Along with music, fashion and art, this weekend's Supercrawl festival offered a glimpse into the city's transit future.

An LRT train car - the technical term is "LRV" (light rail vehicle) - was brought to town for the weekend and parked outside the Lister Block building for people to explore.

Though it largely resembled a GO bus or a Toronto subway car, the shiny new vehicle earned plenty of "oohs and ahhs" from curious visitors. Though renderings of the vehicle have long been available, this was the first time a physical version was set up in town, right on its future route.

On Saturday evening, the city set up a "conversation couch" next door, to give folks a chance not only to see the vehicle, but to chat up the staff - from both the city and Metrolinx - who are heading the LRT file.

Jason Thorne, the city's head of planning and economic development; David Dixon, Hamilton's director of transit; and Andrew Hope, director of the Hamilton project at Metrolinx, were all in the conversation couch hot seat, ready to be grilled.

But with the steady presence of rain, the turnout was underwhelming.

Only three people stopped by with questions - one of them was Ward 1 Coun. Aidan Johnson who, among other things, was curious about the LRV's mechanical system.

Rain and turnout notwithstanding, Thorne felt it was a good exercise.

"The idea is that LRT is going to affect a lot of people. Some don't feel comfortable writing a letter or coming to speak at City Hall. So you get much better feedback if you go where the people are," he said.

Hope agreed, saying it was great idea to offer residents an opportunity to chat face-to-face.

The travelling conversation couch is a project by the city and Evergreen CityWorks (a cross-Canada charity that aims to make cities more livable), in an effort to connect with and empower the community as part of the West Harbour Community Engagement Strategy.

"We want to engage people who wouldn't necessarily otherwise be engaged," says Jay Carter, the Hamilton project co-ordinator for Evergreen.

But their two citizen couch mates Saturday were plenty engaged.

One was Mark Rejhon, a local transit activist.

The other was Frank Soberg, a downtown resident who came out for the meet and greet. His passion is Barton Street, and he chatted with Thorne about opportunities for that corridor once the line is in place.

Thorne said these conversations are also useful for staff, because of the more informal dialogue.

"There are so many people like Mark in the community, they've done their research, they have ideas ... you can't always get that in a five-minute council delegation."

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While the conversation couch will be making the rounds this fall on other topics, Thorne hopes to see further sessions devoted to LRT.

But in the meantime, he and Hope were thrilled to watch people tour the vehicle.

"It's exciting to see it on James Street, and have people realize it's real ... it's going to happen ... soon that vehicle is going to be riding up and down King Street," he said.