Neville Park Loop is the eastern terminus of the
301/501 Queen streetcar line, the longest streetcar route of the
Toronto Transit Commission
The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is the primary public transport agency in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, operating the majority of the city's transit bus, bus and rail services. It is the oldest and largest of the urban transit service providers ...
(TTC).
It is also the terminus of the 143 Beaches/Downtown express bus service.
It is located at the southwest corner of
Queen Street East
Queen Street is a major east–west thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Roncesvalles Avenue and King Street in the west to Victoria Park Avenue in the east. Queen Street was the cartographic baseline for the original ea ...
and Nursewood Road in
the Beaches
A beach is a geological formation consisting of loose rock particles along the shoreline of a body of water.
Beach, Beaches or beaching may also refer to:
Geography Canada
* Beaches (federal electoral district), a federal electoral district in ...
neighbourhood of
Toronto
Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...
. It is named after the street which is just west of the loop.
Streetcars enter eastbound and loop anticlockwise to exit at Nursewood Road and turn north to Queen Street where they return westbound.
History
In 1914, the
Toronto Railway Company
The Toronto Railway Company (TRC) was the operator of the streetcar system in Toronto between 1891 and 1921. It electrified the horsecar system it inherited from the Toronto Street Railway, the previous operator of streetcar service in Toronto. ...
built a
wye at the eastern end of the streetcar line along Queen Street East. The wye was between Nursewood Road and Neville Park Boulevard near the eastern boundary of the
old City of Toronto at the western boundary of
Scarborough Scarborough or Scarboro may refer to:
People
* Scarborough (surname)
* Earl of Scarbrough
Places Australia
* Scarborough, Western Australia, suburb of Perth
* Scarborough, New South Wales, suburb of Wollongong
* Scarborough, Queensland, sub ...
, Ontario. Service began at Neville Park on December 24, 1914.
In 1921, the newly created
Toronto Transportation Commission
Toronto Transportation Commission (TTC) was the public transit operator in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, beginning in 1921. It operated buses, streetcars and the island ferries. The system was renamed the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) in 1954.
H ...
took over and amalgamated existing streetcar systems within the old city limits.
As part of a modernization program, the TTC decided to replace wyes with turning loops to improve operational efficiency at the end of the line. (The TTC's predecessor, the Toronto Railway Company preferred wyes at the end of line.)
On July 2, 1922, the TTC opened the Neville Park Loop to replace the old TRC wye. However, the TTC retained some of the old wye as a tail track south of Queen Street on Neville Park Boulevard. An eastbound streetcar could access this track only by backing in. In May 1989, the tail track was severed from the rest of the system, the severed portion of which remains visible.
The original loop was located completely off-street at the northwest corner of Queen Street and Nursewood Road; that is, the loop did not touch Nursewood Road. The loop was rebuilt in 1967. When it re-opened on August 13, 1967, it now extended into Nursewood Road to accommodate two-car, multiple-unit
PCC trains which had operated through the loop for 10 years. The rebuilt loop had a longer off-street area to hold an entire PCC train.
Services
Although this is the terminus for 301/501 Queen streetcars, there is no passenger access to the loop. The first westbound stop is immediately opposite on the north side of Queen Street and the last stop eastbound is at Neville Park Boulevard. The 301/501 Queen streetcars then proceed westbound, following their route, usually towards
Humber Loop
Humber Loop is a multimodal transit station and a hub for streetcar routes. It consists of two streetcar turning loops and one bus loop. Humber Loop is located between the Gardiner Expressway and the Queensway just west of the Humber River i ...
or
Long Branch Loop
Long Branch Loop is the westernmost streetcar stop within the Toronto streetcar system, operated by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). It is located in the Long Branch neighbourhood in southwestern Toronto, close to the boundary with Mississ ...
.
References
External links
The Great Neville Loop article published by Transit Toronto
{{TTCstations
Toronto streetcar loops