Doors Open Toronto is coming up this weekend, and there are two TTC sites open for visitors.
Lower Bay Station
Lower Bay recently had weekend subway service during the diversion around tunnel repairs between Bay and St. George Stations, and it will be open for walking visitors on Saturday, May 26 from noon to 3:00 pm. Note that this site is not accessible as there are no working escalators to the lower level.
Here is a note from the TTC with the details:
Entry into Bay Lower station will be from inside Bay Station – we will have volunteers and security staff guiding people into Bay Lower from the collector’s level. As there are two sets of doors into Bay Lower station we will be using one for entry and the other one for exit – we therefore will have a continuous line into the station going straight through and out the other end.
We will have the crash gate open on collectors’ level and we will line people up starting at that location – there will be some signage around the station to indicate the start line as everyone will start in the same spot no matter where they entered the station.
We hope to be able to accommodate everyone who comes to visit us that day.
Harvey Shops
The main repair shops at the TTC’s Hillcrest complex will be open from noon to 3:00 pm on Saturday. (The last time I was inside this building, they were rebuilding PCCs and it’s time for another visit.)
The full site listing is available at the Doors Open website.
Steve Munro 
Hey Steve, thanks for including my email in the post. I cannot wait to see how the ttc handles the event at lower bay. With any luck they will make us wait in line while people stand at the collector booth looking for their fare in order to enter into bay station. What they should do is instead allow people enter into the station for free if they are there for doors open toronto and have one line for people entering lower bay station as well as one for people wishing to take the subway somewhere. This allows for the crowds to be minimized when it comes to doors open toronto while still allowing those to use who wish to use the subway system to do so without all the non-sense.
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Concerning Bay station, The TTC handled it right, by keeping the (very long) line to the right along the corridor, stairs and the street above. There appeared to be no particular interference with regular passengers (except some mild confusion over whether they should be in the line).
Concerning Harvey Shops, I also have not been in the building for almost 50 years. The contrast in impressions between an 18 year old boy and an older person with a lifetime of experiences was quite interesting.
PS: Is that transfer table going to work with the new LRT vehicles??
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I didn’t bother with Lower Bay (the line-up was over an hour) and people I know were a bit disappointed. There were a number of props I heard on display of New York signage.
I went to see Harvey Shops, and the TTC did a spectacular job with that open house, with displays of motors, trucks, trolley poles and shoes, seat rebuilds and was very well organized, the staff very happy and surely proud of their work. A highlight was seeing 2766, the one thing they allowed photography of. Adam Giambrone was also there, chatting with visitors, answering questions of all sorts, so a wonderful opportunity taken.
Apparently the TTC will do this every year and is likely to rotate the locations. A bus garage (quite likely Mount Dennis) will be on next year’s list, and I get the feeling that the hours will be better, as they got much higher attendance at both sites than expected.
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I passed through it on my way home. The TTC and Doors Open Toronto should be congratulated on an excellent job. I was impressed.
They had vintage ads, route maps, and black & white pictures up from the 60s showing the integrated service and separation.
They even played movies on a big screen TV that were filmed there. Two trains occupied the platforms for saftey reasons and the ends of both trains where fenced to the platform walls so that people couldn’t enter the tunnels.
If the TTC had kept 6-car trains on Bloor after the separation and ran the Bloor line with a wider headway, it would have made sense to run the integrated operation only during rush hours — something that could have continued to this day. I wonder what the Spadina line would look like if that had happened. But, they went with 4-car trains on Bloor, and the rest is history.
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Actually there was a plan to have Spadina made a terminus if in fact interlining was successful. This is the reason for the crossover north of the station. So if interlining had continued the Spadina line most likely would have been made a line unto itself.
Steve: Actually, there were hard questions asked about why this station was in the project during the planning stages, and the standard response was that they needed it in case the line had to be isolated in an emergency. I didn’t really believe it then, but it’s a moot point because the volumes coming down Spadina to St. George could never be handled as a walking transfer dumping all of the Spadina riders onto the Bloor line to go one stop east right at the peak point.
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