AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
From the Star:
TTC UNTOLD STORIES
Digging up a Queen St. ghost story
Inside TTC's 'The Cave'It was a really gritty industrial street (at a time when) the manufacturing base of Toronto was centred not far from the port Adam Giambrone , TTC chair, on `old' queen st. Streetcar platform dug in 1950s and never used sits behind a door, a buried relic of an old transit vision
Jul 16, 2007 04:30 AM
Tess Kalinowski
TRANSPORTATION REPORTER
This is the first in an occasional series looking behind the scenes of the Toronto Transit Commission.
To the thousands of patrons passing through the Queen subway station, it's just another anonymous TTC maintenance door.
But there are no mops and pails behind the grey door labelled "9Y94."
Instead there's a link to the past and how a transit vision was mothballed as the city pushed north.
TTC insiders call it "Lower Queen" or the "Queen Street cave" – an underground streetcar platform installed in the early 1950s during excavation of the original Yonge subway line.
It's actually a tunnel about three streetcars long, closed off at both ends. For half a century it has sat empty except for some pipes and vents routed along its walls.
Lower Queen is a lesser known TTC "ghost" station. Riders actually got to use another one, the Lower Bay station, last winter when it was briefly pressed into service while tunnel maintenance work was done nearby.
The 1950s excavation of a streetcar platform at Queen was rated an act of foresight, anticipating a future streetcar system that would run partly underground.
Picture the open-air Davisville subway station, only with streetcars descending into tunnels and re-emerging through open cuts (tracks below street level that are open to the sky).
You have to remember Queen St. was very different half a century ago, says TTC chair Adam Giambrone.
There wasn't today's chic of "Spadina and Queen, or even Parkdale ... It was a really gritty industrial street (at a time when) the manufacturing base of Toronto was centred not far from the port," he said.
A 1945 proposal called for a streetcar tunnel under Queen from Church St. west to University Ave., then an open cut just north of Queen as far as Niagara St.
To the east, the Queen car would have travelled across the Don Valley as far as Carlaw using an open cut and an embankment, according to TTC system planner Jeffrey Kay, its de facto historian.
By using access points to Dundas St. W. and Gerrard St. E., "several lines would have come together to get a quicker trip into the downtown area," said Kay.
In 1918, planners showed foresight when constructing the Prince Edward Viaduct to span the Don Valley and link Bloor St. to Danforth Ave.
The primary goal was a dependable crossing for surface traffic, but the budget was expanded to include a lower deck for purposes yet unknown.
"And it took 50 years, but that's where our Bloor subway ran and it saved millions in construction," said Kay.
Had the Queen St. proposal materialized, the city's transit map would have evolved differently, said Giambrone.
But when the Bloor-Danforth subway opened in 1966, it dashed virtually any chance of tunnelling under Queen St.
In a sense, however, the TTC has come full circle on streetcars, said Giambrone.
Before the subway opened, the TTC carried 200 million streetcar riders a year.
And by 2020, when the $6 billion seven-route Transit City light rail network is done, it's expected to add 175 million streetcar patrons to the current 52 million a year tally.
AoD
TTC UNTOLD STORIES
Digging up a Queen St. ghost story
Inside TTC's 'The Cave'It was a really gritty industrial street (at a time when) the manufacturing base of Toronto was centred not far from the port Adam Giambrone , TTC chair, on `old' queen st. Streetcar platform dug in 1950s and never used sits behind a door, a buried relic of an old transit vision
Jul 16, 2007 04:30 AM
Tess Kalinowski
TRANSPORTATION REPORTER
This is the first in an occasional series looking behind the scenes of the Toronto Transit Commission.
To the thousands of patrons passing through the Queen subway station, it's just another anonymous TTC maintenance door.
But there are no mops and pails behind the grey door labelled "9Y94."
Instead there's a link to the past and how a transit vision was mothballed as the city pushed north.
TTC insiders call it "Lower Queen" or the "Queen Street cave" – an underground streetcar platform installed in the early 1950s during excavation of the original Yonge subway line.
It's actually a tunnel about three streetcars long, closed off at both ends. For half a century it has sat empty except for some pipes and vents routed along its walls.
Lower Queen is a lesser known TTC "ghost" station. Riders actually got to use another one, the Lower Bay station, last winter when it was briefly pressed into service while tunnel maintenance work was done nearby.
The 1950s excavation of a streetcar platform at Queen was rated an act of foresight, anticipating a future streetcar system that would run partly underground.
Picture the open-air Davisville subway station, only with streetcars descending into tunnels and re-emerging through open cuts (tracks below street level that are open to the sky).
You have to remember Queen St. was very different half a century ago, says TTC chair Adam Giambrone.
There wasn't today's chic of "Spadina and Queen, or even Parkdale ... It was a really gritty industrial street (at a time when) the manufacturing base of Toronto was centred not far from the port," he said.
A 1945 proposal called for a streetcar tunnel under Queen from Church St. west to University Ave., then an open cut just north of Queen as far as Niagara St.
To the east, the Queen car would have travelled across the Don Valley as far as Carlaw using an open cut and an embankment, according to TTC system planner Jeffrey Kay, its de facto historian.
By using access points to Dundas St. W. and Gerrard St. E., "several lines would have come together to get a quicker trip into the downtown area," said Kay.
In 1918, planners showed foresight when constructing the Prince Edward Viaduct to span the Don Valley and link Bloor St. to Danforth Ave.
The primary goal was a dependable crossing for surface traffic, but the budget was expanded to include a lower deck for purposes yet unknown.
"And it took 50 years, but that's where our Bloor subway ran and it saved millions in construction," said Kay.
Had the Queen St. proposal materialized, the city's transit map would have evolved differently, said Giambrone.
But when the Bloor-Danforth subway opened in 1966, it dashed virtually any chance of tunnelling under Queen St.
In a sense, however, the TTC has come full circle on streetcars, said Giambrone.
Before the subway opened, the TTC carried 200 million streetcar riders a year.
And by 2020, when the $6 billion seven-route Transit City light rail network is done, it's expected to add 175 million streetcar patrons to the current 52 million a year tally.
AoD
