Climbing down into the pit, we found a miniature mining railroad had been set up underneath the street.

Dundas Pit (early October 2000): Liz noticed that some fairly intense excavation was going on near my place at Church and Dundas (Toronto). After peering through the fence into the large, 10-foot-deep hole wistfully on several occasions, we eventually had enough, and thus at 4a.m. one morning we dressed up in dark clothes and decided to see exactly what was going on down there.
       Both Church and Dundas are fairly busy streets, even at 4a.m., so we had to loiter for a fair while before a chance came for us to get past the orange plastic fencing around the pit. Once on the other side, we swiftly descended into the pit and up the tunnel to the south, out of sight of anyone on the street. Not surprisingly, the tunnel was very small and unlit. I had expected the tunnel to have something to do with plumbing, but there were no pipes to be seen. The walls and ceiling had been reinforced with wooden boards, but the floor was just dirt. We were delighted to see a set of tracks had been put in place. Following these for a short distance, we came across a mining cart that occupied pretty much the entire width of the tunnel. Passing this and continuing on a short way, I came to the end of the line, where something that looked like a simple electrical panel was set into the dirt wall. It didn't look like it was hooked up to anything and I couldn't really figure out what purpose it was intended to serve.
       Having seen everything, we left after less than 20 minutes. We fully intended to return regularly to check on the tunnel's progress and see if we could determine its purpose, but it was suddenly sealed up a few days later.

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