Toronto, Ontario //
Taking the subway drum to Canada
And banging it hard in Toronto
Date October 2009
Posted March 2011
Posted March 2011
With traffic around us at a minimum siologen, looking curiously French, flexed those big old bus driver arms and wrenched open the metal grill before him. Taking my cue I slipped between pavement and iron, slithering down onto the ladder and then taking the weight of the hatch so that he could follow. The metal rungs, set into the concrete of the shaft, took us down into a small square ventilation chamber. It was home to one motor-driven fan, with a door leading past the vent louvres and out onto the track. Of course it was no surprise to us - we'd been able to damn near taste it from the street.
We'd gained entry to Toronto's most expansive rapid transit system by one of the most favoured means: direct tunnel access. This removed the need to take an audacious run off a platform during service (a tactic employed earlier to reach the disused Lower Bay station) or to find a tunnel portal to dash in from. Instead in a matter of seconds we'd gone from street-level rat-run to trackside in the subway. All was quiet, which made a change - the first two times we'd sought entry through vents there had been workers mere meters away forcing hasty retreats.
I'd said goodbye to Shane in Detroit and loops had gone back to the hostel, so it was just the two of us peeking round the bend to where we could see two brightly lit platforms. The problem in Toronto (at least in the heart of the city) is that you're never far from a station. The disused stations of note number exactly one (visited already), and we lacked track plans that were sufficiently detailed enough to indicate the whereabouts of interesting junctions or underground lay-ups.
A second vent a little further down the street provided a slightly interesting experience. And we were of course fortunate to find another way in so close. Not all of the vents are open - in fact most of them are chained down from the inside, but look around and eventually you'll come across an unsecured one. This particular stretch of track, down by Union St, was chosen because we knew it carried three parallel lines. It may have had something to do with Union St once being a terminus, before the loop was completed.
So far we'd managed to avoid witnessing the response tactics of the Toronto Police Transit Patrol Unit, which of course only emboldened us further. Tonight there were no workers to be seen allowing us to push our luck a little and venture further into the city. Eventually though we began to drool at the thought of another $3 'street dog', the big greasy hotdogs available up there in the city at seemingly any hour. With minds now on other things we clambered up out of the dusty vent and back onto the street.
A day or two later siologen and loops boarded a big jet plane and left Canadian soil, only to touch down in Newfoundland several hours later thanks to a cracked windscreen. Meanwhile I extended my residence in the hostel for a short while longer. For the remaining days in the city I entertained myself, seeing more of the city and catching up with some family in the suburbs. It was hard to believe that the others had been over for such a short time and yet we'd done so much. The Niagara saga already seemed like half a lifetime ago...
On my last but final night in Toronto I refused an invitation from a group of wild Irish girls to join a party in the hostel, instead choosing to keep flying the flag and trudge through the bitter cold to investigate some more of the subway system. First was a tunnel portal, reached by climbing over a noisy fence and tumbling down a dusty embankment. I didn't get far before finding another brightly lit station, but there was a rather nice diamond crossing (Wikipedia actually lists all of them). I perched between the live rails snapped a photo and mused that such behaviour probably put me at least one rung further down the social ladder than the trainspotters. Thus it was probably for the better that the Dublin lasses were spared my acquaintance ("So what brings you to Canada?" "Well...").
Despite the cold and this late hour my enthusiasm had been lifted by the ease with which the system could be infiltrated and explored. To round off this fleeting perusal of yet another city's underground railway system I ventured a few miles on foot, intent on finding a way into something a little different. Entry into the yard was easy enough but cleaners working nearby prevented any further exploration.
Shortly after this escapade I left Toronto, jammed into a Greyhound coach that made a sum total of zero rest stops during its 13 hour voyage back to New York City. Despite the rumours and stories I'd heard about these buses there was no drama, and instead I dozed in and out of sleep. Back in Brooklyn I fortunately still had keys to the tidy little Bed-Stuy apartment which was more than worth the endless waiting for a G Train service. After the late night adventures, hostel beds and warehouse bivvying, there was simply nothing more satisfying than sinking into what I could only imagine was a very expensive mattress.
We'd gained entry to Toronto's most expansive rapid transit system by one of the most favoured means: direct tunnel access. This removed the need to take an audacious run off a platform during service (a tactic employed earlier to reach the disused Lower Bay station) or to find a tunnel portal to dash in from. Instead in a matter of seconds we'd gone from street-level rat-run to trackside in the subway. All was quiet, which made a change - the first two times we'd sought entry through vents there had been workers mere meters away forcing hasty retreats.
I'd said goodbye to Shane in Detroit and loops had gone back to the hostel, so it was just the two of us peeking round the bend to where we could see two brightly lit platforms. The problem in Toronto (at least in the heart of the city) is that you're never far from a station. The disused stations of note number exactly one (visited already), and we lacked track plans that were sufficiently detailed enough to indicate the whereabouts of interesting junctions or underground lay-ups.
A second vent a little further down the street provided a slightly interesting experience. And we were of course fortunate to find another way in so close. Not all of the vents are open - in fact most of them are chained down from the inside, but look around and eventually you'll come across an unsecured one. This particular stretch of track, down by Union St, was chosen because we knew it carried three parallel lines. It may have had something to do with Union St once being a terminus, before the loop was completed.
So far we'd managed to avoid witnessing the response tactics of the Toronto Police Transit Patrol Unit, which of course only emboldened us further. Tonight there were no workers to be seen allowing us to push our luck a little and venture further into the city. Eventually though we began to drool at the thought of another $3 'street dog', the big greasy hotdogs available up there in the city at seemingly any hour. With minds now on other things we clambered up out of the dusty vent and back onto the street.
A day or two later siologen and loops boarded a big jet plane and left Canadian soil, only to touch down in Newfoundland several hours later thanks to a cracked windscreen. Meanwhile I extended my residence in the hostel for a short while longer. For the remaining days in the city I entertained myself, seeing more of the city and catching up with some family in the suburbs. It was hard to believe that the others had been over for such a short time and yet we'd done so much. The Niagara saga already seemed like half a lifetime ago...
On my last but final night in Toronto I refused an invitation from a group of wild Irish girls to join a party in the hostel, instead choosing to keep flying the flag and trudge through the bitter cold to investigate some more of the subway system. First was a tunnel portal, reached by climbing over a noisy fence and tumbling down a dusty embankment. I didn't get far before finding another brightly lit station, but there was a rather nice diamond crossing (Wikipedia actually lists all of them). I perched between the live rails snapped a photo and mused that such behaviour probably put me at least one rung further down the social ladder than the trainspotters. Thus it was probably for the better that the Dublin lasses were spared my acquaintance ("So what brings you to Canada?" "Well...").
Despite the cold and this late hour my enthusiasm had been lifted by the ease with which the system could be infiltrated and explored. To round off this fleeting perusal of yet another city's underground railway system I ventured a few miles on foot, intent on finding a way into something a little different. Entry into the yard was easy enough but cleaners working nearby prevented any further exploration.
Shortly after this escapade I left Toronto, jammed into a Greyhound coach that made a sum total of zero rest stops during its 13 hour voyage back to New York City. Despite the rumours and stories I'd heard about these buses there was no drama, and instead I dozed in and out of sleep. Back in Brooklyn I fortunately still had keys to the tidy little Bed-Stuy apartment which was more than worth the endless waiting for a G Train service. After the late night adventures, hostel beds and warehouse bivvying, there was simply nothing more satisfying than sinking into what I could only imagine was a very expensive mattress.
