February 24, 2020 . . .

Last Friday, 21 Feb 2020, Haley Morgan and Bernie Drouillard talked to us about Windsor’s last streetcar, Car 351. They were going to show us a video but couldn’t get the sound going, so they made a very smooth recovery when Bernie agreed to talk to the video. So, the video ran and Bernie talked and the saga of Car 451 took off!
Bernie told us about his search for the streetcar, and about the day they pulled into a driveway out in Belle River and finally found it – at least the front of the streetcar, protruding just a bit from one end of the house. The house had been built around it! Wow! Who ever heard about someone living in a streetcar, let alone a streetcar inside a house! But, there it was!  
At first, before restoration, the car was in a sorry state! While all the glass was still intact, when the structure was carefully removed from around it, it was boarded up and transported initially to a temporary place in the old Car Barn Number 1, at University and Wellington, and finally to RM Auto Restoration all the way up in Blenheim, Ontario.
Judging from the pictures Bernie and Haley showed us, the restoration was truly amazing! Car 351 was restored to it’s former glory, inside and out, including slatted seats on one side and padded bench seating all along the other. They did a truly beautiful job!
(I grew up, in the 1940’s, on Wellington Avenue near University Street and watched from the schoolyard across the tracks as the occasional box car was delivered to the Car Barn by rail!) 
Bernie told us that for a part of the time when this car was in service, it and three other cars were specially fitted with fully enclosed smoking sections for use on the longer runs to Tecumseh and Amherstburg.
This was the saga of streetcar number 451, as told to us, by Haley Morgan and Bernie Drouillard of Windsor’s Cultural Affairs office . . .
 ‘til we meet again . . .