|
Caption: Another shot from the best seat on the train: riding in the back of GO Transit cab car 201 on late morning train #252 (Georgetown line, Bramalea-Union), we've just rattled over the crossover switch between CN's Weston Sub mainline tracks and over the steel girder bridge span over busy Queen Street West at CN Parkdale, click-clacking down the stick rail on the home stretch to Toronto Union Station downtown. We're on the south mainline track, with the north mainline visible to the right, along with the start of the CN Newmarket Sub (GO Barrie-line trains) branching off at the switch by the sign. The "last minute" crossover track here let Barrie-line GO trains use the south track of the Weston Sub to/from Parkdale.
On the left are CP's two Galt Sub mainline tracks (GO Milton line), that at the time were completely separate all the way to West Toronto and weren't connected with the Weston Sub at all. This location has the mileboard for "CP Dundas" (after Dundas Street, further north at Mile 3.5 CP Galt Sub) however this location itself was still known as CP Parkdale in official timetables (Mile 2.3), but with nothing to really here of importance to note anymore. There was a really old wooden relic of a CP Parkdale sign that used to be around Lansdowne Ave in the distance, with a modern sign lazily nailed over it. Hopefully it went to a good home when Metrolinx removed it.
How the mighty have fallen: this part of Toronto was once home to not one but two decent-sized railway stations (CN and CP Parkdale, both demolished), small and medium-sized yards and associated facilities for both railways (all removed), and lots of industrial sidings and spurs for local factories and industries around Parkdale and Liberty Village (all gone). Parkdale railway-wise in 2007 had been reduced to just an interlocking plant where the Newmarket Sub (Mile 2.4) split off from the Weston Sub (Mile 2.5), a far cry from the days of Stompin' Tom Conners hanging out on the platforms..
Around 2008, the (Metrolinx/CN) Parkdale interlocking was moved north closer to Lansdowne underpass to facilitate rebuilding the underpasses and Duffern Street, in order to eliminate the "Dufferin Jog" at Queen Street (continuing Dufferin Street below the rail bridges instead of its previous disjointed alignment). New modern signals went in replacing the old ones, some track realignments took place around this time with the unused spans to keep rail traffic flowing as the bridge spans were rebuilt or reconditioned, and several new spans added. More recent track diagrams now show Metrolinx has a total of 8 bridge spans here: 4 for active mainline tracks (x1 Galt Sub, x3 Weston Sub) as well as 4 extra spans for future track additions as-needed (x2 for future planned extensions of the Newmarket Sub, x2 for adding extra Weston or Galt Sub mainline tracks back).
|
I remember being surprised seeing that old CP Parkdale sign from the Barrie GO train during my commuter days.
Another great photo of the railway within Toronto. Taken from a train or not, offers an angle many of us may not see or ever see again.
I’ve rotated some of your pictures as desktop wallpaper.
Not rotated, ripped off. It’s that good.
Notice how the North/East main on the Galt is already rusted out by this point
I’m glad people are enjoying them, I might have a few more to edit and post that may be of interest (unfortunately I only have the Weston Sub, maybe someone else covered the other GO lines).
Apparently some of my photos have even appeared in internal Metrolinx documents in the past, so someone over there might be watching too.
cp5756: IIRC, GO/Metrolinx might have already owned that section of the Galt Sub from Strachan to West Toronto. I can’t find the exact date of acquisition from CP, but I recall it was one of the earliest rail lines GO had purchased, and sort of flew under the radar (the Weston Sub was bought from CN in 2009). It looked like they might have mothballed that track at the time (still shiny in 2006-07), since the only thing run through there was one-way Milton line GO trains during rush hour and the evening/nightly CP local to the Toronto portlands, GO probably saved on maintenance by only using one mainline.
During the track and bridge reconstruction at Parkdale they diverted both tracks of the Weston Sub mains over the Galt Sub main bridge spans, and ran another track on the unused CP service track span for the Galt Sub main. There was quite a bit of track shifting for the project. The unused CN service track span to the east was also moved inward (still in classic CN green paint), and two new spans added by Metrolinx.
I’m certainly enjoying this series of images.
Dan, how late was CP still running to the portlands? Haven’t seen much on those jobs, but there’s of course a decent bit of coverage on the CN jobs that worked into downtown Toronto.
I’ve seen some photos taken in June 2008 of CP still running a local down there to switch the sanitation plant, but at some point they stopped and handed the traffic over to CN to switch instead. It was an evening/night job (I think it ran out of Lambton Yard) so I was not around to catch it.
I believe the CP job was called “The Circle Job”