2017-11-08 43 -79

Location

In the overflow parking lot of a medical center in Scarborough.

Participants

Frogman

Plans

This looks very doable. My plan is to take the TTC Line 3 to nearby Ellesmere Station, not because that's the best way to go, but because I've never taken the Line 3 before and I'd like to check it out.

Expedition

I took the bus to Warden Station, and then the Line 2 subway to Kennedy Station. This means that I have been through the entire stretch of both Line 1 and Line 2, which gives me a sense of accomplishment that I don't really understand.

At Kennedy Station, I took the Line 3 northbound. I had heard two things about Line 3: the trains are old and noisy, and many of the stops are in terrible spots and are therefore incredibly underused. Would reality match up to my expectations? Lets find out! Here is my review:

The cars are very small. I'm used to the subway cars, and so the Line 3 vehicles made me almost claustrophobic.
When I heard that the trains were noisy, I was expecting that they rattled a lot. The noise was quite different from that. It was very loud, and sounded like a noisy synthesizer inserted into a scene in a movie in order to increase tension. It was almost haunting.
I can confirm that Ellesmere Station is not close to anything and that the only other person there was a TTC employee. As a station, it probably does not need to exist, although this should not be taken as an endorsement of the currently-proposed replacement.
The recognizable three-tone closing doors sound is played with the notes sustained, which is notably different from the subway trains.

From Ellesmere Station I walked to catch the 95, which dropped me off right next to the hashpoint. The overflow parking was empty, so no cars were at the hashpoint. I took my selfie and left.

I took the 17 southbound to Warden Station, one stop on the subway westbound to Victoria Park Station, and walked to a nearby strip mall to buy some postage and a single cauliflower.