Video from Radio-Canada on the difficulty and expense of extending the useful life of the metro’s MR‑73 trains, the second oldest running subway stock in the world.
Updates from January, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Vincent Marissal, currently QS MNA for Rosemont, is pondering launching a new municipal party and making a play for the mayoralty.
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Kate
It’s Ensemble that gave TVA the information that nearly 8600 city workers made more than $100,000 in 2023. The largest segment is cops, and it’s interesting that 143 blue collar workers are on the list as compared to 93 jurists.
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Kate
A woman was found dead Thursday morning in a residence in Lasalle. TVA is calling it murder; if so, it’s the first homicide of the year.
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Kate
Le Devoir looks into the evolution of snow clearing priorities, notably how sidewalks have been cleared first in recent years.
jeather
My street — a small side street — gets the weirdest amount of priority cleaning for streets and sidewalks. I don’t want to complain, because it’s very nice that it is done, but I don’t understand it. My main complaint is that the signs are often put up at weird times and don’t give a lot of notice — but infoneige emails tend to be correct, whether or not there are signs.
Orr
We’ve started used infoneige interactive map to better understand when the snow cleaning will be done.
Will look into the infoneige email notifications jeather mentions.Ian
I really like the infoneige app for its accuracy, but this year I noticed that I didn’t get any notification for snow clearing, even with notifications turned on. It’s perplexing but fortunately it was a day clearing htis time so there were horns. Signs only went up ovenight so I didn’t notice in the morning until I hear the trucks.
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Kate
Tourism grew by 7% in Montreal last year, which the Gazette headlines as “a lot more tourists” but that’s clickbait. Our European charm gets a mention, as does the weak Canadian dollar. So remember to speak Catalan or Slovak when you’re out and about, and keep in mind that you’re part of the scenery.
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Kate
In tandem with a current TV show, 24hrs enumerates five reasons why Maurice “Mom” Boucher was one of Quebec’s worst criminals. One of the major figures in the biker wars of the 1990s, he was finally jailed in 2002, and died there in 2022. His Wikipedia article lists the extensive plotting he was able to continue doing from behind bars.
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Kate
La Presse went out with the Solidaribus, a minibus run by the Old Brewery Mission, to find people with nowhere to go on frigid nights and bring them inside, even if only to sleep sitting up in a chair.
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Kate
Canada’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to Quebec’s secularism law aka Bill 21.
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Kate
Luc Rabouin held a public meeting this week to present his priorities if he’s elected leader of Projet Montréal.
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Kate
During last summer’s golf tournament on Île Bizard, some related merch was stolen from the Queen Elizabeth hotel. A thief has been convicted and sentenced to a year in prison.
anton 11:33 on 2025-01-24 Permalink
Not to dismiss the trouble of keeping old trains running, but second oldest subway rolling stock?
I mean even if we just look at rubber-tyred metro systems. Of the four other rubber tyred metro systems besides Montreal that existed back in 1976 when the MR-73 came into service (Paris, Santiago, Mexico City, Sapporo), all but Santiago are still running older trains. It seems Mexico City is even running two older generations. I think if you look at steel-tyred metros, there’s probably tens if not hundreds with older trains.
Kate 18:25 on 2025-01-24 Permalink
I thought I might have misunderstood what the voice-over was saying about the age of the trains, but I watched again and it couldn’t be clearer.
CE 11:58 on 2025-01-25 Permalink
When the MR-63s were still in operation, I was told (by someone who would know) that they were the oldest rolling stock in the world. He said that they had been the second oldest for a while, but Pyongyang bought some old Soviet trains from Russia and the MR-63s became the oldest. The last one was retired after 52 years of service, which is impressive. I can imagine the same thing being the case with the newer MR-73s which went into service in 1976. Our entirely interior metro system probably contributes to our trains’ longevity.
CE 12:08 on 2025-01-25 Permalink
I watched the video after writing the above comment and interestingly, the “someone who would know” was one of the people interviewed in report!
Kate 14:51 on 2025-01-25 Permalink
He would know! Thanks, CE.
anton 10:53 on 2025-01-26 Permalink
Even the MR63 that started operation in 1966 weren’t the oldest trains in the world, when they retired in 2018. For example, the rubber-tyred MP59 in Paris, which the MR63 were based on, were older and ran until 2024 [1]. New York also had trains that were older and ran longer [2]. Berlin is still running trains from 1964 [3]. There were also London underground trains from 1938 that ran until 2021 on the Isle of Wright [5].
I just checked 4 cities (Paris, NYC, London, Berlin), and they all had older rolling stock than the MR63.
Pyongyang didn’t buy old Soviet trains, but old trains from Berlin (built 1956-1965, older than MR63). Apparently some of those were later rebuilt in China, but its not clear [4], because the North Koreans claim they build them new in North Korea. I guess these are also older than the MR63.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP_59
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R32_(New_York_City_Subway_car)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BVG_Class_A3
[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Pj%C3%B6ngjang#Fahrzeugpark
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_483
(PS: in my first message it should’ve been “all but Sapporo are still running older trains”)
CE 11:44 on 2025-01-26 Permalink
Please disregard everything said in my previous posts. It would seem that everything I said was incorrect! haha, oh well.
Kate 20:48 on 2025-01-26 Permalink
anton: thank you for your excellently referenced notes.
CE: No reason to be embarrassed. The person who spoke to you could take a lesson from anton!
CE 22:16 on 2025-01-26 Permalink
It was a very long time ago and things likely got mixed up in my head or there were variables I wasn’t remembering. I should have done a quick Google search.