After leaving my weekend volunteer job with the Toronto Railway Historical Association I decided I would take a trip up to Wilson Station and see how things were playing out up there given that the subway was closed for track work between Wilson and Downsview. After I came back I decided to report my findings to you all. I hope you enjoy them.

I was checking out the Wilson Station turnbacks yesterday and I noticed some good things and some bad things about the way things were run.

First off, I would like to start off with the good things. Trains for the most part were signed Wilson and Finch, which made things easy to figure out and the operator or guard of the train notified passengers of the Wilson turnbacks. There was also plenty of signage at Wilson indicating where to find shuttles.

I would now like to move on to the bad things. For starters, while the operators and guards of the trains did notify people they spoke softly, too softly for most people to hear and people were getting confused when the train they thought was going north suddenly heads back towards Yorkdale.

Earlier I was talking about signage: While there was a lot of signage in the Wilson station mezzanine and bus bays, there was not much in the way of signage on the the subway platform. There were a few measly hand made signs at the extreme ends of the platform, indicating trains on both sides of the platform were heading south but they did not help. People coming up the stairs thinking they could head to Downsview on the subway were getting on trains parked on the Northbound side only to find out upon leaving Wilson station that they had to grab a shuttle to head further north (I had to mention this to someone myself).

One big thing I noticed they could have done better was to activate the 1st and 2nd train to depart signs for the duration of the turnbacks. This would have made people realize Wilson was once again the end of the line. Other that that it was cool to see Wilson Station as a terminal.

I am 21 and was raised in Scarborough so I never got to see Wilson when it was the northern terminus of the Spadina Line.

• Richard