The MR-63 (Matériel roulant 1963) was the first generation of rubber-tyred rolling stock of the Montreal Metro in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Based on the MP 59 of the Paris Métro in France, the trains were in use on three of Montreal's four Metro lines from 1966 until 2018. By the time of their withdrawal, the trains were among the oldest still in use on any metro system in the world, at 52 years old.
History
Initial concept design of the trains
As part of the development of the Montreal Metro in the early 1960s, the City of Montreal was assisted in the detailed design and engineering of the Metro by French consultant SOFRETU, owned by the operator of the Paris Métro.[1] It was decided that the new Metro would use a similar rubber-tired train design as used on the Paris Métro – instead of steel ones as used on the Toronto subway.[2][3]
A large number of rolling stock manufacturers were expected to bid for the rolling stock contract, with French firms expected to have an advantage due to the Paris Métro design.[4] However high tariffs on manufacturers from France (22.5%) and Britain (7%) meant that only two bids were received in June 1963, both from Canadian firms.[5][6] The cheapest bid was from Montreal Locomotive Works (MLW), who had built the M series trains for the Toronto subway.[5] However, aircraft and shipbuilder Canadian Vickers had the support of the French company CIMT-Lorraine which helped to design the rubber-tired system used in Paris.[7] Both bids were thought to be too expensive, and therefore specifications of the trains were amended to reduce the cost.[8][9] The number of cars to be ordered increased from 252 to 369 cars due to extensions to be built.[9][10]
After negotiations with both MLW and Canadian Vickers, the Commission de transport de Montréal (CTM) awarded the MR-63 contract to Canadian Vickers in August 1963, at a cost of $45 million.[11]
Production and entry into service
The cars were built at the Canadian Vickers shipyards in the Viauville neighbourhood of the Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough of Montreal, designed by Morley L. Smith for Guillon Designers Inc., founded by Jacques Guillon.[12] Around 82 percent of the train was manufactured in Canada,[13] with the French traction and control equipment built under licence in Canada.[14]
The first of the 369 cars was delivered on 24 August 1965.[15] The first trains were introduced into service on October 14, 1966, on the opening of the Montreal Metro.[16] During their time in service, the fleet underwent numerous technological and reliability upgrades. In 1976, automatic train operation was introduced. Between 1991 and 1993, all in-service MR-63 cars underwent major refurbishment by AMF Technotransport at the Canadian NationalPointe-Saint-Charles workshops.[17] This refurbishment also included repainting to match the livery of the MR-73 trains.[18] Further upgrades and improvements included solid-state door interlocks in 2003, modern ergonomic driver cabs with new digital dashboards, and automatic station announcements in 2005 (voiced by Michèle Deslauriers).
In the early 1980s, MR-73 cars replaced the older MR-63 cars on the Orange line.[17]
Retirement
The last MR-63 train at Snowdon station on its last day of service
By 2005, the original MR-63 Montreal Metro trains were around 40 years old, and maintenance costs were rising.[19] Société de transport de Montréal (STM) indicated that these trains would be replaced by modern rolling stock in the coming decade.[20] New MPM-10 Azur trains were ordered from a Bombardier Transportation and Alstom consortium, and these trains entered service in 2016.[21] As Azur trains entered service, MR-63 trains were retired one by one. The last MR-63 trains were retired between the last few months of 2017 and June 2018.[22]
On May 30, 2018, STM announced that after June 21, 2018, with 52 years of loyal service, all of its remaining MR-63 métro cars were being withdrawn from service.[23] The milestone was underlined by a communication campaign and a "farewell tour" on all four Montreal Metro lines.[23] The last original train was decorated with information about the cars and featured copies of posters from 1966 from its early operation.[23] It was operated as part of normal morning and afternoon rush hour service between June 18 and 21, 2018.[17]
The rest of the fleet is undergoing a sustainable reclamation plan.[17][29]
Design
The cars were made of a lightweight steel alloy, 2.5 meters wide by 16 meters long and with four double sliding doors on each side. Each car had 40 seats, with a maximum load of 160 passengers per car. The trains run in three car sets, formed of two motor cars with a trailer in-between them. The 369 cars could be formed as a combination of 3, 6 or 9-car trainsets.[30] The MR-63 was identified with grey interiors, four ventilation hoods protruding over the roof of each car, two 113 kW (152 hp) 360-V series traction motors that make a whining noise, and round cab headlights.[30]
The industrial design of the train was undertaken by Jacques Guillon in 1963.[12][3] The colour of the train was a contentious decision, with Mayor of Montreal Jean Drapeau preferring the traditional white and red of the City of Montréal,[12] with Guillon arguing for light blue with a white stripe, the traditional colours of Quebec.[31] Eventually, a baby blue colour was chosen, which "matched Lucien L'Allier's wife’s sweater”.[12]
Motor design
The MR-63 model uses a series-to-parallel servo camshaft rheostat to control and regulate power to its traction motors; this control system can be heard tapping under the floor of a motor car as the train undergoes rapid acceleration at an initial rate of 1.33 m/s2 (4.4 ft/s2) (4.8 km/(h⋅s) or 3.0 mph/s).[30] This control system also features a dynamic rheostatic braking mode that uses the motors to slow the train, turning the motors into generators and dissipating the resulting energy as heat in the rheostat grid.
Hitachi and Jeumont prototype trains
In the early 1970s, two separate three-car trainsets had their original traction systems replaced with two chopper prototype traction systems, one manufactured by Hitachi (fitted onto elements 10, 11 and 12), and another manufactured by the Canron company based on a Jeumont original design (fitted onto elements 40, 41 and 42). The Hitachi chopper system fitted onto elements 10, 11 and 12 were subsequently changed back into their original traction systems a few years later. Jeumont elements 41 and 42 were however stored out of service until 2005 when they returned as trailer cars attached to other motor cars, where they remained in service until 2017, when they were retired alongside other MR-63s being replaced by MPM-10 trains. Jeumont element 40 was retired from service earlier than elements 41 and 42 because it needed to be cannibalised for spare parts for elements 41 and 42 that were no longer being manufactured. Jeumont element 40 has since then been used as part of the Just for Laughs festival.[32]
Reliability
Maintenance of Montreal's subway cars is rigorous, as reliability levels (Mean Distance Between Failures/MDBF ratings) are more than double that of typical North American subway cars by North American standards (at 200,000 km or 124,300 mi in 2004). Furthermore, the entire metro is underground, with trains stored under cover at all times.[19]
In later years, obsolete components and parts availability meant the trains gradually became less reliable, and ride quality deteriorated as suspension systems and rubber spring packs hardened with age. Poor ride quality was not attributed to the tires or tracks.[19] By the time of their withdrawal in 2018, Montreal's rolling stock were among the oldest still in use on any metro system in the world, at 52 years old.[33]
In July 1967, a train operator fainted at the controls of a MR-63 train and hit the wall at the tail-end of the Yellow Line, due to the intense heat generated from the train heaters compounded by the insufficient air flow generated by the forced-air ventilation mounted on top of the train. As a result of said incident, air conditioning was subsequently installed in all MR-63 driver cabs and the forced-air ventilation inside the passenger cabins were modified to generate greater air flow.
On December 8, 1971, a speeding MR-63 train crashed into a parked MR-63 train near Henri-Bourassa station on the Orange Line, causing a 17-hour inferno that destroyed 24 MR-63 coaches parked at the Henri-Bourassa tail tracks. 40-year-old train operator Gerard Maccarone was the sole fatality in this accident, which was later revealed to be caused by a jammed throttle that prevented the train from braking in time. This was at that time the deadliest subway accident ever to have occurred in Canada until the Russell Hill subway accident on the Toronto subway in 1995.[35]
On January 9, 1974, a series of tire blowouts on a 9-car MR-63 train led to a fire which occurred between Laurier and Rosemont stations on the Orange Line. No deaths resulted from said fire, although said train was completely destroyed.
^Magder, Jason (13 Oct 2016). "The métro at 50: Building the network". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 14 Sep 2023. The idea for tires came to Drapeau and Saulnier when they visited Paris, the first subway system to incorporate tires to address a problem of overcrowding. Supplied by Michelin, the rubber allowed trains to accelerate faster, which in turn allowed for more trains to run on a given line.
^ abMartins-Manteiga, John (2011). le design en mouvement / Métro: design in motion. Dominion Modern. p. 80. ISBN9780968193341.
^"Montreal hopes haggling will cut Subway car cost". The Financial Post. 20 July 1963. p. 5. European as well as North American builders of rolling stock were expected to bid for the contract. About a dozen companies were thought to be interested.
^ ab"Montreal hopes haggling will cut Subway car cost". The Financial Post. 20 July 1963. p. 5.
^"'Le Metro' on schedule, costs up $46 million". The Financial Post. 7 Sep 1963. p. 7. From a world-wide call for tenders, only Vickers Ltd. and Montreal Locomotive Works - both Montreal based companies - submitted bids. Foreign firms were scared away after studying customs and excise taxes.
^New Equipment Railway Age September 2, 1963 page 31
^"'Le Metro' on schedule, costs up $46 million". The Financial Post. 7 Sep 1963. p. 7. First tenders for the subway rolling stock were opened in mid July and city officials were almost shocked to find bids were almost double the expected cost ... After efforts by the city to cut frills from the cars and encourage lower bids from the companies, new tenders were examined.
^ abNegru, Myer (13 July 1963). "Lower Subway car prices sought". Montreal Gazette. p. 3.
^"'Le Metro' on schedule, costs up $46 million". The Financial Post. 7 Sep 1963. p. 7. [Metro] Extensions have made it necessary to purchase 369 subway cars instead of the 252 first considered.
^Negru, Myer (7 August 1967). "Extensions For Subway Approved". Montreal Gazette. p. 3. Contract for the rolling stock - covering design, manufacturer, delivery of 369 subway cars, spare parts and five tractors for work trains - went to Canadian Vickers Ltd., lower of two private tenderers at $45,513,918.
^Negru, Myer (7 August 1967). "Extensions For Subway Approved". Montreal Gazette. p. 3. 82.5 per cent of the material going into the rolling stock would be of Canadian manufacture
^"Vickers Subway contract awarded to Canada Iron". Montreal Gazette. 31 Oct 1963. p. 32. The designs were originally made in France, he explained, and Canada Iron will be operating under license agreements with four different French firms, for the manufacture of traction motors, the control, the generator sets, and the current pick-ups.
^ abc"A system in need of major surgery: Our metro stations and trains urgently require an injection of $2.6 billion". Montreal Gazette. 10 September 2005. Maintenance costs are rising and the entire metro fleet is old - the MR-63 cars on the green line are almost 40 years old. In an industry where subway cars start being replaced after 30 years, the average age of the MTC's fleet is about 32 years - more than double that of the Toronto Transit Commission's fleet, with an average age of about 14.
