深夜驛前浪漫 Union Station Deep at Night, Front Street Toronto May 25 2008

Central railway station used to be crowded with passengers as central hub for transportation long before travel-by-plane became quite common and less expensive. I loved to be in the terminal trying to look at the trains arriving or leaving listening to the calls for boarding or announcement of arriving. The voice & intonation of station announcer was so unique that old generation could recognize the style immediately with all those retrospectives for those by gone days. Now with the much less demand for train and more modernized services with express bullet trains or even magnetic trains, no more I could enjoy the mood in the station.

In here Toronto, the central station is one of heritage architectures as many other European central stations do. But unlike stations in Amsterdam, London or Frankfurt, I have no chance of having people crowded at the station. Fares for train cost almost double than the air-fare and schedule is not as flexible or frequent as travel by air, travel-by-train gets less and less attraction though it starts getting attention & reevaluation in some countries as much eco-friendly & much safer means of travel. Federal government in here has been doing research on environmental impact analysis for bullet trains for more than 5 years without any actual plan for implementation though. Anyway I would like to see more trains, more routes for train all around the world with lots of people crowded in the railway station than in air terminal...