44 North
Senior Member
Putting the station parallel to the railway corridor is almost certainly a non-starter. A station platform is 500 feet long, and once you fill out all of the ancilliary systems that need to be installed in the station you're looking at a station box approaching 600 feet.
The distance between Carlaw and Pape via the railway tracks is give-or-take 835 feet. That doesn't give much distance at all to deal with the curves leading to and from the north-south alignment.
I was thinking there'd have to be a "chicane"-type of approach to a station if built under the rail corridor (not sure the proper terminology). But obviously this kind of extended curvature would mean added length, and having to pass under private properties - essentially resulting in similar issue as the all-Pape alignment.
One thing I'm wondering now is whether these will in fact be the typical 150m platform, or if we'll decide to spec the stations for 7 or 8-car trains (giving a platform of up to ~200m). If so then I guess what you say will be even more true.