Returning to '54 and '62

Lawrence Ave & Markham Rd looking west; 1962

I've been studying the aerial photos of the Lawrence Ave and Markham Rd area quite closely since I posted those photos of the Steinberg site. Here are the full page scans of the area from Bonis' A History of Scarborough.

The red arrow points to the street I grew up on. Unfortunately my parent's house isn't in the photo, and is way down the street, off the photo's right edge. To get to Cedarbrae plaza, where Steinberg's was located, we would walk to the end of the street where the red arrow is, continue through the farmers field, which was by then abandoned, and then jaywalk across Lawrence Ave. 

Lawrence Ave & Markham Rd looking west; 1954

The blue arrows mark lines of interesting trees, most of which appear to have been chopped down by '62. If you look closely at the '62 picture you can see a few that were spared. In the '54 picture my street hadn't yet been built. I think construction on my parent's house didn't finish until '58, the year they moved in. 

These two pictures are astonishing. In '54 it appeared to be a pleasant rural area with what looks like many small working farms and fields. Just 8 years later it's a classic mid 20th century automobile-oriented suburb. Even so, for our family it was effectively what is today called a '15 minute neighbourhood', which the city of Ottawa defines as,

A 15-minute neighbourhood is a neighbourhood where you can walk to get to the grocery store, where you can easily walk to frequent transit, and where children can walk safely to school.

My mother didn't drive, so we walked to the grocery stores, as well as the other stores in Cedarbrae and Cedar Heights plazas, which might have sometimes taken 20 or 25 minutes. There were TTC bus stops which my father used to get to work. And I walked to school. Not to mention we walked to the library, bowling alley, pool, and skating rink. So, although it was designed to be automobile-oriented, at that time we used it as an ersatz 15-minute neighbourhood. If it only had streetcar service :-)

Test track Safe-T

The test loop is setup temporarily on top of my Work Mate, and to help prevent it from being accidentally knocked off I've added a safety cleat. 

It's made from 2 pieces of scrap 1x2 pine screwed together to make a T. 

The T slides into the hole in the centre of the test track board, and is then clamped between the Work Mate's jaws. The board is a little wobbly as the foam underside needs a bit of flattening - or needs a shim - but locos run fine, and the T does stop the board from being bumped on the floor.

Workbench Scenes: PCC maintenance

The PCC fleet has been neglected for some time and I'm in the mood to get it back in operation.

There are 4 Bowser PCCs and 1 Con-Cor. They all need a bit of lubrication and some wheel cleaning. Of the Bowsers, one has never been run and is waiting for me to install its DCC decoder, which has been sitting on a shelf unopened for a few years! Another has either a broken or malformed trolley pole: the loop for the trolley rope is broken and needs to be repaired before a rope can be added. And speaking of trolley pole ropes, so far I've only added one to one of the Bowsers; the rest still need them installed so they'll look right on the layout. And speaking of looking right, I want to add ad cards to the outside of these things as to my eye they don't look right without them. Throw in a bit of running on the test track and it looks like the car barn will be busy for awhile.

Test track loop

 I'm planning on assembling all the layout modules and preparing all the streetcars for running. I thought it would be useful to put together a loop of track where I could test and run cars independently of the layout and its potential issues. So, I went through my shelves and materials to see what I could make from what I've got on hand. Ideally I wanted a loop with a 22" radius, but I didn't have enough track, or styrofoam for a base. I did have enough for an 18" radius loop, so that's what I built (I plan to add an inner loop of N gauge track in the future). The top is styrofoam glued on a base of expanded poly-styrene. The track is standard Atlas snap-track. White glue was used to hold the foam pieces together, as well as the track to the foam. Works ok, so it's on to assembling the layout modules and getting out the streetcars.

Steinberg's site then and then

Steinberg's site in 1962 - I've marked Steinberg's in the red box

Soon after the bicycle another new modern means of Transportation came to Scarborough, the electric railway. In 1898 the Toronto Railway Company laid its rails along the Kingston Road from Blantyre Avenue to the Hunt Club, and in 1901 the service was extended to the Halfway House. Then in 1904, work was begun on an extension of the line to West Hill, and was completed the following year by the successor of the Toronto Railway Company, The Toronto and York Radial Company; and more and more people of southern Scarborough began to travel to and from the city on the trolley cars.

Future site of Steinberg's circa1954

The above quote is from Robert R. Bonis' 1965 book, A History of Scarborough. Vince and I were chatting about old trolley routes in Scarborough, and I was interested to see if there was anything in that book about them. It turns out the book had a surprise: aerial photos of the Steinberg's site in 1962 and 1954. In both pictures the 'vertical' road to the right is Lawrence Avenue, and the 'horizontal' road along the bottom is Markham Road. In both images I only snipped the area around Steinberg's and Cedarbrae Plaza. In 1954 the area was rural farmland as far as the eye could see, but by 1962, just 8 years later, it was a vast suburb with more-or-less no remaining traces of its rural roots. The speed of development was amazing. And those trolleys? Long gone before either of those photos were taken.