[URBAN NOTE] "The oldest bit of Toronto subway opened 50 years ago"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's Chris Bateman reported that last week was the 50th anniversary of the first subway trip across the Don Valley on the Bloor-Danforth line.

50 years ago this week, a special gasoline-powered TTC subway car trundled east along an unfinished Bloor-Danforth line towards the maintenance yard at Greenwood Ave. The east-west subway was still a year from completion, so the vehicle had to periodically halt to let workers clear scaffolding and other obstacles off the track.

When it came time to cross the Don Valley, the car emerged into daylight on what was then a 40-year-old metal platform beneath the road deck of the Bloor St. viaduct. It rumbled over top of Bayview Ave., the brown Don River, and newly-completed Don Valley Parkway before disappearing into the approach to Broadview station.

“We have nothing to report but happiness—nothing wrong happened,” a TTC engineer cheerfully announced once the trip was over.

By successfully crossing the Don Valley via the bridge, a group of senior TTC subway engineers and two Toronto Star reporters had inaugurated the city’s oldest piece of subway infrastructure—a train platform built when the city was still dreaming of “tubes” under Bay St.