Day: October 9, 2019

August 23, 2019

In addition to the railroad tunnel here are some other things I saw as I walked around Brockville.

They had some enormous red chairs out by the river (NOT part of the Parks Canada program!):

Not far from the large chairs was a very nice little harbor next to a hotel and restaurant complex.

After spending some time in Brockville I decided to drive up to Highway 401 on which I would make better time heading west.  I generally prefer scenic roads, and what I had seen from Route 2 was very nice, but I had lots of ground to cover in one day and wanted to include a 2 1/2 hour boat ride on part of the St. Lawrence River before driving on to Toronto.

August 23, 2019

Friday was a travel day as I made my way south from Ottawa, then southwest along the north bank of the St. Lawrence River on scenic Highway 2 (to start, anyway) with my ultimate destination being Toronto.   The map below only shows about half of the total distance but includes the towns about which the next few posts will be about.

Ottawa is off the map above the top right corner (not far via “interstate” highway) and Toronto is off the map left of and below the bottom left corner.

Shortly after getting on Route 2 after taking a major highway down from Ottawa I came across the remnants of this old grist mill in Maitland, Ontario.

Even though it was early in the morning there were already several people there working on the grounds near the tower.  This sign tells a little bit about the history of the tower and the mill it was part of.

As you can see, the mill was converted to a distillery in 1863 and two years later was “seized by authorities for irregularities”.  Gee, do you think we could do that in Washington, DC???

I continued on Route 2 until I reached the little town of Brockville.  I parked in front of the Visitor Information center to confirm whether or not my choice of boat tours was the best one (it was, as my pre-trip research had led me to believe) and I had a little time to kill before leaving in enough time to arrive before the tour started so I grabbed both cameras and walked around town a bit.

The first thing I found was this recently renovated railroad tunnel, the oldest in Canada.

For safety they had removed the original rails and ties to convert this into a pedestrian tunnel.  They did put in a flat floor with the appearance of a railroad track.

Along the base of the tunnel walls they installed LED lights which can be programmed to create a number of effects.  Here is a series of photos showing what I saw while I was there.  This sequence of 7 photos was taken over a period of just a few seconds.  If you scroll down quickly you can see the motion of the colored lights coming towards you.

 

 

 

And yes, the floor was wet in some places and there were warnings signs to that effect in plain view before entering the tunnel.