 2nd, after the HST is in force. As a result, the HST was built into the price of the buses. However, New Flyer has completed the buses early. Since you can't charge a tax that doesn't exist yet, the HSR would have a mountain of paperwork to get the payments corrected. New Flyer did not want them taking up space at the factory, so they've been shipped to a storage site where they'll wait a month until going on to Hamilton on July 2nd.

    These new buses will replace the last of the 9700 series Nova LFS buses, so get your rides and photos while you can. Not many of these buses will likely see the open road after the Hamilton schools close for the summer, and come July 2nd they'll be history. As well, a number of 9600 series C40LFs will be retired.

    In other HSR news, this summer the HSR, in conjunction with Hamilton Eat Local, Tourism Hamilton and Smart Commute, will be running countryside tours of several Hamilton area farms. The tours will run on selected Saturday afternoons from 1:00pm to 3:30pm. The pick up point for each tour will be the Bread & Roses Cafe at the Sky Dragon Centre (27 King William St.). Adult tickets are $5, children and seniors tickets are $2. Details are here.

This website is a description of public transit in the Hamilton, Ontario region, past, present and future (Hopefully!) If you’d like to contribute something, make a suggestion, or tell me that something’s broken, email me at hamiltontransithistory@rogers.com

This is NOT the official Hamilton Street Railway website, and is in no way affiliated with the HSR or the City of Hamilton. The HSR’s official website is here.

Disclaimer: Although I try my best to write accurate articles and tales of Hamilton’s transit history,I’m not perfect. Therefore, the reader is advised that all information contained within this website is not guaranteed to be 100% perfect, and anyone using this website as a resource should confirm all information independently. If you have questions or concerns, please contact me at hamiltontransithistory@rogers.com