Street Railway Substation No.600
10643 124th Street
Architect: John Martland of City Architects’ Department
Constructed: 1938
Designation: Municipal Historic Resource
The lean years of the Depression were a transitional period for public transit in Edmonton. Hurting the most was its rail-bound streetcars. As Ken Tingly writes:
“Population growth in the 1930s continued to be as mixed a blessing for the Edmonton Radial Railway as it had been in the 1920s. On the one hand, it meant increased revenue as the Great Depression forced greater use of the transit system among more ranks of society. On the other hand, it also meant relentless pressure on the system at a time where it could be least afforded, especially after the economically listless post-war decade when needed repair, replacement, and extension had already been hindered by years of wartime shortages and material.”
As the Depression worsened, the City was left in a bind. They wanted to replace the streetcar system entirely. Their preferred option was the trolleybus — a catenary-based amalgam of bus and tram — but they estimated that could take upwards of fifteen years to fully implement. At the same time, repairing the system until then would cost a significant sum. The City needed a stop-gap alternative — they found one in the diesel motor-bus, which promised to be a low-cost, low-maintenance solution.
Initial demonstrations along the old Glenora-bound Green Line streetcar route were a surprising success and by 1933 the bus had already “replaced the streetcars [on the Green Line], while in the case of service to the University of Alberta it became a new feeder service to the south side streetcar line.” It also had the marked benefit of allowing the cash-strapped system’s existing financing and resources to be better allocated elsewhere.
That’s what spawned Substation No.600.
Even though their ultimate goal was to replace the streetcar, City officials knew they’d be around for the long haul. Updates were a give-in and the one area that needed the most updating was the Westend. Although three dedicated routes — the Blue, Blue & White, and Red & Green — serviced the greater 124th Street-area, its denizens suffered disproportionately. The Westend’s roads were a mess, especially in the spring thaw where they turned into a porridge-like sludge. There, 124th’s rails buckled and bended, and light derailments became a common sight.
Worse still was power. By 1938, only two electrical substations powered streetcars north of the Saskatchewan. One, in the Eastend Parkdale-area, was too far from 124th to be any help. The other was at the City Power Plant in Rossdale. Even then, currents needed to travel upwards of four kilometres to reach trams heading westbound. Frequently, a lack of sufficient electricity would slow the vehicles significantly.
Work on the new streetcar powerhouse was jointly expected to be “of great assistance to the Street Railway system in maintaining the railway schedule,” while also “effect[ing] a saving of 15 percent.” William Barnhouse, Superintendent of Edmonton Light & Power, explained that “taking the power over three miles of copper in what was making us lose a considerable amount of energy. [A] new west-end rectifier will cut down on that wastage so greatly that we figure the city will save $3,000 a year as a direct result.”
Tenders went out on June 18th, 1938, with work beginning on August 15th. The winning bidder was Fred L. Allyn, a local building contractor. In all the estimated construction cost was approximately $25,000 — $18,000 of that went towards the three large made-in-Britain glass-bulb rectifiers. A significant sum, around $7,000, came from the Dominion Government as part of the Municipal Improvements Assistance Act.
Completed that November, Street Railway Substation No.600 started powering Edmonton’s streetcars in January 1939. The City invited newsmen to observe it in action. A reporter from the Edmonton Bulletin explained what went on inside:
“Carried on a heavy armoured cable, 13,200 volts of current enters the building underground and passes through an eight-ton, oil-cooled transformer to the rectifiers.
The rectifiers, three huge glass bulbs, with 12 pounds of bubbling, dancing mercury in their bases, cooled by fans that whirr madly or flutter slowly as the power load increases or decreases, give off an eerie light as they perform their duties unattended.”
To him, the plant looked like a “magician’s laboratory or a scene of a 25th century fantasy.” His contemporaries with the Edmonton Journal likened it more to the “quick-change chamber of the evil queen in ‘Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs’” as the “room of hissing and humming [was] lit by baleful bluish sparks.”
The Journal continued on:
“All west-end trams running as far south as 120 st. and Jasper ave. and as far north as Calder come within the radius of the new substation and get their direct current from its rectifier, Mr. Barnhouse said.
They also have the advantage of increased power and speed while operating within that radius, he said, shown with a flick of one finger how the voltage available to the streetcars drops from 70 from 100 volts or more as soon as the rectifier is thrown off.”
What interested reporters most though was “the meaning of the ‘600’ appearing on the front of the new electric light substation.”
“It doesn’t mean there are 600 such substations in Edmonton, […] Barnhouse said Friday, answering a question that has been puzzling inquisitive west-enders.
‘It’s just a designating number we use in the department, but there’s no particular reason why we call it 600 rather than just six,’ Mr. Barnhouse said. There are only seven such substations in the city, he added.”
But the opening of a new streetcar facility didn’t hinder the City’s vision. As Ken Tingly explains, the “Edmonton Transit System’s conversion from streetcars to electric trolleys and gasoline busses, and the resultant abandonment of the street railway track system […] began in 1939 with the first trolley route and advanced more rapidly after the end of the Second World War.” By 1948, plans were made to remove 124th Street’s streetcar tracks in preparation for trolleybuses, and “all car service to the west end, except for the Calder stub, ceased in midsummer.”
Pressed into a new role, Substation No.600 serviced the trolleybus system for another sixty-one years before that system’s untimely abandonment in 2009. For a decade the building sat dormant, a “sentinel, to remind us of the days when Edmonton desired streetcars with enough passion to erect stalwart brick castles just to house the equipment to keep them humming along” — then Beljan Developments bought it.
Renovated between 2020 and 2021, the now-protected heritage site is just one in a string of historical building renovations for Beljan — previous projects include the rehabilitation of the old Oliver Telephone Exchange, Crawford Block, and Strathcona Hotel. With the addition of a three-storey annex and connection to a neighbouring building, the old Substation has, as per the company’s website, undergone a “significant transformation into a unique commercial destination along the 124 Street corridor.”
Sources:
“Tenders For Substation No.600,” Edmonton Bulletin, June 16, 1938.
“Bids Called On Substation For Street Railway,” Edmonton Bulletin, June 22, 1938.
“Council Takes First Steps in City Bus Plan,” Edmonton Bulletin, July 14, 1938.
$825,000 For Work Plan Launched Here,” Edmonton Bulletin, August 11, 1938.
“Ottawa Approves Edmonton Loan,” Edmonton Journal, October 29, 1938.
‘600’ Designation Said ‘Just Swank’,” Edmonton Journal, October 29, 1938.
J.W. Fry, J. Hodgson, R.J. Gibb, “Edmonton Annual Review of Civic Administration,” Edmonton Journal, October 29, 1938.
“City Receives First Portion Federal Loan,” Edmonton Bulletin, November 22, 1938.
“New Tram Substation Saves $3,000 in Power Each Year,” Edmonton Journal, January 31, 1939.
“$25,000 Unit For Power Service Is Now In Operation,” Edmonton Bulletin, January 31, 1939.
Paula Simons, “Streetcar Substation Offers Glimpse Into Public Transit’s Past,” Edmonton Journal, March 16, 2017.
Colin Hatcher & Tom Schwarzkopf, Edmonton’s Electric Transit: The Story of Edmonton’s Streetcars and Trolley Buses (Toronto: Railfare Enterprises, 1983), 102.
Ken Tingly, Ride of the Century: The Story of the Edmonton Transit System (Edmonton: City of Edmonton, 2011), 95-96, 141.
“Substation,” Belgian Developments, Accessed October 18, 2021,
