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THEORY Union Station
*Ethics A Tour of Canada's Greatest Train Station by Ninjalicious
*Observations
Like many sheltered kids from the suburbs around Toronto, I was
PRACTICE given my first taste of the big city's architecture at Union
*Abandoned Sites Station. When I first emerged into Union Station's
*Boats cathedral-like Great Hall, I had to struggle very hard to keep
*Churches the proper degree of teenage aloofness in front of my friends.
*Drains/Catacombs In truth, I was absolutely blown away by the sweeping fa ades,
*Hotels/Hospitals the beautiful monumental architecture I later learned to call
*Transit Tunnels "Beaux-Arts", and the sheer size of the thing, which seemed to
[arrowdn]Utility dwarf even Pickering's Sheridan Mall. It was the biggest,
Tunnels prettiest and oldest building I'd ever seen.
Tunnelling 101 Construction began in 1913, but the station was not
Tentanda Via officially opened until 1927. The massive building, which
Union Station occupies an entire block on Front Street between York and Bay
*Various Streets, has been the largest and busiest rail station in Canada
since its construction. In recent years, Union Station has taken
RESOURCES on added importance in the Metropolitan Toronto area as the
*Exploration Timeline terminal for commuter trains, bus, rapid transit and subway
*Infilnews systems.
*Infilspeak
Dictionary TTC Station
*Usufruct Blog In Infiltration 5, I wrote about the rapid transit section of
*Worldwide Links Union and the wonderful carved-rock tunnels that connect Union
to Queens Quay. At the time I was exploring the station, both
rapid transit stations were sealed off and the rail line had
been replaced with a surface bus route. The TTC had announced
that the rail line was being closed until March 1999 to allow
crews to repair a leak in the tunnels between Union and Queens
Quay, which lie entirely below lake level.
The Entrance to the RT Station That sounded pretty good
to me. A floor-to-ceiling sliding aluminum gate had been
stretched across the entrance to the rapid transit station, and
a barrage of signs informed me that the station was closed and
that I should use the bus instead. Failing to notice the signs
(oops!), I slid open the unlocked gate and slipped through. A
drywall barricade had been erected at the top of the stairs
leading down to the RT. I pulled open an unlocked door in the
makeshift wall and giddily skipped down the stairs. Several
temporary offices had been thrown together out of particleboard
at the base of the stairs. I didn't investigate these offices,
as I could hear a man yelling at someone in one. At the end of
the hall, I came to a newly installed glass door, pasted with a
sign advising me that the area beyond was extra-specially
off-limits.
When I pulled back the glass door, a thick cloud of dust
and noise greeted me. No construction workers were in sight, but
I could hear an orchestra of shrieking drills and pounding
jackhammers at work nearby in the southbound tunnel. I quickly
retreated to the northbound side. From within the tunnel, it
became apparent that this leak repair business was no minor
project. Aside from the makeshift offices I'd already seen,
another cluster of offices had been erected in the maintenance
area south of the station, and there was evidence of heavy
construction vehicles having visited the tunnels.
I travelled down the tunnel very slowly. The ground was
soaked with water from the leak; in some areas there were
puddles I couldn't cross in my shoes. The air was nearly opaque
with dust. I could see a pair of headlights shining in my
direction somewhere further down the tunnel, but I couldn't hear
any voices due to the roar of the machinery. I thought it would
be really cool to walk all the way through the tunnels to Queens
Quay and see what was going on down there. I suppose I pushed my
luck a bit.
The employees spotted me before I spotted them, and
turned off a machine or two so they could yell out to ask who I
was. I stopped walking towards them. One of the workers (still
quite invisible to me behind a brightly-lit cloud of dust)
yelled to ask me what I was doing. At this point, I turned
around and started slowly splashing my way back up the tunnel.
Several more voices yelled out various things behind me,
including "stop". At this point, I started marching back up the
tunnels as fast as I could go without falling into any puddles.
I made it back to the station in a couple of minutes and fully
expected to be greeted by security, but either the workers in
the tunnels weren't equipped with walkie-talkies or they decided
to just dismiss me, for I was able to exit the rapid transit
station without incident.
Train Concourses
Stairways at either end of Union's Great Hall lead down to the
concourse level. From this level, one can access the GO and VIA
concourses, the subway, the Royal York Hotel and the PATH
walkway leading to the CN Tower, SkyDome and most of the major
downtown malls and office buildings.
Though Union Station is owned by Canadian National
Railways (CNR) and Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR), through
their joint ownership of Toronto Terminal Railways (TTR), most
of the station's real estate is devoted to Toronto Transit
Commission (TTC) trains, Government of Ontario (GO) trains and
VIA (doesn't stand for anything, but generally capitalized due
to peer pressure) trains.
GO Transit didn't exist when Union Station was
constructed, but since it was tentatively introduced to the
station in 1967, GO's commuter train service has gradually
become the primary function of Union Station. The half of the GO
concourse adjacent to the tracks is a fare-paid zone, and the GO
concourse is stocked with many surveillance cameras and bored GO
security guards.
The VIA Concourse is a semi-fare-paid zone, only open to
passengers and perhaps their well-wishers. Sometimes Union
Station security guards stand at the entrance to the arrivals
concourse to make sure everyone leaves and no one enters. Of
course, the VIA area is quite large and well-connected to the
rest of the station, so there are many routes around this
blockade. I've found six. Once inside the VIA area, there are
many doors, stairways and ramps leading to interesting
semi-abandoned areas left over from the olden days when VIA
service was much more extensive. You can also take ramps and
stairs down into the parking garages or climb stairs up to the
track level. If you are caught at track level without a ticket,
you can claim that you're just into trainspotting. Rail fanatics
are strange but real, and posing as one will make security
consider you weird but not mischievous. A camera is obviously a
good prop here.
The track level is accessible from either concourse.
Union features a bunch of tracks which are usually filled with a
bunch of trains. Most of the platforms are watched over by
surveillance cameras, and crossing the tracks is definitely
frowned upon.
The Entrance to the Abandoned Train Shed The main tourist
attraction at the track level is the long-abandoned train shed
at the easternmost end of track one. A ramp leading up to the
old shed is blocked by a tall blue gate. When I visited the lock
on the gate hadn't been fastened properly so I just slipped it
off and wandered in, but even if the gate were properly locked
it wouldn't take much effort to find a way around.
When I first entered the shed late one night I could
hardly see anything. The roof has a few holes in it, but these
were clogged with snow, and the windows were all caked with snow
and dirt. There are no bulbs in any of the overhead lights, and
probably no electricity anyhow. I didn't have a flashlight with
me, so I explored very slowly until my eyes adjusted to the
light. The shed is immense, containing two main tracks, on which
are stored some very odd-looking railway vehicles. Weird old
railway junk is everywhere; much of it was covered in snow when
I visited. There are several huge freight elevator shafts set
into the central platform, but peering into the shafts I saw
that the elevators had been removed. The shafts offered a view a
straight down to a dimly-lit, seriously flooded parking garage
somewhere under the station.
Under the Station
Union Station is nice because it's so old and haphazard. I love
seeing how the engineers have built around the original
architecture, rather than simply demolishing it and starting
fresh. It gives character. City planners could learn from this
style of building. Among the best areas for spotting odd, out of
place alcoves are the multiple levels under the station.
The parking garages can be accessed either through a set
of automatic glass doors at the end of a hallway branching off
from the VIA section (just past the security office), or through
ramps leading down from VIA's arrivals concourse, or from the GO
Concourse, through an unmarked brown door in the hallway leading
to tracks 12 and 13. I'll refrain from writing too much about
the parking garages, because I know that most people don't get
all worked up over parking garages the way I do, but these
really are beauties. Several fascinating old relics abound,
including very oddly-shaped ancient elevators, many unlocked
mechanical rooms and supply rooms, and all sorts of bizarre
equipment I lack the vocabulary to describe. The walls, floors
and high ceilings are alternately built out of red brick,
cement, steel, asphalt and painted wood, in no apparent pattern.
Pedestrian and auto ramps lead up and down, and all the floors
are on a decent slope. I don't think there is a level surface in
the whole place.
There are a couple of closed-circuit cameras in the
garages, but they're easy to spot and avoid. Though no entrance
to the garages is marked "staff only" or "do not enter", the
garages are unquestionably employee-only territory, and there
are usually a handful of employees down here who will see you.
Fortunately, Union Station has a hell of a lot of employees,
working for dozens of competing acronyms, so if you simply walk
purposefully while checking your watch or fumbling with your car
keys, you won't have any problems.
The Entrance to the Steam Tunnels While the whole area is
filled with explorable alcoves and storage rooms, there are two
specific spots down here to seek out. The first is the area at
the northeastern corner of the garages, which has entrances to
the station's very interesting shops and mechanical rooms,
including an engine room, an elevator room, a metal shop, a
truck repair shop and a carpenter's shop. Providing that no
employees are on duty, there is lots of stuff to peek at here.
The second is the entrance to the steam tunnels, which is
quite easy to find if you just stare at the ceiling and follow
the pipes. Or look for room D9 the D stands for delivery
level, I think. In a nondescript alcove, tucked behind a pair of
wooden doors, is a steep metal staircase leading further
underground.
Steam Tunnels
Although Union Station is just a single building in a single
location, its network of steam tunnels and mechanical rooms is
quite extensive. The steam tunnels actually extend far beyond
the perimeter of the station, and contain facilities for
heating, ventilation and sewage disposal.
The first section Victor and I toured in detail is the
area at the eastern end of the tunnels. This area is abundantly
decorated with signs reading "Authorized Personel Only", but we
figured no judge would convict us for ignoring such a
poorly-spelled sign. The area was pleasantly devoid of any
authorized personnel, though a supervisor's desk looked to have
been recently occupied, some of the towels the workers had hung
up on wires beside the shower stall were still drying, and there
was some fairly new-looking garbage in some of the bins. We had
to travel quite a way up the tunnels, and around several
corners, before we came upon the more remote areas that looked
like they hadn't been visited in months or years.
The Entrance to the Machine Room Travelling south down
the middle tunnels, the first room we stumbled upon had a tiny
little door that proclaimed that it should remain shut. Neither
Victor nor I could figure out how to get through the door
without opening it, however, so we opened it just a little and
just temporarily, and entered a machine room. Inside the machine
room, we found a set of steep metal stairs leading one flight up
to an unlocked door looking out on some marble hallways. We
didn't take this route at the time, but I have since stumbled
upon this same door from the other side and determined that the
marble hallways are part of the lower levels of the TTR offices.
Through this handy emergency exit, one can quickly exit the
steam tunnels and head out to the VIA concourse or up to the TTR
offices.
Exiting and shutting the door behind us, we proceeded up
the steam tunnels, occasionally stopping to marvel at such
delights as hallways leading nowhere, stairways leading up to
crawlspaces, gigantic machinery of unknown function and valves
with such impressive responsibilities as "Front Street Water
Supply".
Slimy Water in the Abandoned Subway Hall At the end of
this series of tunnels, we found a cement stairway leading up to
a three-foot-tall wooden door held shut by two iron bars.
Carefully withdrawing these bars and setting them aside, Victor
and I emerged onto a gangplank near the top of a stairway and a
disassembled escalator. We wandered down the stairs, leaving
footprints in the dust. At the base of the stairs, a dark,
decrepit hallway with a very shiny black floor stretched out
before us. Victor pointed out that the floor was all wet. "Yeah,
weird," I agreed, as I put my foot down on what I expected to be
a solid floor and my leg plunged through the murky black water
up to my knee. After I withdrew my soaked foot from the water
and wringed my socks out, Victor and I concluded that (a) I was
an idiot and (b) we wouldn't be exploring that tunnel without a
dinghy.
When we came back a few weeks later to take pictures,
however, we found that our flooded tunnel had somehow been
drained. The floor was still slimy and the place was still
unlit, but we hauled out our flashlights and went to take a
look. After a short way, the tunnel turned 90 degrees to the
right, and then continued on an upward slant for some distance.
At the end of the hallway, a set of cement stairs led up to a
door. Checking this door, we found it led directly out into
fare-paid area of the subway station! I won't even attempt to
map this madness or guess what purpose this connection once
served, but it's nice.
On our next expedition into the steam tunnels, Victor and
I checked out the western set of tunnels, the largest and most
interesting of the three sets of tunnels. Large steam pipes
occupy at least half the width of the tunnels in most areas, so
this section is also very hot and cramped. We had to remove our
coats in order to endure the trek to the end of the main tunnel.
At the end of the tunnel, we explored various metal staircases
leading up and down, being careful not to accidentally touch the
burning hot metal handrails on the staircases. One steep metal
staircase led up to an interesting-looking staff area that
seemed a little too recently visited for our comfort. Another
metal staircase led up to a wooden door, on the other side of
which another tunnel stretched off to the south. This tunnel was
constructed out of cinder blocks, and seemed newer and cooler
than the tunnels we'd left. After five minutes or so, we came to
a room at the end of the tunnel, which contained a few
uninteresting machines and a ladder leading to a street-level
exit hatch. Peering out of this exit hatch, and inhaling some
much-needed cool air, we determined that this exit led out to
Bremner Blvd., far to the southwest of Union.
We weren't quite ready to call it a day, so we traced our
steps back to the main tunnels and took a sorth-leading tunnel
that we had ignored earlier. It was another one of those
exceedingly hot tunnels, so we weren't exactly overjoyed when we
came to a 5m-tall sheer face and had to ascend a (hot!) metal
ladder to continue down the tunnel. After this we descended some
stairs and continued down the tunnel for a long way, before the
tunnel seemed to come to an end at a cement wall with an
inconspicuous metal panel, not much wider than a locker door,
set into it. We basically assumed this was the end of the road,
but I decided to try and take a quick peek behind the locker
door before we headed back.
Steam Tunnels Under Union Station Mechanical Wonderland
The inconspicuous little metal panel opened to reveal a further
series of tunnels, rougher, wetter and more cramped than the
main steam tunnels, which sloped down as we headed north. As
well as the wet floor, occasional ladders leading up to
street-level manholes give this area a drain-like quality.
Eventually, the drain-like tunnels emptied out into a
low-ceilinged crawlspace area. Unpleasant odours and an
abundance of rat traps kept Victor and I from exploring all the
dark tunnels branching off from this area. Instead we headed up
a flight of stairs and emerged into an extremely large,
high-ceilinged and unpopulated room filled with machinery,
oddities and wonders. This, I realized, was Union Station's
famous power substation.
After the apocalypse, the smart money is on Union
Station. There are self-contained carpentry, plumbing,
electrical, machine and paint shops, and all sorts of tunnels
and fun places to climb and play. On top of supplying the water
and steam needs of itself and many of its large neighbours,
Union's power substation is also capable of supplying the
electricity needs of a good-sized town.
Mechanical Wonderland The first thing that struck me
about the area was how cheerful it was, for an overgrown
mechanical room. All the metal rails were painted bright yellow
or bright green. A huge bank of machines was brightly decorated
in all the colours of the rainbow. Yes, even indigo! For some
reason, "machinist" and "interior decorator" are two items that
rarely appear on the same resume, so this room was a strange
sight.
Other tourist attractions in this area include the huge
hole in one of the cement walls leading to a chamber underneath
a street grate, a collection of several dozen small wooden
chairs of the type used by kindergarten children, several
smaller, more abandoned-looking rooms full of lifeless
machinery, and a door leading into a large unlit area connected
to the station's ventilation system. This gigantic ventilation
area (behind the rainbow machines) offers all sorts of fun
shafts to climb in, over, around and through, and is one of the
station's biggest highlights. I wish some of my pictures had
turned out. Make sure to bring a flashlight along, as the area
has no lights whatsoever, and bring a stack of moist towellettes
with which to clean yourself afterwards.
We also discovered the hallway through which the
employees enter the plant. Victor and I took the steam tunnel
exit, though, because we were much too far from anywhere even
vaguely public to have an excuse if we were caught.
The Great Hall
Leaving the basements and the concourse level, one comes to
Union Station's most distinctive feature: the Great Hall. The
Great Hall is 77m (250 feet) long and 26m (84 feet) wide, with
an arched ceiling which is 26m (84 feet) tall at its centre. It
is a true arch of vitrified Gustavino tile (the crowd-pleasing
tile). Four-storey-tall arched windows are situated at either
end of the hall. As mentioned, it is really pretty.
The Great Hall also features galleries. Two small
corridors, one two storeys high and one three storeys high, run
around the perimeter of the hall. These corridors are always
empty and appear inaccessible to the general public. After
checking nearly every door and vent in the Great Hall and
finding everything quite secure, I had pretty much given up hope
of ever finding my way to the upper levels of the Great Hall.
Then one day, as Victor and I were idly exploring the upper
levels, a businessman emerged into the hall through a glass door
that had always been locked. Without thinking or even saying a
word to Victor, I skipped over to the door, grabbed it before it
shut, and strolled into the area beyond.
TTR Offices
As mentioned, Union Station and the tracks leading to it are
operated by the Toronto Terminals Railway Company (TTR). The TTR
offices are located right beside Harvey's in the Great Hall. The
glass doors to the offices are usually electromagnetically
locked, at least after business hours. Like other security doors
in Union Station, a green LED on the lock means stop (locked)
and a red LED means go (open).
Having lucked our way inside, Victor and I climbed the
marble staircase up to the second floor. After looking around
for a few moments, we crossed over a hallway with glass walls, a
glass ceiling and a glass floor, and found our way out to the
second-storey gallery looking down on the Great Hall. After
taking some pictures here, we journeyed up to the third-storey
gallery and had an even better view, though we had to walk past
the gaze of a security camera to get there. We seemed to be the
only people in the area, so we knew we'd stand out if security
guards were patrolling.
Still, another flight of stairs beckoned, so we climbed
up to the fourth and final floor accessible by the marble
staircase. After a little looking around, though, we found a
smaller, totally unlit staircase leading further up. By the
light of our flashlights, we made our way up. The door to the
fifth floor was locked. The door to the sixth floor lead to a
records room, filled with all sorts of ancient records, but
nothing very useful to us.
The door to the seventh floor opened out into a very
large, high-ceilinged attic. The attic was fashioned out of red
brick and iron support beams along the ceiling. There were
several holes smashed through the walls leading to various pipes
and ventilation systems that had presumably needed repair once
upon a time. A wooden door halfway up one of the walls, with no
stairs or ladders leading to it, indicated to me that the attic
hadn't always existed in its present form. At the far end of the
attic Victor and I found an elevator that only had a down
button, and a narrow black door leading out to a stairwell with
black walls that seemed to offer more possibilities.
We emerged into the dingy black stairwell, which appeared
very unused. We were at the top of the stairs, but a black metal
ladder led up through a hole in the ceiling and beyond. We
eagerly climbed up the extremely dusty ladder and (when we again
turned on our flashlights) found ourselves in a small elevator
room. We could see the elevator several floors below us through
the metal mesh floor. A tiny door in the wall begged for our
attention. I opened it and was delighted to see a lovely view of
Toronto's harbourfront at night. I peered out through the door
and lowered myself down onto the green copper roof of the
station, which had no guardrail around the edges, and seemed
much taller than it actually was because there were no other
buildings nearby. As I explored and took pictures, I shivered
intensely in reaction to both the freezing cold winds and the
excitement.
A View of Union Station's Roof Before long I climbed back
inside, and Victor and I took the black staircase back down,
peering in on some interesting empty rooms as we made our way
back down. When we exited the black staircase on the fourth
floor, the door locked behind us. We made our way out of the TTR
area by elevator.
I headed back to the TTR offices alone one day to take
some pictures and do some more exploring. After I had waited
like a vulture outside the locked door to the offices for about
10 minutes, an employee finally emerged, and I prepared to
accept the open door from him.
"Can I help you?" he asked, clearly employing the phrase
in its 'can-I-hinder-you' sense.
"I'm supposed to be meeting someone on the fourth floor."
"How do I know you're supposed to be in here? I mean, you
don't look bad or anything..."
Snow on Union Station's Roof I laughed and said, "Thank
you, you neither."
He smiled, weakening. "Okay, go ahead."
Having paid my admission fee through acting, I climbed up
to the fourth floor to look for alternate paths out to the roof.
I found many sights Victor and I had previously missed,
including the headquarters of the CN police, an extremely
ancient elevator serving the lower five levels of the TTR area,
a washroom filled with 10 locked stalls labelled "this stall not
in use," and another disused staircase leading to the upper
levels, at the easternmost point of the fourth floor. It had
been so long since anyone used this staircase that I left a
five-millimeter-thick footprint in the dust everywhere I
stepped. Between the fifth and sixth floors, I found an
unlocked, unscreened window that led out to a lower-level roof,
and stepped out to take a picture of the falling snow. At the
top of the stairwell, I found a door with an extremely
intimidating sign.
Entrance to the Gun Club
The door was locked.
See Related:
[bullet]Infiltration: Journal
[bullet]Union Station at UEC
[bullet]Union Station at Viewing Hole Gallery
For my next trick, I made my way down to the basement
level of the TTR offices. A couple of TTR employees were
standing in a stairwell necking when I arrived, but they seemed
content to ignore me. I found a rather insecure phone closet. I
tried a few doors leading down to the steam tunnels but to my
immense frustration they were locked. I exited out to the VIA
Concourse through a door that locked behind me. Temporarily,
anyhow.
A version of this article originally appeared in Infiltration 12
, together with letters and articles on the Chicago Tunnel
Company tunnels, Michigan Central Station and the Buffalo
Central Terminal.
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