Its initial rise and fall notwithstanding, the Birney car was useful and durable, and many were shipped to streetcar systems in other countries, especially ones located in smaller cities and towns, where they served for additional decades. For example, the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, bought up Birneys secondhand from other systems (including 22 acquired from the Toronto Transportation Commission (TTC) and five from Bakersfield and Kern Electric Railway) across North America to build an "all-Birney fleet" and keep its streetcar system going in the difficult years of the Great Depression and World War II, finally retiring its last car in 1949. The TTC operated 25 such cars from 1921 to 1927 (and retired in 1941 when 14 were sold to Halifax.