Continuing a series of caches celebrating everything to do with railways. (Sourced from my old cache, which was hidden merely feet away... Floaty )
The History of the Station:
Leaside is a station along Line 5 Eglinton in Toronto, and is located on the west edge of Leaside. It borders a high school and is very close to one of Canada's biggest hospitals (Sunnybrook).
There's two entrances here, one on the north east corner, on the land of aplaza, and on the opposite corner is the other entrance, formerly the home of a McDonalds which was uniquely built to have a dining area on its second floor, and a parking lot on the ground level. It was surprisingly a point of contention for the community to lose this restaurant, as people would watch baseball games from Howard Talbot Park to the east.
This site was also engineered and planned with residential development in mind, but unfortunately plans fell through early on in the line's (long) construction and this site remains underdeveloped, with nearby homes boarded up, as the community waits for what development may be coming here.
Another issue for this station in particular is the fact that this intersection, back when it was just two dirt roads going up to the next farm, was known as being a former creekbed that would flood every year. Since then, the old waterway (Walmsley Creek, named for an old settler) was buried, and the site has been known to be difficult to build on due to how sandy the soil is here...this may have been causing issues when the Crosstown was run underground here.
This is a local station for me, so while I was sad to see this intersection change so much while this was being built, I'm glad that it's easier to travel along Eglinton without dealing with some of the traffic around here....it gets pretty nasty around school time!
About SideTracked Caches
This cache belongs to the SideTracked series. It is not designed to take you to a magical place with a breath taking view. It's a distraction for the weary traveller, but anyone else can go and find it too. More Information can be found at the SideTracked Website
Please Bring your own Pen. The cache itself is a typical urban hide, and unorthodox for a DreamMachine cache.