Dunsmuir Tunnel

Dunsmuir Tunnel

The westbound SkyTrain platform at Granville Station
Overview
Location Vancouver, British Columbia
Coordinates 49°16′59″N 123°06′56″W / 49.282981°N 123.115420°W / 49.282981; -123.115420Coordinates: 49°16′59″N 123°06′56″W / 49.282981°N 123.115420°W / 49.282981; -123.115420
Start Waterfront
End Stadium–Chinatown
No. of stations 2
Operation
Work begun 1931
Opened July 16, 1933 (1933-07-16)
Reopened December 11, 1985 (1985-12-11)
Owner TransLink
Traffic Automated guideway transit
Technical
Length 1,396 metres (4,580 ft)
No. of tracks Double
Electrified Third rail

Dunsmuir Tunnel is a subway tunnel beneath Dunsmuir Street in Downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Part of the SkyTrain's Expo Line, the tunnel is served by two stations: Burrard and Granville. The tunnel's west portal is located midway between Waterfront and Burrard Stations, while the east portal is immediately adjacent to Stadium–Chinatown Station.

The tunnel was originally built by the Northern Construction Company in 1932 connecting the Canadian Pacific Railway railyards on Burrard Inlet and False Creek at a cost of $1.6 million. The tunnel's east portal is located further south than the current portal, easing trains into the False Creek yards on a gentle southward curve. It was clearly visible until about 2005, where it was almost completely hidden next to an outdoor storage area behind the Costco. The portal was destroyed in 2011 to make way for a new development. There is now an abandoned portion of tunnel unused by SkyTrain at the former east portal.[1] [2] [3]

The tunnel was taken over by BC Transit in the early 1980s when the SkyTrain system was built in conjunction with Expo 86. Because the tunnel is only wide enough to accommodate a single railway track but with sufficiently high clearance, a superstructure was built inside the tunnel to carry the westbound SkyTrain track above the eastbound track. This results in the two stations within the tunnel having a split platform configuration.

The former East portal

References

  1. "The SkyTrain Tunnel - The History of Metropolitan Vancouver". vancouverhistory.ca. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
  2. "Happy 80th Birthday to the CPR Dunsmuir Tunnel, Vancouver, BC ...". flickr.com. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
  3. Bollwitt, Rebecca. "Tunnels Under Downtown: Vancouver History Readers' Choice". miss604.com. Retrieved 17 February 2014.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/20/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.