Raymond Francis Corley was born in 1926 in Toronto. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1948. He first worked for General Electric in the railway test car department in Pennsylvania. He returned to Canada in 1949, working in the Canadian General Electric Company as a transportation engineer designing propulsion equipment for trolley coaches and subway cars. In 1965, he was named director for transportation of equipment and sales planning for Canadian railway-related operations, including urban transit. This role gave Ray access to railway transit systems, properties and suppliers across Canada and opportunity to gather a significant amount of rail and transit information that would have otherwise been lost.

In 1974 he went to work for the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), eventually becoming the Superintendent of Design and Development in the Equipment Department. During Ray’s 15-year career with the TTC, he was instrumental in the design and development of much Toronto’s modern streetcar and subway fleet.

Ray retired in 1989 and became a transportation consultant, researcher and historian. Ray spent decades preserving transportation history and accumulating a personal archive of photos, records and artifacts on railway transportation, equipment and operations.
Raymond Corley, is also a published author of many books on rail and urban transit:

• The BUDD RDC in Canada, for the Upper Canada Railway Society, 1967,
• Canadian National Steam Power, co-authored with Anthony Clegg, 1969,
• Preserved Canadian Railway Equipment, for Railfare Enterprises, 1972,
• Interurban to St. Albert: the Edmonton Interburban Railway, co-authored with Douglas V. Parker, 1995.

Raymond Corely died in 2003 at the age of 77 yrs. In 2004, he was awarded the W.G. Ross Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) and thereby inducted into CUTA’s Hall of Fame.