4: Buying the trains
<< 3: MTARTS, the commuter study || 5: Management planning >>
The Government of Ontario and the CN had already written specifications for train equipment
and had called bids for their manufacture when I first came into the picture. I had been with CN
for 13 years, working in several different departments. In the mid-fifties I had lived in Toronto as Regional Transportation Engineer,
so I knew Toronto reasonably well. The work at that time was to
identify what models of diesel locomotives should be purchased to
take over the work of the steam engines that were to be withdrawn
from service. After that I was moved back to Montreal with the St.
Lawrence Region. Before I left England, I worked on the London
Subway system, and before that I had training with a manufacturer
of streetcars and subway trains. I knew the set-up of transit and
how to move large numbers of people in commuter service. When
the CN's Personnel Department pulled the records of who might be
available to do the new commuter service, my qualifications
popped out. I got a phone call from Toronto asking me to come for
interview. It was a job I couldn't refuse, so I returned home to
Montreal carrying all the files under my arm for me to study.
When I moved to Toronto, I found that several departments
had been somewhat involved in the contacts with the Government, but mostly they had been
waiting for someone coming on the job to pull it all together, so right away, lots of people
wanted to talk to me. There were two people who had been directly involved in it, so it was to
my advantage to get them on my staff right away. These were Jack George, at that moment in the
Accounting Department, and Bob Withrow, on special assignment in the Equipment Department
at Regional level. During those few weeks while the ordering of the equipment was the main
subject, the new Commuter Group consisted of only three people, getting our feet under the
table!
Purchase specifications
Something else had been going on just before I came on the job. Of the two senior officers of
CN, who had been intimately involved in the MTARTS work, one was Jack Spicer, the Area
Manager. The other was Eric Wynne. Eric had risen from his position in the mid-fifties, as
General Superintendent, Motive Power and Car Equipment, through positions of General
Manager for the Great Lakes Region, and Vice President, at Headquarters, all the time retaining
an involvement in the commuter project around Toronto. It was natural that his interest should
centre on the type of train equipment that might be used.
He well understood that the first development should be on a low-cost scale, until the
population and the governing bodies could acquire enough experience and conviction to go into
it in a bigger way. So he had been having discussions with other operators, looking for available
equipment that might be used for the first services. The result was the loan of an old car from
Chicago, that he arranged to bring to Toronto in 1964 for inspection and testing.
Eric Wynne was not acting alone, while these ideas of using old car equipment were being
followed. The Superintendent of Motive Power and Car Equipment on the Area had been Dick
Veenis. Then he was moved up to General Superintendent at Region level, so the position at
Area was filled by Dick Babb. These were the people who worked on the preparations for
displaying this car, arranging to have it brought from Chicago, getting it moved from place to
place, putting it in the coachyard at Spadina to have the craftsmen examine the various
components, and negotiating with Can-Car at Hamilton to have it tested.
The first question naturally was whether a car of that age would meet all the standards of
structural strength needed according to the regulations of the Association of American Railroads
(The AAR) and the regulatory bodies of the Government of Canada. So, as part of the
arrangement with Chicago, the car was sent to Can-Car's plant in Hamilton, to verify its
structural integrity. So it was tested to destruction on the compression bed. Even at its age, it met
all the required standards of strength, but it fell far short of reflecting the image the Government
had in mind.
Memoirs of Bob Schmidt
I spoke with Bob Schmidt, who had gone on staff with the Government at MTARTS in early
1964. He remembered that the car had an open platform, like the traditional railway cars, with a
clerestory roof, and could easily have been at least 50 years old. There were many like that
available from there, so it would have been possible to get a whole fleet on the cheap, to start the
service with. As Bob said: "One of the flavours of the service was, that it was a trial. Happily,
the various parties gained confidence as we rolled along. As soon as we saw that car, some of us
immediately had a mental blockage. This would be counter-productive, in marketing terms. So
the sooner we could think up something else, the better!" It may have been easy, persuading the
Committee that it was not worth coming down to inspect it. They needed only to see the
photographs, and the politicians were ready to "Bite the bullet".
Examining the details
So in CN headquarters in Montreal, Eric Wynne had already put in hand the drafting of
purchase specifications for new cars and locomotives, that would be ready for use, even before
the final acceptance of the idea at government levels. Bob Withrow was Special Assistant to
Dick Veenis at Region, for just this kind of special assignment, so Bob had been doing the
liaison between Region and Headquarters, while these specifications were being drafted. All of
these principal decisions had to be approved by the senior officers, but time was of the essence,
so Wynne was running ahead of the game. Bob Schmidt had it in his records that the memo of
March 22, 1965, from Roy Cowley to the Executive Committee, proposed that the service should
start with new equipment. This was approved and acted upon so quickly, that bids had been
called in May 1965, even before I came on the job. The purchase specifications, against which
the suppliers were bidding, called for 8 locomotives, and 49 coaches.
When I was offered the responsibility of bringing the new commuter service into being, it was
emphasized to me, that the success of the service rested upon my coordination of the whole, at
least on the CN side. So my first weeks were devoted to becoming part of the decision process,
as far as placing orders for the train equipment was concerned. While the equipment would be
purchased and owned by the Government of Ontario, CN would operate it, and the way it
functioned would govern the quality of service that we would render.
The concept of "Push-pull"
In the history of railways across the world, the locomotive had always been coupled at the
head of the train, hauling the cars behind it. No departure from this tradition had yet been made
on Canadian railways, so the purchase specifications as usual called for locomotives to haul
passenger cars. At each end of each run, the locomotives would be uncoupled, to run around the
train, and be recoupled at the other end, to haul the train in the returning direction. It would take
time to do this, because at any time after uncoupling and recoupling a locomotive, a full brake
test had to be done. A member of the train crew would walk the full length of the train first in
one direction, checking that the brakes had applied in all cars, then in the other direction, to
check they all had released properly. At all stations where commuter trains might have to
change directions, there would have to be time in the schedule for this work, and a second track
for locomotives to run-around.
Since the introduction of electric or diesel-electric locomotives, the electrical controls had
permitted operation of several power units in "Multiple unit" (MU), under the control of an
engineman in the leading cab. The controlling wires passed from power unit to power unit
through jumper cables. So when the engineman operated the throttle or the brake on the lead
unit, all units responded accordingly.
The electric railways in Switzerland had been operating for some time a new concept that
went by the name of "Push-pull". The MU wires were installed through all the cars down the
whole length of the train, so that an engineman in a control cab at one end of the train could
command a locomotive coupled at the other end. The locomotive then would push the train from
the rear, yet under complete control from the front end. The magic of this was that a train could
be reversed at any location on the track, whatever might be called for by the operating
department. There would be no need for a second track to run the locomotive around the train,
nor would the full brake test be needed, since the train would not have been uncoupled. The only
terminal time required would be to unload and reload the passengers, and for the engineman to
walk from one end to the other along his train.
This would be a great advantage for the new commuter service. The performance calculations
had shown that the new trains could make the journey between Oakville and Pickering, with all
station stops, in 80 minutes. The study had made reference to the possibility of using push-pull,
but did not have clearance to actually propose it. If the cars would be set up for push-pull, the
turnarounds at each terminal could be just 10 minutes. Allowing 90 minutes each way, a single
train set could complete the round trip in three hours. The study called for an hourly service all
day long, so if we had push-pull, we could fill the all-day service with only three train sets on
line, and the trains would keep moving, rather than using up time at the terminals.
The offer of self-propelled (S-P) cars
There was another complication. In most railways of the world, and most especially, in
electric transit systems, they did not use locomotives at all. The passenger coaches had their
diesel or electric power units installed under the floors of the cars. The cars could run singly, or
they could be operated in multiple-unit ("MU") in trains, This arrangement brings great
flexibility in matching the lengths of trains to the varying levels of passenger flow. Trains can be
long for the peak periods, then some cars can be cut off, and only the shortened train continue in
service through the lighter hours of mid-day. So there are important operating advantages.
CN had already had some experience along these lines, having owned and operated a fleet of
almost 100 diesel self-propelled (S-P) cars, to designs of the Budd Company in Philadelphia. It
had not always worked out well, because, with every car having diesel power units underneath, it
proved expensive, keeping them well tuned up and available for their scheduled services. Wynne
understood the good and the bad of this situation, and always hoped that a good, reliable, diesel
self-propelled car might be forthcoming.
The bids were opened on July 20th in a public meeting. The two manufacturers in Canada,
Montreal Locomotive Works, and Hawker-Siddeley jointly with General Motors, had put in bids
meeting the purchase specifications for locomotives and coaches. The surprise was that MLW
had added an uninvited bid, to supply 49 diesel S-P cars.
In view of the operating advantages that S-P cars would bring, this offer could not be rejected
out of hand. Yet the invitation for bids had not been open to S-P cars, so other competing
manufacturers had not had that option. If S-P cars were to be considered, the purchase
specifications would have to be amended, and new bids received on an official basis. It created a
strange situation, where both manufacturers had been present and had heard the bid prices of the
original submissions, and now were to compete in the broadened specifications.
When the revised bids were opened, naturally both manufacturers had covered both the
locomotive-coaches combination and the S-P cars. In both of the bids, the designs of the S-P cars
were new and unproven, but the prices were most favourable with Hawker-Siddeley. Now it
became an internal decision, where to place the orders.
It was time for me to speak up, together with the equipment specialists of CN, to bring in
practical considerations. We were charged with inaugurating a new and truly innovative form of
intensive rail commuter service, with significant departures from traditional railway practice,
and here we were faced with the possibility of opening the service with a wonderfully flexible
fleet of 49 unproven S-P cars. We simply could not take the risk that the new service might
prove unreliable, if the new designs failed to give reliable service.
Going back to Push-pull
So it fell to me to carry my decision back the policy makers, and to negotiate a compromise
position. Yes, it would be good in the long term, if all the coaches could have power units added
to them at a later date, but not until the designs could have been fully developed and proven in
service. It was enough that there would be significant new functions in any equipment we would
start the service with. Meanwhile, we could face up to having a mixed fleet, with a small number
of S-P cars, for trial and demonstration, but most of the fleet must comprise locomotives and
coaches to designs that would not introduce untoward complications.
Clearly, introducing S-P equipment would have offered the advantages of easy reversal of
trains at terminals, but we needed locomotives and coaches to reverse in the same way, so this
decision immediately brought back on the table the idea of push-pull. The only place on CN
where there was anything similar was in Montreal. The electric trains through the Mount Royal
tunnel were units comprising one electric power car pushing two trailer cars. In that operation,
three such units coupled together in MU made a train of 9 cars.
So the proposal to use push-pull in the new commuter trains brought the equipment specialists
into the picture, and there was considerable debate on the acceptability of introducing this new
concept for trains that would be as long as one locomotive pushing 10 cars. A locomotive train
in the push-pull configuration would require that the coach at the rear end of the train should
have a control cab, where the engineman would operate, for that direction of running. The cab
cars would have all the usual engine controls for power and brake, headlights, locomotive bells,
and whistles. All the coaches would have MU wires and electric couplers connecting the control
car to the locomotive.
The merits were clear, and authorization came down from top levels to go ahead with a mixed
fleet. Now the Government knew that CN would opt for push-pull, the question was what mix of
S-P cars and locomotives with coaches should be ordered. The original intention had been to
order a fleet of 49 passenger cars, so the fleet would be a mix of S-P cars, cab control cars, and
coaches. But the hope of arriving at a reliable diesel S-P design in due course meant that
sufficient S-P cars should be brought in, to give a fair trial, and resolve any complications.
Finally, the selected mix was to order 32 coaches, eight cab cars, and nine S-P cars, with eight
locomotives to haul the coaches. The design of the coaches was to be compatible, as far as
possible, with the design of the S-P cars, so that we might install diesel power units under them
at a later date that would release the locomotives. The thought was that the nine S-P cars would
operate in trains of three or four cars each, so for this arrangement, they would have control cabs
only at one end of each car, and be coupled back to back. But in a fleet of only nine cars, this did
not afford flexibility for cars to be out of service for normal maintenance and overhaul when
necessary, so two of the S-P cars came with control cabs at both ends of the car. These two cars
could have operated as single cars, but I think they never went into service that way.
The Hawker-Siddeley family of cars
The designs for the cars from Hawker-Siddeley derived a kind of "Family Relationship" from
a series of rail transit cars they had supplied over the years to the Toronto Transit Commission,
(TTC), for the Toronto subway. Including the orders for the commuter cars, Hawker-Siddeley
now had on the order books, four different series of cars, all in this same family. They already
had an order for another series of subway cars for the TTC. 1967 was the year for the World
Exhibition in Montreal, and they had contracted to supply the automated transit system on the
exhibition grounds. Now they had the Government of Ontario
commuter cars, and CN was ready to call for 25 new cars for main
line trains in Southern Ontario that went by the name the "Tempo
Train".
It was an exciting year for this manufacturing company, with
four different designs of cars to follow, one after the other, down the
same production line, all similar, but different in various degrees.
The lead, at the management level, was taken by their General Sales
Manager, Lorne Main, and by the Chief Engineer, Mike Murzynski.
They had to maintain running discussions with the World's Fair,
with the TTC, with the Government of Ontario, and with CN for the
commuter equipment, as well as for the Tempo trains. My part was
to finalise what the combinations would be for the commuter trains,
so I was working with MTARTS, Hawker-Siddeley, and the CN
staffs at Headquarters and on the Great Lakes Region in Toronto.
Calculating train speeds
In the early days of rail operations, performance calculations for journey times of trains were
all done manually, using slide rules and plotting tables. Since CN had installed mainframe
computers in the mid-fifties, naturally, programs had been written to put this kind of calculation
through the computer. I traveled to Montreal to meet with Roger Spack, who worked in CN's
Transportation Department and did a lot of the work in calculating the expected performance of
the train equipment at the design stage.
In those days they did not talk to the computer using a keyboard. The input was prepared as a
whole series of punched cards that passed through a card-reader, into the computer. At first, even
the output came in the form of another set of punched cards that then had to be translated into
either diagrams or tables of figures. Later, the machine typed out a long table of figures that
saved more time, and made the output readable to staff outside the computer room. This was a
remarkable improvement over manual calculation, with an immediate reduction in time to
complete each job. It made it possible to examine more options, changing the combinations of
lengths and weights of trains, more powerful locomotives, changing permissible speeds on the
tracks, and many other changes that might be made, to improve the performance and economy of
the railway as an economic enterprise. The whole process went by the name of the "Train
Performance Calculator", or the TPC.
That was the status when the orders were placed for the new commuter equipment, so we
quickly put in a request for Montreal to do some TPC's to tell us what performance we could
count on for those trains in service. The De Leuw Cather report had recommended that the
journey times from Oakville and from Dunbarton should not exceed 40 minutes, and their first
graphical timetables had been drawn up based on this figure. A graphical timetable showed the
movement of trains in time and distance, according to the train schedules and availability of
track space. The output from the TPC's gave us figures for the minimum running from end to
end, making all the station stops, but the computer could not include for dwell time at each
station stop, nor could it include time allowance for recovery in case of delays.
In all operations, it must be recognised that there can be random variations in time required
for people to perform their actions. Some passengers may be crowded together on the platform,
or there may be a handicapped passenger, extending the boarding time. Other events along the
line might interfere in a way that could cost a minute or two in the run. The tradition in setting
schedules had been that, at intermediate stations, the schedule would be set for the fastest speeds
the train could keep up to. This meant that in these parts of the run, there was no reserve. If any
delay occurred, the train would be late on schedule, up to the point where there would be any
reserve time. This practice assigned all the reserve time until just before the final destination. If a
train proceeded along the route with no delays, this time remained in reserve, in case there may
be a delay later. If the train had suffered any delay along the way, it could be back on schedule
before the key points.
This would not be good logic for a commuter operation. The schedule publishes the time the
train should depart from each and every station that it will serve, so the train should be on time at
all points. So we set the commuter schedule so that there were no station to station times shorter
than the calculated running time. Whether the calculation said 4 minutes 50 seconds or 4 minutes
10 seconds made no difference, we set it at 5 minutes. There were sure to be some shorter and
some longer, so on average we were adding just half a minute to each part, enough to cover the
dwell time at each station. The result was that the total time from both of the outer stations into
Union Station, making all of the station stops, would be 37 minutes.
On this basis, one train, making a full round trip in 3 hours, would use only 4x37 = 148
minutes in movement, leaving us 32 minutes for reserve time. We chose to put 6 minutes of
dwell time at Union Station in each direction, leaving us 10 minutes for turn-around at each
outer terminal. This was ample time for crews to change ends in changing direction, and still
time at Union Station for a few minutes of recovery time, if any time had been lost on the way
in.
Managing the government work
That was when Cam McNab, Deputy Minister of Highways, arranged for the whole responsibility to be
taken over by the Department of Highways, and he had appointed Bill Howard, to manage it. At this stage,
all the organizing and setting up staff had been done in the name of "The commuter rail project", not really
reflecting the fact that it would be a service different from any that Toronto had had before.
The GO-Transit name and logo
The contracts for the train equipment had already been placed with Hawker-Siddeley, so Bill quickly
picked up the public relations side of this contract. The mechanical design of the cars was well advanced,
and it was becoming urgent to know, how the cars were to be finished, concerning names and
identification. Only about three weeks were available to come up with the specifications, so that the
manufacturer was not to be delayed. So he wrote to me, requesting the participation of CN to create a new
image for the government commuter services. CN had just completed the process of revising the
corporate image, with the adoption of the new symbol, the continuous CN. This work had been supervised
in the Public Relations Department in Montreal, by Lorne Perry, and executed under contract by a
company called Gagnon-Volkus.
So I relayed the request to Public Relations, and talked with Lorne how to handle it. The staff at Volkus
had become fully experienced in the technicalities of railway hardware and operations, so he recognised
that the simplest way to get the job done quickly enough would be to put it to Volkus, almost as an
extension to the CN contract.
In 1995 I travelled to Montreal to meet with Lorne Perry, now that he is retired from CN's Public
Relations Department. When we started to talk about the creation of the new image, he said that the man
in Volkus who supervised that work was Frank Fox, now a professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design. We got Frank on the phone, and had a three-way conversation.
Memories came flooding back as we were talking, so it was more like a group of enthusiasts talking
together. Lorne remembered how the previous commuter services used old style passenger cars, an
antique image that had existed for a long time. The design brief was challenging us to come up with
something that expressed super-modern rail, to counter the old image. This was to be an impressive
service, conveying motion/action/swiftness. Whatever name we came up with had to become a household
word, to be able to penetrate the market.
A change of colour would help to underline the departure from the old image. The new CN logo was
red, train crews were wearing uniforms in a grey-black cloth with hats having a red band round the sides,
and the old cars had been a dark black-green. They asked me what colour I thought it should be, so I
immediately said: "Oh, make it a good clear green, that should make it go!"
In those years, the fashionable phrase was "Go-go", go-go music, go-go girls, everything a-go-go.
Frank remembered how they came to a quick recognition that those were the initials of the Government of
Ontario, so it would do well to bring those letters into a logo. As Frank said: "I started working on it
conceptually right away. We started thumbnail sketches and in one of those surprising things that happens
every now and again, the actual concept of the GO symbol came up very quickly. We were thinking of two
circles with a letter "T" somewhere in them. We had cut out two circles, then literally put a square into the
circle, then "Bingo", there was the G, in green, and we could lay a white "T" on it. Sometimes that happens
in design, a happy accident. More or less, we had this feeling among us that this couldn't be true. We went
off trying many other solutions, but nothing else was good enough. I know we were surprised, this thing
happened rather quickly. We played with the proportions a bit, because we did not want the overlying "T"
to disappear, when the logo would be reduced in size."
Lorne and Frank brought the concept to the commuter group in Toronto, then we all took it to the
Government. The logo was drawn on a large sheet of squared paper, so that the proportions were well
identified, by how many squares each part occupied, and that was the item that was registered in
copyright. This information was passed to Hawker-Siddeley to be used for the logos to be applied on the
outsides of the cars, and to General Motors in London for the locomotives. The logo lent itself well to being
incorporated in badges for the staff, so as we moved closer to inauguration, we provided badges for
everybody involved in the operation.
The design specification to Gagnon-Volkus called for more than just a logo. A concept of interior
furnishings was needed to make erstwhile auto commuters feel comfortable in the new railway cars.
Automobiles had bucket seats, so they worked with railway seat manufacturers to make a similar
arrangement, very different from the bench seats of the old cars. With fluorescent lighting overhead,
cream coloured walls, and black bucket seats arranged two by two, they created an image completely new
and welcoming. They hoped that these finishes would not be defaced later with advertising inside and
outside, and it was only much later that this happened.
There was also consideration of uniforms for the train crews and station
attendants. Several alternatives were offered, but the idea of creating a complete
departure from present practice was judged to be too expensive, for a service
where the intent in the beginning was for only a three-year demonstration. The
decision was to use CN's standard design of uniforms, and the present tailoring
contractor, for economy. One part of the proposal was adopted, not to use the red
bands that CN was using on the crews' hats, but to substitute a green band of the
same colour that had been adopted in the logo.
There was a mysterious departure from the
copyrighted designs in the early days of it
going public. The Gagnon-Volkus design had
left a space between the first and last "wheels"
of the logo. This was to be of the same width as
the bars of the letter "T", and was intended to prevent the two parts from running
together when printed small. Unfortunately, in the first items that went public, this
space was missing, so the two "Wheels" were touching, and it made the logo into
more of a solid block. Several months elapsed before someone noticed the error, so
from then on, everybody was alert to this error, and it was quickly corrected.
The logo as originally presented was intended to appear without adornment on a pure white background. It has
not always been possible to stay strictly within this concept. Depending upon where the logo was to go, there have
been other departures from the logo originally intended by the designers. The awnings on some bus shelters have a
black finish that does not easily accommodate a logo requiring a full white background. So white rings have been
added to suggest the white/green contrast. Buses operated by GO-Transit in the outer suburbs have a white or silver
background. In this case white rings have been put around the logos on the fronts and sides of the buses instead of
the white rectangle.
Other new features
Additional to the arrangement of push-pull, the
equipment in the locomotive-hauled trains introduced
new features in several other ways.
The transit cars, from which the design of the
commuter cars was derived, were to be constructed in
aluminum alloy, so that they would not require
frequent repainting. The light weight of the cars was
an advantage for the performance of the trains hauled
by diesel locomotives, so that the calculations for
journey times showed the benefits of aluminum
construction.
All the electric power for heating, lighting and air conditioning was to be supplied from a
second diesel engine-generator on the locomotive. The standard in Canada at that time for power
train lines was 575 volts, 3 phase, alternating current, so all cars were wired through with a
power cable to deliver electricity to all the cars. The locomotives were to be manufactured by
General Motors, at London, Ontario. Their designers worked on the arrangement of an auxiliary
engine, to be installed in the locomotives, but intended to operate continuously, to supply the
power to the train. So the shorthand phrase to describe this arrangement was "Head-end Power".
The car doors were power operated, which also was a first in our rail commuter service,
although already well established in transit operations. Knowing that an important feature of
good commuter train performance had to be the shortest possible dwell time at stations, we had
pressed for a set of wide doors at each end of each car, allowing a double line of passengers
boarding or alighting. In most cases, dwell times at stations along the line proved to be less than
thirty seconds. In peak periods, cars would be carrying more than 200 passengers each, but time
to unload a complete train of 10 cars at Union Station was less than two minutes.
The communication signal between the conductor and the engineman was electric, giving
rapid communication of start and stop signals. This differed from previous main line practice,
where the communication was by an air signal that was distinctly slow to react, and certainly
delayed the departure of trains, while the engineman waited for the starting signal to reach him.
It was a well-established technique to have a public address system installed in transit trains,
so this was included in the bids and orders placed. The Government representatives were trying
to offer a transportation service that would attractive to commuters who had been driving to
work in their own automobiles, so they had already requested that there should be subdued
background music, similar to what might be heard on radio stations. But a new idea was
promoted, that there could also be loud speakers directed towards the outsides of the cars, that
would allow the conductors to speak directly to passengers standing on the platforms. When we
picked up on this idea, we asked that the speaker circuits should be interlocked with the door
circuits, so that the voice would be heard on the outside only when the doors were standing open.
The conductor could announce from the position inside the car, or could step out onto the
platform to look along the length of the train. The ability for the train crews to announce directly
to the platform proved to be an excellent facility, and was of great value when the service was in
full operation.
All commuter stations along the line were to have washrooms available to the passengers, and
trains were to operate at 20-minute intervals, so it was decided that the cars would not have
washrooms on board. With electric heat and no washrooms, there would not be any water on the
cars. This avoided need for steam supplies in the yard, or for supplying water service to the cars.
With no risk of freezing up, trains out of service in the service depot could be allowed to go cold.
The original intent had been to rely upon the auxiliary generator on the locomotive to warm
up the train before departure, but complications arose from the noise of the engine causing
complaints from the neighbourhood. Shortly after the inauguration, electric connections were
installed beside the holding tracks, so that trains could be heated and lighted silently, from
ground power.
So the Government placed the orders with Hawker-Siddeley, according to the details finally
agreed on. In total, the decision to go with new equipment allowed innovation in many different
ways, including the manner we were able to use the trains in service, that paid off handsomely
when the operation started.
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