BLAST FROM THE PAST

TTC’s vintage streetcars free to passengers every Sunday until Labour Day,

There’s a hulking heap of nostalgia rumbling along Toronto’s waterfront this summer.

The TTC is reviving its vintage maroon-and-cream streetcars on Queens Quay W. every Sunday until Labour Day, and the rides are free.

For nearly six decades, these Presidents’ Conference Committee streetcars carried countless Torontonians around the city.

“We grew up on these kinds of cars,” said Les Crockett, who started riding the TTC in the 1930s.

A true public transit buff, Crockett can remember a time when streetcars would lose their connection to the overhead cables, each time they turned around at a service loop.

He can even recall the days before evening rush hour meant jampacked streetcars.

“I would hop on with the driver,” Crocket said. “After 5 p.m. there’d be nobody (else). He’d say ‘Come on for a couple of rides. It’s kind of lonely.’ ”

The Presidents’ Conference Committee Cars, more commonly called PCCs, stuck around for so long that even TTC riders several generations younger than Crocket can remember the model from their youth.

Mark Krajewski rode the PCC as a boy, growing up in the 1980s. Today, he works at the Halton County Radial Railway museum of streetcars in Milton, Ont. On Sunday, Krajewski was on the PCC regaling riders with facts from the car’s history.

“These were the backbone of Toronto from 1938 to 1995,” he said.

“The citizens of Toronto got their first look at the PCC at the 1938 Canadian National Exhibition, where there were two cars on display.”

The ride is a little bumpier than the modern-day commute.

“When you’re driving around, it bounces up and down, it jerks a lot more, it doesn’t have that nice smooth glide,” said TTC driver Witto Dela Riva, as he piloted the PCC through traffic.

“But it’s a nice car. Everybody looks for this car. Cars will stop and (drivers) will take pictures.”

The TTC put its first PCC cars on the St. Clair line in 1938. By 1957, there were 745 of the cars, running on the majority of the TTC’s streetcar routes. After a rebuild of nearly 200 PCCs in the 1970s, the TTC kept the Depression-era streetcars on the road until1995, when the last19 vehicles were retired.

The transit commission has only two PCC streetcars left today.

RENÉ JOHNSTON PHOTOS/TORONTO STAR The TTC’s vintage streetcar takes its first journey of the season along Queens Quay. It will run every Sunday until Labour Day.

Les Crockett, aboard vintage streetcar, took his first TTC ride in the 1930s.