Construction work along a downtown Brandon street has uncovered a lesser-known and short-lived part of the city’s history. 

When crews started stripping Rosser Avenue, sections of track for the city’s streetcar system began to surface.

“They’re still underneath the pavement in a lot of downtown,” said Aly Wowchuk with Brandon’s General Museum and Archives. 

It was a project that seemed doomed from the start.

“They were originally installed in 1911 and it didn’t have a great start. It actually took up to three different contractors to get this whole system started,” she said.

Wowchuk said the first contractor was fired by city council because they didn’t like being told where the track should be. The second one was found to have been putting nonexistent people on the payroll and was also let go.

The third contractor hired did finally get it done.

“Nonetheless, in 1913, the tracks came into operation, but they only existed for the next 20 years,” she said. 

“They shared the roads with some very early automobiles as well as horses with buggies,” Wowchuk added. “It was a very, very busy downtown back then.” 

She said the system proved to be too much of a financial burden on the city council of the day, which decided to shut down the streetcar system in 1932 in favour of a private transit service, which ran buses around the city. 

The tracks were later paved over and largely forgotten about, until last week. 

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