TTC part of “Doors Open Toronto”

As part of Doors Open Toronto initiative, on Saturday, May 23rd, TTC is opening doors to its Greenwood Shop and Eglinton Garage, where they maintain our buses and subway cars from 12:00pm to 5:00pm. Sounds really cool – unfortunately I found out about it way too late and made other weekend plans. But I think you should go! I am going to be checking out a few other Toronto landmarks on Sunday.

Greenwood  Maintenance Shop

Greenwood Shop is one of two heavy repair and overhaul facilities for the TTC. It is part of the 31 acre Greenwood Complex which opened in March 1960.The shop covers approx. 190,000 square feet and is the workplace of almost 200 employees. Major vehicle overhaul work and component rebuilds to support the fleet of subway vehicles is done here. The Shop also maintains the TTC fleet of workcars that are used by other TTC Departments in the maintenance of subway track, tunnels and wayside equipment.

Visitors will have a behind-the-scenes tour featuring machinery and equipment used in the overhaul and repair of big subway cars and the various work cars used by the TTC.

Eglinton Garage

Eglinton Garage/Division opened on March 31, 2002 and consists of 121,000 square feet situated on a 15.7 acre site. The garage services a fleet of 250 buses. The facility also features two bus wash racks, 12 indoor repair spaces and an outdoor bus storage area with a unique heating system which allows parked buses to be connected so that their engines are warm and ready to drive during the winter season.

A behind the scenes tour of the garage including a ride on a bus through the bus wash.

A ride through a bus wash!

More information on Doors Open Toronto and more places to visit.

P.S. Here’s a tip, City of Toronto – why not use a free open map API (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc) to place all of the locations on one map and give users an opportunity to print out customized lists instead of putting them all in one loooooong list. Even your downloadable PDF seems to be maintained by an accountant in Excel.