Snowdon

Snowdon is one of the four transfer stations of the Montreal Metro, serving both the Orange and Blue lines.

It was named in honour of the Snowdon neighbourhood, which also happens to host three more stations (Côté Sainte-Catherine, Côte-des-Neiges and Villa-Maria).

The station has only one entrance, on 5111 Queen-Mary Road. It has a beautiful design, and it is part of an office building of the STM. Having four storeys, the two higher levels are longer than the second level, who is longer than the first. That means you walk under the higher levels to enter the station. Once in, there are quick stairs that lead to the ticket booth and turnstiles, followed by escalators that give an awesome view of the lights suspended from the ceiling that are put on circles that do a nice pattern.

Once you are at the bottom of the stairs, you reach the central tunnel, as the station was built in three tunnels, the central one for the passengers to walk to their destinations and go up and down the different platforms, while the two other tunnels are the tracks and platforms. The tunnels are connected to each other via cross-tunnels.

The upper level has the terminus platform of the Blue line, called the Snowdon platform, and on the other side is the Côte Vertu platform on the Orange line. On both sides, train doors open on the left. On the lower levels, trains go in the opposite direction and doors open on the right.

The colours of the station are mainly tones of brown.

The main point of interest is Saint Joseph's Oratory, which is approximately mid-way between Snowdon and Côte-des-Neiges stations. There is also the Décarie autoroute which passes just next to the Snowdon station.

UNIQUE FEATURES

While this section is usually one of the hardest to fill on most stations, this one won't be hard to fill. First of all, since the platforms are built in individual tunnels, they have unique shapes of half circles. Also, the way the cross-tunnels are built, you can wait for your train in them and get a much grandiose view which is quite unique in the network. Since the upper platform doors open on the left, that is also quite unique.

Another unique feature of the station is the maps that are used in the station are different shapes than the rest of the maps in the network (Snowdon is more square while others are more rectangular). They are put on some cubic boxes with lights inside. Some old school metrophiles enjoyed the fact that it stayed many years with older maps, which included old station names (like Berri-de-Montigny instead of Berri-UQAM) and still had Henri-Bourassa as the terminus of the orange line. Snowdon is also the only station of the network to have been the terminus of two lines, as it was the western terminus of the orange line in 1981. Finally, Snowdon is the only terminus station of the network that has stacked platforms.

PUBLIC ARTWORK

The station's main artwork is wall murals by Claude Guité, which are situated on the walls that passengers look at while waiting for their train (the wall behind which trains passed by). Those murals represent each season, and they are spring (Montmorency platform), summer (Saint-Michel), autumn (Snowdon) and winter (Côté Vertu).

 STATION RIDERSHIP (2019)

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