Public Transit tickets (2)

 

Montreal Street Railway Company tickets with advertising on the back (early 1900's)

Complimentary ticket from the Montreal Street Railway Company (early 1900's)

Last ticket of the Montreal Street Railway Company (1911)

First ticket of the Montreal Tramways Company (1918)

Montreal Tramways Company ticket for constables (around 1920)

Montreal Tramways Company tickets for its employees' annual picnic (1930)

Montreal Tramways Company ticket for the Longueuil bus service (1931)

Montreal Tramways Company ticket to be used on the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Saint-Hubert or Outremont bus lines when paired with a valid transfer (1930's)

Montreal Tramways Company tickets to be used in three consecutive zones (1948)

Montreal Transportation Commission ticket for its employees, printed before the municipalisation of the Montreal Tramways Company in June 1951

 courtesy – Montreal Archives of Transportation

©2017 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Public Transit Tickets and Receipts

 

First ticket of the Montreal City Passenger Railway Company (1861)

First ticket of the Montreal Street Railway Company (1886)

Ticket from the Montreal Park & Island Railway Company, a suburban network managed by the Montreal Street Railway Company from 1901

Ticket from the Montreal Terminal Railway Company, a suburban network managed by the Montreal Street Railway Company from 1907

Examples of receipts issued on certain lines by the Montreal Park & Island Railway Company and the Montreal Tramways Company (1900's)

- courtesy  Transportation Archives of Montreal

©2017 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Trolley Buses

 

Several models of buses were tested, including the famous “Atwater Street Monster” built by the American company Versare. In 1931, a 35-vehicle garage was built on Côté Street, near the company’s head office. The network also grew in 1931 with service to Longueuil and St. Helen’s Island via the new Havre Bridge (Jacques-Cartier Bridge). The bus division now had 155 buses carrying over 20 million passengers yearly. Beginning in 1936, the bus replaced the tramway on certain routes and new garages were opened in Montreal East and on Mont-Royal Avenue. The following decade saw the opening of the Bellechasse (1941), Charlevoix (1944) and Villeray (1947) garages.

 

Atwater Street Monster - 1927

Seven trolleybuses built by the English company AEC were put into service on Beaubien Street in Montreal on March 29, 1937. It was the first modern trolleybus service in Canada, after unsuccessful tests in Toronto and Windsor, Ontario. Ten years later, the MTC decided to continue the experiment and acquired 40 more trolleybuses. These vehicles, which were built by the Canadian Car company, were put into service on Beaubien Street and, starting in 1949, on Amherst Street and Christophe-Colomb Avenue. The MTC received another 40 trolleybuses in 1949 and decided to deploy them on Bélanger Street. The number of trolleybuses increased from 80 to 105 in 1952, but then remained unchanged until this means of transportation was abandoned in 1966.

Mack bus in war time - 1943

 

courtesy – Archives of Montreal

©2017 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
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Montreal Bus History

 

 

1919

The first buses appeared in America and Europe at the beginning of the 20^th century. Initially, the Montreal Tramways Company (MTC) preferred tramways to buses, since buses were less comfortable and could not carry as many passengers. However, the company needed to replace several parts of the rail crossing on Saint-Étienne Street (now Bridge Street). Given the significant costs involved, the MTC opted to replace the tramway with buses. Two White trucks were converted into buses at the company’s Youville repair shops and the new service was launched on November 22, 1919. In 1921, two more trucks were converted into buses and assigned to the shuttle between Berri Street and St. Helen’s Island.

1925

After these test runs, the time had come for the MTC to give a real chance to the bus, which had continually improved over the years. In 1925, the company created a bus division and launched three new routes in quick succession: Lachine-Montreal-West (August 6), Lachine-LaSalle (August 15) and Sherbrooke Street (August 19). This time, the MTC didn’t build its own buses, turning instead to American suppliers. New routes were quickly created on Saint-Hubert Street, in Outremont, in Verdun, and between the Bordeaux and Cartierville areas. The number of buses increased from 24 to 55 and the company opened its first bus garage in Saint-Henri, which had a capacity of 85 vehicles.

St. Henri Bus Garage – 1926

St. Henri Bus Garage – 1926

 

©2017 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
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Retirement of the Tramways

 

Faced with the criticism of the MTC’s private monopoly, the City of Montreal created the Montreal Transportation Commission (MTC) in August 1950. The Commission appropriated the assets of the Montreal Tramways Company on June 16, 1951, including a large number of old tramways at the end of their useful life. The tramways needed to be replaced quickly, but with what type of vehicle? Although powered by electricity, tramways were no longer very popular in the early 1950s. They were not as flexible as buses and many motorists accused them of blocking downtown traffic. So the decision was made to replace them all with buses over a period of some ten years.

 

Mount Royal

In the end, it took eight years to retire the tramways, with the CTM purchasing some 1,300 buses to replace its 939 tramway cars. And that was how “the trams” gradually disappeared from the city’s streets, such as Sainte-Catherine Street, where a parade was organized in 1956 for the event. On August 30, 1959, another parade marked the retirement of the last tramways in Montreal, on Papineau Avenue and Rosemont Boulevard. It was the end of an era—nearly 100 years of tramways in Montreal.

 

1959

 

courtesy – Archives of Montreal

©2017 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Tramways In War

 

 

1944

After dominating the city’s landscape for years, tramways now faced competition from buses, which were introduced in Montreal in 1919 and had their own division as of 1925. The early rickety buses were quickly replaced by quality vehicles which, although they could not carry as many passengers as the tramways, could be deployed rapidly and less expensively as the city evolved. After several smaller-scale tests, the first major replacement of a tramway by a bus occurred in 1936 in the city’s east end, on Notre-Dame Street. The bus was no longer a simple complement to the tramway but its direct competitor.

 

1944

World War II breathed new life into the tramways. The Transit Controller appointed by the federal government in 1941 required the MTC to limit its use of gasoline and tires. The company was thus forced to return its old tramways to service and purchase a few more second-hand. In 1944, it also put into service the PCC tramways, the last tramway model used in Montreal, of which it received only 18. So it was an aging fleet of tramways that served Montreal through the Second World War and made it possible to achieve a peak ridership in 1947 of 398,349,773 passengers transported during the year.

 

courtesy – Archives of Montreal

©2017 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Golden Age of Tramways

 

Created in 1911, the Montreal Tramways Company (MTC) quickly acquired all of the other transit companies on the Island of Montreal. This private monopoly caused some concern for the general public, who were worried about the quality of the service offered. Late that year, the new company opened its first repair shops in Youville, where the metro’s primary maintenance shops are currently located. A few years passed before the creation, in 1918, of the Montreal Tramways Commission, a public organization tasked with supervising the activities of the Montreal Tramways Company. This new balance worked quite well and the tramways were on the cusp of their golden age in Montreal.

 

Funeral Car - 1915

At its peak in the early 1920s, the Montreal tramway network comprised over 300 miles (500 km) of tracks and more than 900 vehicles carried nearly 230 million passengers per year. In 1924, the first network map was distributed and the tramway cars began indicating the route number. That same year, the first solotrams (tramways operated by one employee) appeared and passengers now had to board at the front of the vehicle. In 1925, a huge terminus was opened on Craig Street, today’s Saint-Antoine West. In 1929, the MTC moved its offices just next door and, the following year, the company launched its Mount Royal tramway line.

 

Band Car - 1913

 

Courtesy Archives of Montreal

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The Past Whispers
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Electric Tramways

 

 

April 1, 1911 – Employees

The first electric tramways appeared in Europe in the early 1880s. In Montreal, the electrification of the network was delayed because the management of the Montreal Street Railway Company (MSRC)—which had replaced the MCPRC in 1886 and had close to 1,000 horses—had misgivings. However, the work finally began in the summer of 1892 and the city’s very first electric tramway, the Rocket, was put into service on September 21, 1892. Within two years, the network was completely electrified, and ridership doubled during that same period from 10 million trips to 20 million. Meanwhile, a system of transfer tickets was tested to facilitate changing from one express line to another.

 

Snow Sweeper

The electric tramways were much faster than horses and were soon serving Sault-au-Récollet (1893), the parish of Saint-Laurent (1895), Bout-de-l’Île (1896) and Lachine (1897). At the same time, the MSRC introduced double-truck tramways, which were longer and more spacious. Most importantly, the company inaugurated the Pay As You Enter (PAYE) tramway, the first public transit vehicle in the world in which passengers paid when they boarded instead of waiting for an agent to collect the fare. That same year, the MSRC also introduced its famous observation tramway, which would delight generations of Montrealers, young and old alike. Ridership reached 50 million in 1905 and hit the magic 100-million mark in 1910.

 

Interior

 

courtesy – Archives of Montreal

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The Past Whispers
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Horse Drawn Tramways

 

Horse-drawn winter tramway on St. Catherine Street (c.1877)

 

The first tramways, which were drawn by horses along rails installed in the public roads, appeared in England in 1807. In Montreal, the harsh winters and steep inclines delayed the introduction of this type of network. It was only in 1861 that the city’s first public transportation company, the Montreal City Passenger Railway Company (MCPRC), was created. The MCPRC hired an American, Alexander Easton, to build its six mile (10 km) network. Construction began on September 18, 1861 and a first line was put into service along today’s Notre-Dame Street on November 27. A second line was inaugurated a few days later on Saint-Antoine Street.

 

c.1892

Each horse-drawn tramway had two employees: the driver and the conductor, who sold the tickets and collected the five-cent fare. Workers, who earned less than a dollar per day at the time, couldn’t yet afford this service reserved for a certain elite group. People simply hailed the tramway to have it stop and pick them up, and they could even ask the driver to wait a few minutes for them! In its first year, the company logged a million trips. Three types of cars were used: the summer tramway, which had open sides, the winter or sled tramway, which was very useful when the rails were covered with snow and ice, and the omnibus, a wheeled vehicle used when the rails were impassable, such as during the spring melt.

 

courtesy – Society of Transportation of Montreal

©2017 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved