Ottawa Electric Railway Sub-station - Ottawa, Ontario
Posted by: elyob
N 45° 23.696 W 075° 43.759
18T E 442915 N 5027083
The street address is 340 Holland Avenue.
Waymark Code: WMWVX6
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 10/19/2017
Views: 8
Be safe. This transformer station is still active. The Ottawa Electric Railway (OER) building is located immediately south of the Queensway. When built, the sub-station was near the railroad, the Renfrew sub-division of the CNR (now occupied by the Queensway highway). Like today, Holland Avenue (and the OER streetcar tracks) went under a railroad bridge just north of the transformer station.
The Ottawa Electric Railway dates back to the 1890s. Tracks on Holland Avenue were used by the Somerset-Laurier streetcar route. When this route to the Civic Hospital and the more distant route to Britannia were opened for streetcars in the 1920s, this new transformer sub-station was required. In the late 1940s, more than 230 daily round trips were made by streetcars along Holland Avenue. There was a significant need for the electricity provided by the sub-station. By 1960, streetcars in Ottawa were gone forever.