The TTC is completing its project to upgrade Vincent Yard between Keele and Dundas West Stations. It returned the yard to operation today, Sunday, June 18.

Keele Yard has capacity to store as many as eight trains, and four sets of storage tracks that extend into a covered section below and east of Dorval Road. Each night, starting tonight, TTC crews test four trains and prepare them for service the next morning. They conduct some system checks while trains are on the outdoor storage tracks.

Most maintenance for trains the 2 Bloor - Danforth subway line still takes place at the TTC’s Greenwood subway yard in the east end.

Most passengers know about Vincent’s four tunnels. They’re barely visible from the main line. The photographer has captured this view from a better angle. Poking out of the second tunnel from the right is a work car. Photo: George Davidson.

By reopening Vincent Yard, the TTC can:

• increase the time for maintaining trains, tracks and signals by as much as 40 minutes every night, as empty trains no longer have to operate between Vincent and Greenwood for maintenance before and after normal subway service hours.
• increase day-to-day service reliability for TTC passenger by more efficiently positioning trains in the west end for the start of morning service. Most Line 2 trains previously entered service from the east end.
• provide extra flexibility in scheduling subway trains in the west end.

Here’s a shot from the yards, looking west at the main line and Keele Station. Vincent Yards could handle eight service trains; four inside the tunnels, and four outside. Photo: George Davidson.

TTC yards operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week to support subway safety and service, with most activity occurring in the late evenings and early mornings when crews maintain the trains and prepare them for daily service. Though all operating train yards generate some noise, the TTC says it tries to reduce the noise for its neighbours.

Each night, four trains will typically return to Vincent Yard at about 2 until 2:20 a.m., when crews run system checks to make sure the trains are safe-ready for morning service. The trains leave the yard from about 5:45 until 6 a.m. The TTC has scheduled the first westbound train to travel past Vincent Yard at 6:01 a.m. Local residents are likely to hear two short horn sounds — which safety regulations require — whenever a train is about to move inside the yard and the sound of trains moving.

Subway workcars generally leave Keele Yard shortly before the four passenger trains arrive at the yard for the night, and work-cars return to the yard minutes before the passenger trains leave the yard for morning service. The number of work-cars that the TTC stores in the yard depending on how much work it has scheduled for the west end of Line 2.

From the Transit Toronto archives, read:

• the Vincent (“Keele”) subway yard, by James Bow, here.

Workers manning tie-tamper car RT-41 work away at the throat of Vincent Yard on the afternoon of July 17, 2014. This was one of the first steps towards reactivating the yard into service. Photo by James Bow.