In August of 1932, the DSR Lorain Avenue car barn went up in flames, destroying most of the DSRy's fleet of rail cars. While temporarily borrowing old cars from the other Dayton street car companies, Phillip Worman, the DSRy President, had to make a monumental decision as to how to keep the company afloat. The DSR's single line ran from Linden and Santa Cruz on the east side of Dayton through the Central Business District (CBD) and thence out Salem Avenue to Catalpa. Most of the trackage was in bad shape, and with the Depression in full sway, revenues were hardly supportive of extensive rail renewal as well as obtaining replacement rail cars.

Over in Indianapolis, the newly-reorganized Indianapolis Railways was experimenting with Electric Trolley Buses (ETB's) on their Riverside-South Meridian line, with an inaugural parade being staged on the 2nd of December 1932. Brill had provided 15 new T-40 ETB's, consecutively numbered from 501 through 515. In attendance were several Dayton Transit officials, including Phil Worman of DSR, and WW Owen of the City Railway Company.

Later that day after the ETB parade, Brill executives, knowing of Worman's dilemma, made him an offer to supply 12 identical T-40 ETB's and have them ready to roll in Dayton by April of 1933.

Worman accepted the deal, and returned to Dayton to start stringing the additional 2nd trolley wire needed by ETB's. Street car motormen were retrained to become ETB operators in early April 1933, and Dayton had it's own ETB inaugural parade on 22 April 1933. Revenue operation started the next day, the 23rd of April.

The DSR Brill's were numbered by 5's, starting with #100, 105, 110, etc. The traction orange and cream DSR Brill's were an immediate success, and one-by-one, the other 4 Dayton street car companies converted their rail lines to ETB operation. Ridership grew and Worman ordered 5 more identical T-40 Brill's, which had rear exit doors and 2 GE traction motors. After another year or so, DSR ordered their final ETB's, a pair of T-40 Brill's, but these two (#185 & 190) had the exit doors at mid-bus. By this time the Dayton Street Railway Company had renamed itself as the Dayton Street Transit Company (DST).

On 12 April of 1941 the DST was sold to the big City Railway Company (CRC). CRC paid $185,000 for the DST's 19 Brill T-40 ETB's, barn, overhead infrastructure, and franchise. The Lorain Avenue barn was later sold off by CRC. DST had no substations of it's own, buying 600-volt DC from the DPL CBD substation and from the Oakwood Street Railway Company, which had a rotary convertor in their Brown Street barn. Henceforth the Linden-Salem ETB line was operated out of the CRC Western Avenue barns, and the orange/cream Brills were repainted and relettered into standard CRC yellow and gold. Many of the sturdy ex-DST Brill's remained in CRC service into the early 1950's. None are known to have survived the scrappers, and there is no known color photograph of DST Brills in their original paint.

The PRC T-40 Brill's had 2 General Electric 1154 motors; the T-44-S coaches had a single GE 1213 motor.