Weekend Roundup

Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler
Skywatch Friday
ABC Wednesday

1. Starts with "R."
2. A Favorite
3. Red

For the letter of the week for this round I am going to go with all things TTC, Toronto Transit Corporation.

Letter R

Royal York in Red

The station was opened in 1968 in what was then the Borough of Etobicoke.

The original plan for the Bloor-Danforth extension to Islington had different stations than what was eventually built. The stations were to be at "Montgomery" and "Prince Edward", instead of Islington and Royal York. This was probably because these two streets were the ends of the Kingsway shopping district. However, it was decided to include only one station in the Kingsway, at Royal York.

Yes, we have a Royal York Hotel downtown on Front St. far removed from this station. So why the name??

Royal York Road was named after the original destination of the road – the Royal York Golf Course (now St. George’s Golf and Country Club). The course itself opened in 1929 as an added attraction for guests of the same-named luxury downtown hotel. Its entrance was relocated from Royal York Road to Islington Avenue after the hotel sold the course.

I stepped outside to get the first photo above, and saw this awash in red.

RETIRED

Toronto Railway Museum tweeted this out last Sunday.

Oct 26, 1990: the last day of scheduled operation for subway cars from the TTC's original fleet built in Gloucester, England. The TTC had called for tenders for its first subway cars in February 1951, while the Yonge Subway line was under construction. 1/3

FAVOURITE

Red Rocket Coffee on the Danforth.


Red Rocket is used to refer to the older streetcars.

The term "Red Rocket" was only taken up by the TTC as a marketing slogan in the early to mid 1980s. It was in widespread use throughout the 1970s thanks to John Downing of the Toronto Sun, who applied the nickname during a series of articles attempting to bend the will of the TTC in favour of retaining streetcars. John Downing got the idea for the term from John Bromley during a lunch meeting between the two and Mike Filey. John Bromley originally coined the term on March 30, 1954, to (in his words) "facetiously" describe the slow Gloucester cars operating on the newly opened Yonge line. The term remained in limited use amongst John Bromley's friends during the fifties and the sixties until John used it during the lunch meeting with John Downing, and the idea took off like a (ahem) rocket.

RED

Our Mounties wear red and our flag is red.