When the Toronto Suburban Railway started building their radial line to Guelph, they ordered 6 centre-entrance cars (3 coaches, 3 combines) from the Preston Car Company. Only 4 were delivered (the TSR had Preston store the cars before the line was completed, and two of them when Preston had a works fire in 1917) and operated until the CNR let the line drop into bankruptcy in 1931.

At the bankruptcy, the CNR reclaimed their (single) boxcab motor and two interurbans that they’d purchase to help passenger service, leaving nothing but these 4 centre-entrance cars (three of which were operational; TSR 104 had been used as a parts source and was sitting on the ground at Lambton shops) and a handful of wooden express motors on the property.

The reorganized TSR didn’t pursue passenger service, but used the Preston cars as locomotives (supplimented, in WW2, by a quartet of CC&F motors) so by the end of the 1940s they were basically junk and were quietly scrapped.

Except for 104, which was still quietly sitting on the ground at Lambton shops.

And there it sat until 1995, when the TSR built a new shops complex on disused industrial land in Acton, moved everything from Lambton there, and set 104 aside to be restored.

The restoration took a while (it was a low priority thing done mainly by volunteer labour, with several l-o-n-g pauses while missing parts were tracked down and purchased/copied) but it was finished, painted, and available for excursion service in 2026.