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By GO Transit to Guelph for the Day - Execution

Sunday, July 26, 2015: My incoming balance on the Presto card is $44.41 according to the nice man in the ticket-wicket. The yellow DIY is Hors de Service. The outgoing balance is $32.73, so the GO Bus trip out and back cost me $11.68. This is terrible when compared to Transiliean, but much better 9and easier) than VIA Rail (see for example ..\..\ViaRail\Cobourg\Planning.doc)

Monday, July 27, 2015: I postponed my trip because my throat and legs are sore – probably a weak virus trying to attack me. Silly virus! It needs me healthy if it wants a well-behaved host. I can’t see much fun in dragging an aching voiceless body around in 30º heat, so my trip will be tomorrow. Today: rest and reading books.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Somewhat rested and recovered I set off early and arrived on foot at the Go Bus station in plenty of time to catch the 5:50.

We ride the HOV lanes along the Gardiner Expressway, head north up Highway 427, zoom past the airport I find it hard to make out our route from the map on the Go Transit pamphlet. Each major stop lists the routes that travel through there, but the thin lines that criss-cross bear no route numbers, so It is a matter of cunning logic coupled with guess-work to determine where we might be next.

We ravel through Bramalea which sports lots of BT buses; I don’t think of Brampton or Mississauga or York region as being exciting places to visit for the day, in part because I’ve driven through and in them for thirty years, on business. But also because I look for a town or city with a downtown that I can stroll, yet big enough to support a bus system that will give me an overview.

The cities immediately surrounding Toronto tend to be vast areas of dormitories with shopping malls plonked down every mile or so, but with no discernible walk able city core.

We exit Brampton along Bovaird Drive against a flood of commuter traffic heading south and east wards. I have already spotted Highway 410 southbound crawling at walking-pace. Been there; Done that!

We mooch through Rockwood and Acton and I think about another trip based on a paper-ticket where I hop off at each small town, wander for an hour, and catch the next bus for the next stage. I spot a diner “Angel’s” and tuck that away in my memory for future reference.

After road works and much scenery we drop into Guelph. I spot a rake of kayaks being towed on water as we zoom along Gordon

And here we are in sunny Guelph. Go Transit has dropped me off on time; we are at but not in the Central terminal. My bus terminates at the University of Guelph, so I am dropped off at a regular bus stop at the side of the street.

Guelph City has fixed helpful signs to posts. First item on this sign is City Hall, which I must visit to collect my bus map and day pass.

As soon as I’ve had breakfast.

I swing a bit to the left and take a photo of part of the bus terminal and the red-brick building that still serves as the station and platform for GO trains and VIA rail services. Later in the day a VIA thought will strike me, but right now I am keen to find a breakfast.

And as I took the preceding two photos a bus slid in and hid the sign that says “Central Bus terminal” or similar, so I took a photo of the bus.

In the background we see a building being constructed, and part of a crane. More about the crane later, but first, where is breakfast?

Breakfast is signaled by a few small tables with chairs a way up the street, so I set off and find myself in Vienna; I’m not sure whether it is a café or a diner, but the two young ladies are cheerful and bring me a Macdonell special; later I realize that I was on (doh!) Macdonell Street.

The photo doesn’t do it justice. I ate everything except the melon rind and the chocolate-chip pancake. The pancake found a home in a spare plastic milk bag and thus became a morning-tea snack later on.

There it is, hiding behind a utility truck.

I have just noticed the top of the garbage bin, and am now wondering whether it is a hinged lid or whether it pops off like the pop-it beads kids used for necklaces fifty years ago.

And so to City Hall. The wading pool is not operating, but it has the look of a well-cleansed patio. There’s that crane! I have made it one of my navigational landmarks because I doubt they’ll finish the building before I go home tonight.

The nice lady in Tourism sent me off to the Nice Lady Behind The desk, who laughed, took my money, and issued me with a map (hooray!) and a neat all-day bus ticket.

And directions to the library.

So off I go, to Norfolk Street (this is eerie because I am reading Green’s “Short History of the English People” and have just covered a section on the north-folk and south-folk people who invaded England)

En route to the library, up Norfolk Street, I turn to take a photo of the huge church that stares eastwards down Macdonell Street. Another landmark, it turns out.

The library is nicely modern and clean and bright with three floors. I wander the perimeter of the ground floor and am struck by a wall-mounted map enhanced from original versions of 1881 and 1892. In particular the description holds me in its spell, for it is a précis of a sleuthing task that must have taken years.

Phil Keddie organized the work; he is now retired from the Geography Department of the University of Guelph.

After a most pleasant half-hour in the library (and armed with a map with branch libraries circled on it) I wander the streets to make my way, roughly, back to the bus terminal.

Downtown Guelph is a city of churches. From the monster that dominates Macdonell Street to smaller ones nestled now between commercial buildings.

I walk down what I think is Quebec Street, towards and then across Sleeman Square. O the north-west corner is a fountain and on is rim a drinking fountain, cunningly disguised as a frog. Lower right-hand corner of this photo.

At least, I think it is a drinking fountain. How do I know that its water isn’t just streamed off from the foot-rinsing pool?

From the same spot I swivel to the right and shoot into the sun at a view of the glass-roofed Old Quebec Shops Arcade; I’ll visit here after I’ve ridden the buses.. In the background my first landmark in Guelph: The Crane.

And so southwards heading towards the bus terminal, I reach Macdonell street. That’s the Armory Building – we’ll have a better view later in the day – with its turreted tower peeking above the delivery van and below the traffic lights brackets.

I have made a loop, for this is practically where I started, looking west towards the huge Church Of Our Lady.

I hang a right to reach the buses and the Central Terminal and here is the last of three buses heading out of the driveway.

Guelph’s system is similar to Peterborough’s – the buses leave at fixed times, for example “forty minutes past the hour and every twenty minutes during peak time”, and I a witness to the final purging of the bus bays.

Yep! (Nods head sadly) I have managed to miss all twelve or so bus routes that depart from this terminal. Twenty minutes to wait.

What’s a fellow to do but wander around the bus terminal and the railway station platforms taking photos of Big Old 6167 that was towed and parked here so that people like me who are waiting for a bus of a train can idle away the time by taking photos.

Still on the railway platform I formalize my landmark. It seems strange to me to have one crane in sight. In downtown Toronto we are always in sight of at least four tower cranes, no matter where we look.

Vroom Vroom! We are off. If you check the timestamps on the photos you will see that I missed all the 9:40 buses by less than a minute, but I have snared a 10:00 bus. This one is the 2A, the West Loop route (#2) which runs clockwise (#2A) as distinct from the West Loop route (#2) which runs anti-clockwise (#2B)

I am excited enough to take a photo of the trees that line the bank of the Speed river at the point where the Eramosa River joins it.

Unlike the Hamilton Street Railway the Guelph buses have clear windows so we can see the outside world, and seats face forwards, and also backwards, so a group of four can sit together and, we hope, not feel they have to shout across the aisles to carry on a conversation.

Here we are on the Gordon Street bridge rushing past the boathouse. Later in the day I realized that the rake of kayaks was being towed here; a spit where one can rent a canoe or a kayak.

Six minutes after leaving the terminal we are in the beautiful grounds of The University Of Guelph. This area reminds me of the manicured areas of Kings Park in Perth Western Australia. Had I packed a picnic lunch I’d be happy sitting under a shady tree eating it here.

And at nine minutes past ten we pull into the University’s bus terminal. Mark the time.

Grouch Number One: Guelph Transit numbers its bus platforms sequentially starting at zero. The platform signs bear the platform number “0” in big bold characters; can’t miss it. But what most passengers want to know is “Where do I go to stand and wait to catch the #15 bus route (0r the #2A or the #2B etc.) and platform numbers are useless.

To be sure it is a small system and if you are getting off a bus you ask the driver “Where do I go to stand and wait to catch the #15 bus?” and the drivers are courteous and point it out to you “Over there, that bus” and you’ll be OK.

But there is the need for a key printed on the City’s Bus map showing that route 2A will be at platform 10 and route 2B will be at platform 7. That’s an extra level of complexity in the process, forcing every enquiring passenger to map (literally) a bus route to a platform number. And on a small system like Guelph that’s un necessary.

Grouch Number Two: Guelph Transit doesn’t group like-routed buses; the bus routes 2A and 2B are found at non-adjacent platforms 10 and 7; bus routes #3a and #3B are found at non-adjacent platforms 9 and 6. I have tried to find a rational explanation for the grouping of the buses at platforms 0-6 and those at platforms 7-12 but have not as yet come up with an explanation.

I note in passing that the west and east loops (2 and 3) are classified as 2A and 2B, and 3A and 3B; but bus route #5 is assigned platforms 4 and 8 and has no A/B suffix to differentiates between eastbound and westbound.

A similar non-pattern exists at the Guelph Central Terminus. (“X” marks the spot where the GO bus dropped me off)

And here we are pulling out of the University terminal; an eleven minute wait. It wasn’t until the ninth minute that I realized that the driver had shut off the engine when he wandered away, which killed the air-conditioning. I opened up a few windows in the back to get some air moving through.

This problem cropped up throughout the day – plastic seats hot to the touch, the interior like an oven, because the buses are parked with no air-conditioning and all the windows closed.

I confess to getting annoyed at air-conditioning running with windows open, but what is one to do? Also I acknowledge that this day was the day before the hottest day so far this summer – temperatures were probably in excess of 30º in the shade.

Much amusement was given to me by a young lady who sat outside the bus, in the sunshine, waiting for the driver to return. Once she entered the bus she only had to drop her paper transfer in the garbage bag. Me I would have hopped on the bus and then gone forward and presented myself to the driver once he got on; or sat in the shade of a tree until then.

I took the opportunity to study the backside of my Transit Map, especially the Rules and Regulations, and realized that cell phone conversations can’t be banned (those annoying periods when our brain is privy to only one side of the anguished conversation) because one can’t ban people from talking to themselves out loud, or reading out loud. Or practicing their lines for the play, or ... and there’s little difference between all those activities; they are all one-sided conversations.

We speed along what I think is The Hanlon Expressway which is bucolic; it is easy to forget how close the country is to the outskirts of a smaller city. From downtown Toronto you could travel 3 hours by local transit and still not be free of houses (I’m thinking Toronto Transit Commission to Islington, Mississauga Transit north up highway 10, transfer to Brampton transit ...)

I think this is jointly a shot of the bus interior and a view of the south-east corner of Hanlon and Wellington Street. That ravine hides what I suspect is the Speed River.

On the north-west corner I spotted an interesting turreted structure – turned out to be an Inn, or at least a Restaurant; I forgot to note the name. I have a feeling they do Prime Rib Dinners for parties of twenty.

We turn north up Elmira Road and on the west side I spot what I figure will soon be houses, although I think that a sign appeared marking this down as a Shopping Mall. Sigh.

Then we dive into one of the two large industrial parks in Guelph. This one is named Northwest Industrial Park. See if you can work out where it is.

I took this photo to show a typical building in this area. New, presumably modern; clean, bright.

Add this to my list of landmarks for navigational reckoning. Note too the array of solar panels.

Another example of the buildings in the Northwest Industrial Park; this one looks just like the buildings strewn across Mississauga and Markham and ...

I was trying to get a shot of the Woodlawn Cemetery as we motored eastbound along Woodlawn Road West, but the retaining wall arrived before I was ready, so this is not much more than yet-another-view of the interior of a bus.

But do please note how clear and clean are the windows; not at all like the decal-sealed windows of the Hamilton Street Railway.

And now a view of the cemetery.

At this point I realized that the bus routes #2A/2B overlap with the routes #3A/3B.

I wasted too much of my day wondering whether one could not have four-thousand expressed in Roman Notation as a registration plate.

BRRRMMM!

We head south down Woolwich Street towards the downtown core. I am about to get the first of many tours of the downtown stores.

Nearly all the bus routes converge on the downtown core, and the bus map gives up trying to sort them out and writes them all in as grey!

The effect as I rode out and in again was that I saw the same sets of shops anything from four to eight times.

I check my timetables as we approach the terminal and see to my delight that routes 3, 10 and 13 all leave at 11:15! Of course! Every bus is scheduled to depart at quarter past the hour. It’s almost like the Peterborough system, except here it appears to be at the driver’s discretion when to pull out instead of waiting for the dispatcher to assemble every route, so in theory in Guelph you could miss your connection (but see “Morphing” below) but in practice you would tell your driver that you had to connect with another bus, and the driver’s would talk through their phones and you’d probably find your connection waiting for you.

So it’s a quick hop onto the 3B and away we go, setting off as we did on the 2A as far as the University campus, and then we begin an anti-clockwise loop around the eastern portion of Guelph.

Forewarned is fore-armed and this time I get a better shot of The Boathouse – canoe and kayak rentals. When I return for a 3-day visit this will be on my list of things to do.

While we swing in and out of the University campus – second time today for me - I spot a GO Transit bus #29 headed for Cooksville. Until now it hadn’t dawned on me that there is more than one way to get to Guelph by GO Transit. Cooksville isn’t the only alternate route either, but I have yet to find a GO Transit map that identifies which route numbers travel along each stretch of rural highway in Ontario.

We head east along Stone Road East, and I try to get a shot of The Arboretum but the trees get in the way.

On the south side are playing fields, and it looks as if a soccer field is about to be re-sodded.

Note the planted area, mid-distance in line with the tree.

A marginally better shot; it looks like this is a nursery for flowering plants and shrubs.

I realize I should have zoomed in, then we would have had a shaky but detailed image ...

This is my all-day pass. I show it to the driver and the driver taps a key on his console, presumably to register that another fare has boarded the bus. Data Gathering. Good Stuff.

The nice lady in City Hall wrote the date on it and did the scratch-and-win thing for me.

Notice that every day pass has the same layout. Once could purchase multiple passes and then fill on the date on each one on the day of use, although why the date is to be written AND scratched I’ve not been able to work out.

I see that my ticket is A00544; since we are at day 208 of this year, can it be that Guelph Transit sells three to four passes each weekday, or has the serial number been running since day passes were introduced?

Here we are, still on the #3B. We have performed a lovely loop around the north-eastern segment of Guelph and I am now barreling westwards past Woodlawn cemetery where but an hour before I had barreled eastwards on the #2A.

There is a typical range of housing; this is an example of what I think of “the 1960s style” because I was drawing these houses in perspective in Technical Drawing class in High School. As well the pine trees in the yards look to be forty or fifty years old.

The older houses sport older, shadier trees.

Back at the terminal I hop off the #3B and scoot across to the “#10 Imperial” which spends about five percent, max, of its time on Imperial Road. Me I’d call it Paisley.

I sit and wait for the bus to arrive and start chatting with a sweet little old lady who was originally from Slovenia; she is waiting for the #12 to take her to visit her husband in hospital. It feels awfully nice to strike up these conversations with total strangers and to learn a little of their lives.

The bus arrives, I sit at the back, but I can’t open the window and a young fellow leaps across the aisle and wrenches it open for me. How kind!

We trundle through the by now familiar downtown core, picking up steam for our trip and pull up alongside an old car. Vintage? It’s in good condition, and I start chatting with the young man as we admire the car.

We figure that the roofing is new, vinyl; we are not sure about the wooden spokes.

As the bus heads out along Paisley and Westwood and Imperial roads, we chat, the young fellow and I.

Like so many people I meet he’s “always wanted to go to Australia”. So Go! I tell him. “Oh the time, the expense”. Cobblers, I retort. In 1956 it was a 3 ½ week boat trip from the UK to WA; today it is 24 hours in the air (not even, I suspect). One day to recover, makes it two days out and two days back. Make your own morning coffee for a year and you’ll have saved up the air fare.

“Oh, but what about the wife”. It puzzles me that he’d consider leaving her behind, so I try to light a squib under him by saying “Tell her I cook, launder, sew and houseclean, and I’ll drive her to the airport to meet you on your return” and thankfully he laughs.

I muse on this. Here I am in Canada urging a young man (29 years old) to go to Western Australia. One hundred years ago a young Aussie soldier urged my maternal grandfather to go to Western Australia. He didn’t; but he did urge his daughter, my mother, to go, and she did, we did. Which is why, a hundred years later I am in Canada urging a young man (29 years old) to go to Western Australia.

Meanwhile, back at the bus terminal ...

I have been confused at the livery of the Guelph Transit and GO Transit fleets.

They bear the same shade of lime-green, and in different places, but I am so used to a lime-green bus (in Toronto) signaling GO Transit that I keep seeing a Guelph Transit bus as a GO bus!

This bus sports only a lime-green horizontal strip across the rear, but since it’s the only colour there the brain thinks “lime green rear” and equates that to “Go Transit”. At least, that’s the way my mind works.

I walk back to City Hall and grab two local papers; the lady there suggests that A&W is the best place to get a float, so I wander down Wyndham to Wellington and order a float and a glass of water from the tap, not iced, and no ice.

To my dismay I am served a refrigerated glass with iced water and a head of ice. The float was nothing to write home about either.

I figure that clerks nowadays are trained NOT to listen to customers, but to check a box (or tap an icon) that they think corresponds to what the customer might want.

I’m an old man, hot and weather-worn, I probably want an iced water to cool ne down, so tap “Iced water” and get on with the next customer.

I think I have made my last purchase from A&W (the penultimate was a carton of limp cold greasy fries from my local A&W eight months ago ...)

The serviette is food for thought.

How can you breed and raise cattle without hormones being involved? Ditto steroids which, I think, are in all of us, like cholesterol.

Do they mean “raised without man-induced levels of ...” or is this the start of a SoyLent Green nightmare?

I escape from A&W and slowly make my way back up the hill for my fourth planned bus trip.

You’ll recall that back at 09:39 I suggested that we’d have a better view of The Armory? Well here it is.

And here we are in the Guelph Central Station watching the early arrivals pull in for the 45-past-the-hour departures. Guelph Transit has Community Buses. That’s a Community Bus on the left, and I’m not sure that this isn’t also called a Mobility Bus.

Immediately I’d taken this shot I turned and walked past a bus shelter and there was my sweet little old lady in pink. I stopped and hoped her husband was well, she smiled and said she thought so. For some reason it felt good to recognize a “stranger” during my one day in town.

I hop onto the #13 and the trip is uneventful until Eramosa and, I think, Stevenson Street when Summer School lets out and half the teenage population of Guelph surges onto the bus.

I pass a very pleasant ten minutes chatting with a student who is taking a booster course in Chemistry and thinks he’d like to study Physics at University.

We chat all the way to the Guelph Central Station, whereupon he says to me “Aren’t you getting off here?” and I say “Oh yes, aren’t you?” and he says “no!”.

The #10 route, on reaching Guelph Central Station, morphs into a #4, and the #4 route, on reaching Guelph Central Station, morphs into a #10. This turns the two loops into two wings of the same butterfly.

But I wonder why they don’t just call the route by one number and label them “E” and “W” for the loops East of the city and the loops West of the city.

This general rule could apply to routes 4/10; 5/14; 8/12; 9/13 and 11/16. From the passenger’s point of view it is a through trip, only the driver stands up to change the route indicator. (You know what I mean!)

Anyway, I am done riding local buses for the day; now it is time to hoof it around the downtown core. I’ve ridden through it eight times already!

My vague plan, laid out two weeks ago has been followed, and those objectives have been achieved; I have gained a good overview of the city.

I start near St George’s Square and for once in my travels I do not cross to the war memorial and read off the names written on there. Perhaps the heat is getting to me.

I walk up one side of the street, eyeing shops on both sides, along Wyndham to the point where it crosses the Speed River and becomes Eramosa, when I take a photo from the bridge, looking up-stream.

I retrace my steps off the bridge and begin to walk along the riverbank towards Macdonell Street.

Here is the path, paved, with an abandoned rail track running between the path and the placid river.

This is a canoe able river! One the far side is a dock to sit on with a coffee in the early morning, or an iced tea in the early evening.

I said this was a city of churches (shades of Adelaide!) and it is. This view is taken from the river path.

The path and rail tracks switch sides, but I elect to walk in the shade on the grassy area.

When suddenly (with much warning tooting, to be fair) ....

Rumble rumble, Trundle trundle go the freight cars.

I never would have guessed, but closer examination of the rails shows them to be polished, not rusted.

A young lady pedals up with a road-train sort of affair and we chat for a while. Her trailers are designed to clamp end-to-end so she can sleep in shelter if she feels like it.

This schematic canoe is a time-capsule implementation.

Messages to the future.

Presumably someone has written down, somewhere, when the time capsule is to be opened.

I dropped into Play With Clay and had a nice chat with the manager. One can (book a table) make something out of clay, they dry/fire it, you return to paint it, they glaze it, you return to pick it up.

I supposed that I could make an ashtray and leave it with them to fire and dip in paint and then mail it to me.

Into the arcade and a quick walk around. This is not a covered mall such as the large malls in the States or in Toronto. It appears to be a few boutiques and mainly services. All service, I think, on the upper floor (I didn’t go there). I buy myself two small chocolates for a couple of bucks but of course they are forgotten once I have licked my lips.

You can see that at four-thirty on a weekday afternoon the place is not very busy.

I took this photo to remind myself to note that several businesses out in the streets have signs “We have moved”. That could be because business is booming, or it could be because rents have gone astronomical.

Perhaps I notice this sort of thing when I’m walking a downtown core because I want to be entertained by stores, and a vacant store reduces my entertainment.

In this case the LCBO has moved out of the downtown core to a street that marks the boundary of the downtown core. I bet parking is easier there!

Into Speed River Bicycle where I explain that I am not buying today, but want to know if they would rent me a bike for the day. Maybe $30, but I know that’s not a fixed price. I imagine picking up the bike when they open at 10 a.m. and pedaling to the Guelph Central Station and hooking the bike onto a bus to University, then exploring the campus, back to a bus and so, perhaps, to the south end on the #5 or #16, pedal exploration, and so on for the day. I’ll need to buy or rent a chain lock.

And then into Foto Source because (a) I need a new camera and (b) they have a sign in the window saying something like “Photography is our business” and I am tired of dealing with service-challenged clerks in chain stores. I explain that I am not buying today, but want a replacement for my cruddy point-and-shoot. I inspect the Panasonic SZ10 for $199 and take a business card.

By this time I KNOW that I’ll be coming back to Guelph for a 3-day stay, at which time I’ll probably buy the camera, rent the bike, and have lots more fun.

And after visiting the camera shop and the bike store I head off to lunch down Wyndham Street and pass the train station. See the “VIA” sign? So do I. I had not previously contemplated getting a VIA train to Guelph.

My little VIA booklet tells me I could leave Toronto at 10:55 and be in Guelph at 12:08 – an hour and a quarter vs. two and a half hours, although I’d miss the morning in Guelph. An evening trip would be 17:40 to 18:52, same deal on timing.

Or (now here’s a thought!) I could spend the day in Guelph and then catch the 18:52 to Kitchener, Stratford, St Mary’s, London, Strathroy or Wyoming. (Already I NOW I’m going to Wyoming just so I can say airily “Oh, I went to Wyoming for the day”).

There’s nothing special about this shot; I’m just strolling to Angel’s Diner and was impressed by the regular trees in the regular yard.

And here I am in Angel’s Diner studying the menu. I can’t decide whether to have the Pizza Caesar or the Pizza Caesar.

What do you think? Should I go with the $12.89 “Personal sized pizza all dressed served with caser salad”?

Or should I go with the $12.99 “Personal sized pizza all dressed served with caser salad”?

I ask the waitress for a bit more time while I contemplate my choices.

In the end I give in and ask here what’s the difference; she laughs and says that after working her five and a half years she’d never noticed that!

Off she goes to check with the manager. I mean; we’re talking ten cents here!

In the end I go for the $12.99 edition because I’ve had a good day and am in a good mood.

Here it is. Too much for me to eat.

I stuff two quarter-slices into an empty plastic milk-bag I just happen to have on me, pay the bill (a small argument ensues at the till because they didn’t charge me for my pot of tea, but I win in the end) and I head off, slowly in the heat of the late afternoon, the sun challenging me as a waddle up the hill and back to the station.

So how much of the downtown core did I explore on foot? Enough!

I have an hour to kill before the bus departs, so I wander around taking photos; I have no inclination to hop on another bus, although it would fill the time nicely.

An announcement comes through the loudspeaker that the GO train is delayed. I look at the GO announcements board. The train is “On Time” but has a “medical Emergency”.

Huh?

It turns out that if you wait a minute the screen gets fully updated; now the arrival time is displayed in red. “delay reasons are reported for delays of ten minutes or more” but this delay is only five minutes, so far. I understand that if it is a medical emergency it is probably going to be a delay of significantly more than ten minutes, so it’s good to be warned about it.

Still and all it makes me think again of GO Transit’s policy with its so-frequent delays. Do they really only tally a delay as a delay if it is more than ten minutes? A ten minute delay, even a five-minute delay, is a significant event if it causes you to miss you connection to a bus that runes only every half-hour or worse, every hour.

Time to take more shots of Dear Old 6167. I have known since I was a teenager that North American trains covered areas vastly vaster (?) than those in the UK. This is an example. The tender – for fuel and water – is roughly the size of the locomotive. A British rail 4-6-2 “Pacific” would have a tender slightly under half the size of the locomotive.

Another feature of these locos is that the boiler is raised well above the wheels. You can see below the boiler and above the two central drivers portions of the building in the street. A British rail locomotive generally has the boiler slung between the wheels. Perhaps British Rail is constrained by its long-time investment in low bridge clearances.

Oh yes. The Crane. You think I am bored?

A bit more detail of some of the valve and timing gear, for those who study that stuff.

I know this makes sense, but it all seems a bit obvious. “Watch for buses” is more common.

Maybe a pictograph of a bus crushing a pedestrian would be more alarming and therefore more effective.

I am now bored enough to figure out mentally the conversion of gallons to cubic-feet, and use a value of 22/7 for Pi to estimate the length and diameter of the tank.

Buses stream out on the quarter hour every half hour; I love this predictable system.

Look!

What’s that in the distance?

Could it be ...

.., Yes it is! It’s the VIA train from Toronto to Windsor. Again I consider (not today) the option of spending, say two days in Guelph and then toddling off to another town for an overnight rest and a day-tour of some other city before heading home.

Here is a shot of the new (but hardly modern) and the old (but hardly ancient)

We don’t have 1st class and 2nd class in Canada. We have “Business” and “The rest of us”.

I am struck by the distance between the car and the platform, in both the vertical and horizontal senses. From this car the conductress(?) lowered a set of stairs, but still needed to offer a hand to a Little Old Lady.

The VIA train pulls out around the bend and leaves me staring at a sculpted eagle of some kind. “Steel-like talons ...”. Of course I’m not clever enough to move a bit to my right so that it appears to be a Giant Eagle perched atop The Crane. “Eagle on a Crane”, get it?

Then comes the retarded Go Train from Union Station with its load of ticked-off ticket-holders who are late for supper. Again. I wonder if Go Transit ever cancels the LAST train at night just because it is delayed.

Passengers have straggled off the train and into waiting cars. Ding-Ding goes the train; Churn-Churn go the wheels. BROOM-BROOM goes the pushy diesel locomotive as it sweeps out of the station ...

The bus arrives and I notice its route indicator says “York Mills”. This is good because I don’t have to fight twice for a good seat; I can stay in one seat for the entire trip. I’d thought I had to change at Brampton, as I did on the way up.

So the main or through service runs York Mills to Guelph University, and the run from Union Station as far as Brampton is a branch service. Sort of.

We pull out five minutes late at 2010 and set off as the sun sets behind us through Rockwood, Acton, Norval and by the time we get to the Mount Pleasant GO Station on Bovaird Drive I am consumed with a problem in Logistics.

Option 1: I can get off the bus at Yorkdale and hop on the subway making a loop through Union and get off at College.

Option 2: I can get off the bus at York Mills and hop on the subway directly to College.

Option 3: I can get off the bus at Yorkdale and hop on the subway getting off at Queens Park and walk three bus-stops home.

Which will be faster?

In the map above, Option 1 is shaded in purple, Option 2 in orange, and the red indicates my pedestrian route from Queens Park

We arrive in Yorkdale at 9:59, in York Mills at 10:09 and I subway home by 10:30.

I suspect that Option 3 would have been slightly faster by about five minutes over the other two options.

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416-993-4953 CPRGreaves@gmail.com

Toronto, Wednesday, August 12, 2015 5:39 PM

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