Lucien-L’Allier station to close for repairs
Lucien-L’Allier train terminus is going to close starting next April so work can be done on the open-air quais – including building an awning structure over them. It will partially reopen October 2024 but won’t reopen completely till the following April.
Thomas 21:21 on 2023-05-29 Permalink
Not to be a pedantic train nerd (even though I absolutely am), but in English we call them platforms 😉
LJ 21:40 on 2023-05-29 Permalink
What a complete waste of funds that could be much better used elsewhere. At that terminus everyone can wait indoors during inclement weather, and in nicer weather no one needs the awning. I see no purpose to having it at all. Reminds me of the rebuilt waiting station for some buses outside Lionel-Groulx, which made everyone walk much further than necessary, provided no useful shelter, and has now been closed for a very long time.
Kate 08:22 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
I’m willing to believe the external platforms (thank you, Thomas) need some work, since they’ve been sitting out there since 1976. Maybe the awning is meant to protect the infrastructure and will only protect passengers as a side effect?
I still need to find out which incredible idiots decided it was a great idea to build a hockey arena directly on top of the tracks leading into Windsor Station, which could have been in use for centuries for trains, but is now meaningless.
shawn 08:57 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
Yes the loss of Windsor Station as a working train station still hurts – for me, anyway.
Kevin 10:37 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
I assume it was Dore, looking at a wasteland in the wake of the Overdale debacle.
Kate 11:05 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
Kevin, you’re right that Jean Doré was mayor in 1993 when construction began on what was then called the Molson Centre. Why did CP allow it, I wonder.
shawn 11:44 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
I don’t think CP cared. Windsor was being used only for commuter rail and CP stopped operating the line in 1982.
Taylor 20:35 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
If memory serves Mulroney facilitated the deal.
The fact that CP left Montreal two years later may have had something to do with it too… I think Shawn may be on the money, they probably simply didn’t care anymore as most of their business had, by that time, shifted to Western Canada, and commuter rail operations had been transferred to the AMT.
That being said, never say never (again)
The Bell Ctr is nearly 30 years old and the NHL will invariably start getting fussy about the age of the arena in a few years
The railway right of way is a possible route for a downtown TGV terminus
If you demolished the Bell Ctr you can still access Windsor Station
In my dreams, this is what will happen. They’ll recycle the old Forum into a new arena, bring hockey back to where it belongs, and turn Windsor Station back into a jewel of a train station. Better still, in a major redevelopment of Windsor Station, they vacate the commercial properties within and make it a hotel.
Don’t discount the ‘moving back to the Forum’ thing either… it would be the mother of all sports marketing/PR efforts… quite possibly the only way to convince locals to spend public money on a new arena. They’d have a parade with 24 replica stanley cups brought from one location to the other. Big parade. The Molsons could potentially make a fortune selling their land back to the gov’t for a train station. And then there’d be the whole hockey nostalgia angle… people eat that up. I’d be surprised if they weren’t already working on such a plan.
shawn 06:20 on 2023-05-31 Permalink
I am the furthest thing from a rail guy but according to Wikipedia, that line and the old CN line to the west island were actually sold to and run by the old STCUM: the Montreal urban community transit authority. The AMT – that didn’t exist until the 90s.