Late last night I ran for the eetcarstray and saw a strip of bright blue-white LED lights on the front step. I asked the driver, a smart, sardonic young guy I’ve talked to before, what gave. It turns out that CLRV 4041 is a test vehicle with air conditioning, LED (s)potlighting and striplighting for egress and ingress (SPY-CAM photo), and a removed middle post that otherwise blocks ingress. Only in Toronto – where, over the next four days, temperatures will reach 34° with humidexen pushing 40° – would a single streetcar be air-conditioned as part of a test.

The AC unit is nicely integrated atop the car’s roof, and the guy said it cost $40,000. Maybe he was talking about the whole test retrofit, which I rather doubt given that I can buy the lights at Home Depot. He complained that people opened the windows anyway. He hadn’t heard the lore that the TTC specifically refused to buy streetcars with AC as standard equipment even though the cost at the time was $800 per car. Remember, we’re all supposed to be as tough as the jumped-up motormen who run that place. And Canada is of course a winter country, which fails to explain why one-third of streetcars are unheated in the winter.