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Matt Cosgro photo, all rights reserved. Used with permission.
Seashore's car 957 is a classic example of the Montreal prepayment type, and epitomizes the city's streetcars during the peak of the development era. Is is one of a group of 50 cars built in 1910-11 by Canada's Ottawa Car Company for the Montreal Street Railway just before its consolidation into the Montreal Tramways Company. The car is a very early type to be built almost entirely of steel, and, indeed, for a time later car orders reverted to wood/steel composite construction. Industry unfamiliarity with steel resulted in a heavily overbuilt car, which at nearly 53,500 lbs., is one of the Museum's heaviest city streetcars. Consequential high power consumption resulted in less use of these cars in later years.
With a length of 46 ft. 6 in. and a width of 8 ft. 5 in., these cars introduced the basic car body profile for Montreal's successive car orders. Some earlier cars had been longer, restricting their use in parts of the Old City because of narrow streets and tight corners. A particular feature of No. 957 is the unique "Montreal roof". This is a modified railroad type in which the sloping monitor ends midway on the vestibule at either end, rather than extending to the very ends of the car. This roof style was introduced in 1896, and was almost universal on the city's streetcars until the 1913 introduction of the arch roof design.
Regularly operated in passenger service until 1951, Car 957 thereafter was used for the painting of clearance lines on street pavements to deter motorists from parking too close to the track on narrow streets and at curves, thus surviving until the end of the tramways. No. 957 came to Seashore in 1963 in an advanced state of deterioration and has since been completely restored.
History from Historic Cars: The National Collection at the Seashore Trolley Museum by Ben Minnich
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