Thus, the City created the Toronto Civic Railways to serve the newly annexed districts.
The TCR was not a separate entity or agency but operated under the City's Department of Works, Railway and Bridge Section.
To move streetcars between TCR carhouses, temporary track connections had to be made to a nearby TRC line.
The other reason was that when the TRC franchise ended in 1921, the City wanted to merge the two systems.
The TRC and TCR tracks were not connected and passengers had to change streetcars at Greenwood Avenue and pay another fare.
However, many passengers found the new Gerrard line to be more convenient than the Little York branch, and the latter closed in 1913.
After the TTC took over the TCR in 1921, it double-tracked the line and extended it south to Queen Street.
St. Clair Avenue was a rough, undulating road requiring much cut and fill, and the Nordheimer Ravine had to be bridged.
After its creation in 1921, the TTC connected the TCR and TRC lines at Avenue Road, expanded the St. Clair route both east and west, and added more streetcar routes to connect with the St. Clair line.
[3] The Lansdowne route ran on Lansdowne Avenue between St. Clair Street West and the Canadian Pacific Railway midtown line north of Royce Avenue (today Dupont Street).
The double-track line connected with St. Clair streetcars at the north end, the Davenport line of the Toronto Suburban Railway at Davenport Road and with the TRC's Lansdowne route if passengers walked across the CPR tracks.
The procedure required the conductor to set the signals and derails every time a TCR streetcar passed through the crossing.
Thus, two-man crews were required on this route until 1933 by which time the southbound derail had been removed.
On July 5, 1931, the route (now called Lansdowne North) was extended via a new underpass under the CPR tracks to Royce Avenue (today Dupont Street).
Its construction started in 1914, and the first stage required filling in a ravine at Keele Street.
Service from Quebec Avenue to the western terminal at Runnymede Road started on November 12, 1917 again using a temporary single-track line.