[PHOTO] Photos from Roundhouse Park and the Toronto Railway Museum

I can't explain why I had never visited the Toronto Railway Museum and the Roundhouse Park before Sunday, not in all of my years of living in Toronto. Located just literally on the other side of Bremner Boulevard from the CN Tower and the Rogers Centre, a park devoted to rail is something that should have caught my attention before now.

(This is why I like Doors Open so much. Finding out new things about the city I love is always welcome.)

The Toronto Railway Museum, occupying a unit of the John Street Roundhouse that gives the park its name, has a nice collection of ephemera from Canada's railway history. It has preserved this chalk blackboard showing CPR's schedule in the summer of 1971.



This Pullman car, the "Nova Scotia", is a substantially bigger artifact.



Toy trains and rail models happened to feature heavily in this space. A long-time Lego fan, my attention was caught by this Lego model of a city in miniature.



My eye was caught by this East Coast diorama, part of a model train set.



Outside the Museum, the John Street Roundhouse is an impressive building, one that I apparently did not photograph from the top of the CN Tower. Wikipedia's explains its import.

The John Street Roundhouse was built for the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1929-31 by Anglin-Norcross to replace the earlier John Street roundhouse built in 1897. Trains were so properly maintained at this location that railroaders recognized them by their "John Street polish." When diesel run trains began being used, business was slowed at the Roundhouse and the building was last used for its original purpose in 1986. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company donated the roundhouse to the City of Toronto. It is the only remaining roundhouse in downtown Toronto (the CNR Spadina Roundhouse was demolished to make way for construction of the SkyDome). One third of the original structure was dismantled, to allow construction of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre below, then reconstructed (1995) by Hotson Bakker Architects and is now home to Steam Whistle Brewing. Renovations to the brewery interior portion were done by William Hurst Architects. The remaining two thirds was rehabilitated by IBI Group Architects and now house the Toronto Railway Museum and soon Cineplex's Rec Room entertainment complex. The turntable and courtyard, Roundhouse Park with the restored wooden railway buildings was also completed by IBI and has received a number of design awards. The SkyWalk retains a direct connection from the Roundhouse Park, to Union Station.

John Street Roundhouse could maintain 32 locomotives at a time. 32 bay doors make up the inner rounded facade of the building and face the 120 foot turntable. This turntable was the largest used by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and was constructed by the Canadian Bridge Company.

Outside, in the park proper, various locomotives and cars are parked amid the grass.

[VIDEO] "Riding the Toronto Railway Museum miniature train around Roundhouse Park"

The Toronto Railway Museum includes a miniature steam train, 7.25" gauge, that runs the length of Roundhouse Park. Tckets for adults are $C 3.50.

How do I know this? Well.

"Riding the Toronto Railway Museum miniature train around Roundhouse Park" (Watch on YouTube)

Heritage Toronto's Derek Boles has an essay up about the history of miniature railways in Toronto.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy notes the literally cosmic homophobia of Louie Gohmert.


• The Big Picture notes a Chinese factory set to make a fortune off of making masks of the American presidential candidates.


• blogTO notes the raising of the Trans and Pride flags at Toronto City Hall, marking the beginning of Pride month.


• Crooked Timber notes the racism that erased the genealogy of African-Americans.


• Joe. My. God. notes that Britain's NHS has rejected PrEP again.


• Language Log notes the sensitivity of the local version of the name "Pikachu" in Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong.


• The LRB Blog reports from the scene of an active volcano in Nicaragua.


• Marginal Revolution notes that witchcraft apparently does hurt economic progress.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer wonders why New Zealand and Uruguay, with such similar economies, saw such substantial economic divergence after 1950.


• Peter Rukavina reports on an interesting Asian food store in Charlottetown.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes a Russian claim that condoms cause HIV transmission.

[NEWS] Some Wednesday links

• Bloomberg notes the rise of populism in Mexico, looks at how Europe is losing its reputation as a renewable energy leader, looks at political protest in Zimbabwe, and looks at changing habits of Saudi oil ministers.


• Bloomberg View notes the politicization of the Israeli army, looks at an effort to smuggle Korean pop culture into North Korea, and considers strategies to encourage Japanese to have more children.


• The Globe and Mail considers the risky strategy of marijuana growers, who hope to get the government to back down as they do their thing before legalization.


• MacLean's notes that the outcry over the shooting of the gorilla in the Cleveland zoo is misconceived, and reports on Kamal al-Solaylee's book about being brown.


• NOW Toronto notes that one argument raised against letting permanent residents vote in Toronto is that Donald Trump allegedly has an apartment here. (Wrong, on multiple grounds.)


• Open Democracy looks at how British authoritarianism is restrained by the European Union.

[URBAN NOTE] On the new funding and route for the Downtown Relief Line

The Toronto Star's Ben Spurr wrote about the new announcement. We even got a map!

The downtown relief subway line is one step closer to becoming a reality, after city planning staff identified the preferred route for the transit project this week and the provincial government announced funding to design it.

At the TTC’s Greenwood complex on Wednesday, Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said the Liberal government would give provincial transit agency Metrolinx more than $150 million for planning and design work for the line, which would connect downtown Toronto with the Line 2 subway east of the Don River.

TTC officials called it the most significant funding to date for the relief line, which has been discussed by planners for decades and is considered among the city’s top transit priorities.

The subway will go east on Queen, across the Don River, and then link up with Pape station.

The Globe and Mail's Jeff Gray had more.

ntario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca made the announcement at the TTC’s Greenwood subway yard in the city’s east end, flanked by Mayor John Tory and TTC chairman Josh Colle. Mr. Del Duca said the money would go to Metrolinx, the province’s regional transportation agency, where officials would work with TTC planners on the details of the proposed line, such its route and its more detailed costs.

Mr. Tory and Mr. Del Duca were careful to excise the word “downtown” from the line’s name and to point to its potential “regional” benefits.

Mr. Tory repeated his previous assertions that the relief line was a “precondition” before demands that the overcrowded Yonge line be expanded northward into York Region could be contemplated.

The funding announcement came on a bad day for public transit in Toronto, after a fire at Yonge Station forced the shutdown of much of the Bloor-Danforth line for the morning rush hour, leaving thousands of commuters in the lurch.

Responding to questions about the morning’s subway headaches, Mr. Tory said much of the $800-million the city is set to receive from Ottawa for infrastructure would go into repairing existing transit lines over the next two years, so that the city will not be building new lines as its current system crumbles.