Skywatch Friday
1. Starts with "B."
2. A Favorite
3. Building
For the letter of the week for this round I am going to go with all things TTC, Toronto Transit Corporation.
A fun song showing the building of the subway 1949-1954
Letter B BAY Station
It is located in heart of the Yorkville district just north of Bloor Street West on the west side of Bay Street.
The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) operates its lost articles office at this station, where forgotten objects on the city's buses and trains are held until reclaimed or sold by auction.
Below the main platform for Bay station is an abandoned platform, which was used for only six months in 1966 when the TTC experimentally ran trains whose routes included portions of both the Yonge–University and Bloor–Danforth lines. This abandoned platform is sometimes referred to as "Lower Bay" by the general public or "Bay Lower" by the TTC.
The "secret" door to the lower platform, this was the exit during Doors Open.
The platform was in service from February to September 1966 as part of an interlining experiment, in which the TTC ran trains along three routes, with one matching the subsequent Bloor–Danforth line, and the other two combining parts of the Bloor–Danforth line with the Yonge–University line. The experiment was deemed a failure, largely because delays anywhere quickly cascaded to affect the entire system. Also, as the stations had not been laid out effectively for cross-platform interchange, trains travelling east from St. George and west from Yonge alternated between the two levels, leading passengers to wait on the stairs in-between the levels, since they were unable to tell which platform would receive the next train.
A piece of Canadian trivia/gossip, the host on this video is Ben Muloney, the oldest son of former prime minister Bill Mulroney. And he is married to Jessica Brownstein, daughter of Brown's Shoes founder. She happens to be a close friend of Megan Merkle, Duchess of Sussex (Meghan Markle). In 2018, she and her husband attended Markle's wedding to Prince Harry, and their children participated as page boys and flower girl.
Bay station has several exits and entrances on Cumberland, Bellair, and Bay, and this beauty store location is right next to the entrance on Bellair.
Andrew at High Riser Blog will get a kick out of this.
A pet peeve of mine - the delay of our new streetcars from the Quebec company Bombardier. They had not delivered their contractual agreement and now have recalled most of the cars they did deliver.
A friend of mine recently said they should be paying us to have their logo on our cars.
As I took my seat the other day on the subway, someone had left this newspaper with this heading.
A Favourite
Biblio-Mat and Books
A book collector's dream, The Monkey's Paw in Toronto has the world's first "Biblio-Mat", a random book vending machine on Bloor St. West.
You insert a coin, obtained from the cash, and you get a book!
BUILDING
I'm continuing with my box collection.
This one is from Ireland, a typical country pub.
Bar.
Bombardier should be very sorry. While I think they used superior German engineering for the traction system and motors etc, and would have paid a decent but probably fair price, they went for the el cheapo Mexican option with the bodies of the trams, and the result was a disgrace. But more than just blame Bombardier, the blame needs to go firmly back to TTC, who went for the cheap without carefully examining how it would pan out. My city Melbourne did worse, buying very cheap complete trams from Germany and France, and they have been a disaster. It has been a PR disaster for Siemens and Alstom. We now import the motors and running equipment for our trams, of high quality, and build the bodies ourselves. Was money saved by outsourcing the tram body and chassis construction to Mexico, as against the higher cost of paying Canadian wages and creating employment in Canada? It certainly doesn't look like it to me.
ReplyDeleteCan Canada do public transport vehicles well? I believe the coach we travelled on in Canada was made by Prevost in Quebec. The driver loved it, the best he had ever driven said he, and we rather liked it too. Smooth, quiet, great aircon, wifi, USB charging points at seats and just perfect, and that was three years ago with a probable four year old design. Imagine how Prevost has moved on since then. Well, I hope the company has.
Sorry Jackie, that wasn't a soap box you pushed under my feet?
"We're sorry" isn't sufficient for that screw-up.
ReplyDeleteWOW what a mess! Love the idea of the biblio-mat and your boxes are wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI like all your Toronto "B's", Jackie. The "NO BAY" is neat, do you think there really will come a YES BAY? I wish we had better mass transit. There are some busses and an overground train that doesn't go except down town from one end to the Medical Center.
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...Jackie, lots of Bs around Toronto. Nice to have these history lessons too. Few people own up to their screw-ups these days. Thank for stopping by, enjoy your weekend.
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