frowzy, a city where trains run through the center of town and chuff smoke into the foyer of the best hotel." Greber sought to clean up the downtown by relocating rail traffic outside of the city center. Part of this involved the construction of a new train station. The final decision to remove tracks from the downtown core was made in 1950, a time when conversion to cleaner diesel locomotives seemed only a far future possibility. Despite the fact that the transition to diesel occurred far sooner than expected (in 1960), the track relocation and new station plans continued. A land swap was arranged between the Federal District Commission (now National Capital Commission) and the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways in which they gave up their downtown railyards east of the Rideau Canal and railway rights of way through Ottawa in exchange for land near Walkley Road, where the Walkley Train Yard would be extended. This reduced the number of trains traveling through the downtown core, opened up new land for development downtown and provided the east-west right of way for what would later become the Queensway (Highway 417). The new Ottawa station The construction of a new railway terminal on of land near Hurdman Bridge was announced in May of 1961. The site was chosen due to the fact that Ottawa's population was moving southward, it offered easy accessibility to the Queensway and there was ample room for parking. Additionally, the land that would make up the proposed site was already largely owned by the railways and the Government of Canada. It was thought that the terminal would become the hub of a new commercial and industrial area. The cost of the new train station, tracks and equipment amounted to around . The new Ottawa station was built for passenger services of the Canadian National Railway (CNR) and the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) companies, and was the last of the monumental union stations to be built in Canada. It was seen as an attempt to project a modern and futuristic image of rail travel in an era when it was being increasingly superseded by other means of transportation. The station was designed by the modernist architect John Cresswell Parkin of John B. Parkin & Associates in collaboration with the Montreal firm Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold, Michaud & Sise. Their design reflects a mix of modernism and Beaux Arts