I did not think to take any proper pictures, only pictures of the rather splendid model locomotives on display, with that included left being lifted from google, but it was impressive. Handsome matt black steel roof trusses. A proper concourse area with plenty of space and enough seats. Few shops. Clean and decent rest rooms. All in all, very good and I can only say in our defense that Ottawa station must handle a very small number of passengers indeed compared with Waterloo. There did not, for example, seem to be very much at all - if anything - in the way of commuter lines. But they did take imitating airlines further than we do and have gone in for baggage allowances & overhead lockers as well as hosts & hostesses with trolleys.
And then a few days ago we discovered that the main station used to be slap bang in the middle of town, with railway lines all over the place, including over the Alexandra Bridge mentioned a few days ago.
At some point the city fathers decided to free up this valuable site in central Ottawa, relocated the station to the south east, added a bus station called 'TRAIN' and scrubbed out the lines over the river to Hull. And the only catch with all this is that the old central station building is still there, once very grand with lots of pillars, now, by the look of it, largely disused. Sufficiently grand that 'Union Station' was spelled out in stone above the pillars with an initial 'V', in the best classical manner. Probably their version of a Grade I listed building. And we had mistaken it for a former bank or town hall.
While Alexandra bridge has been recycled, now carrying both a road and a pedestrian walkway, the combination of which need more space than a railway line, thus explaining why extensions have been stuck on both sides, rather in the way of those stuck on Hungerford Bridge in London.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/vertigo.html.
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