Caption: A nice view of the old Weston GO Station, very quiet and very quaint surrounded by lush greenery, until it was replaced by a brand new station to the south a few years later and subsequently obliterated by a giant grade-separation trench. The view today is from the rear of GO Transit cab car 237, departing on morning train #252 enroute to Union Station downtown. In the distance are the grade crossings for John, King, and Church Streets before the Weston Sub curved to the west and crossed the Humber River bridge at CN McGill.

This station was the original built by GO Transit for the launch of their new Georgetown line in April 1974, and replaced an old CN station that was previously here (demolished 1966). It did incorporate the old CN waiting room building that managed to survive. Like Bloor GO Station, the amenities here were also sparse, with some shelters, a small rectangular insta-station building, its own payphone (thanks Ma Bell) and an underground tunnel at this (south) end of the platform going under the tracks and coming out along the Lawrence Avenue underpass below (note bridge railings). The north end of the platform fronted onto John Street, where a very small GO parking lot was shoehorned in nearby almost as an after though. The odd platform shape at this end was for a CN service track that had previously run along the back of the station and connected to interchange tracks along CP's MacTier Sub on the right (incidentally, there was a CN-CP connecting track still present just to the south of here).

The demise of this incarnation of Weston Station came about with the idea for a new "Blue 22" Pearson airport express train (initially planned to use rebuilt RDC cars from IRSI) and expanded all-day two-way Georgetown corridor GO service with the West Toronto grade separation happening. Both would have required an updated, modernized station on site, although the UPX wasn't originally supposed to stop at Weston. The residents of Weston weren't happy about all of this, and launched a grassroots campaign targeting "Dalton's Dirty Diesels" (after then-Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, more on him in a future post) due to all the extra diesel trains that would be running through the corridor on the expanded GO and new UPX lines. Among other things they wanted electric trains, a stop at Weston, and a grade separation for the about-to-be-busier rail corridor (that already intersected their neighbourhood for decades dating back to the steam era).

Only two of those three demands were met: they got their trench from Metrolinx, and their UPX stop in the form of a new Weston station that opened in stages between 2013-2015. There was lots of talk about electrification and pushing for studies, including planning to do the section of the corridor for the UPX line and a stretch from Union to Mimico so the UPX trains could be serviced, and possible servicing facilities at Humberview. The RDC idea was replaced with new Nippon Sharyo DMU trainsets with Tier 4 emissions diesel engines. This was also part of why GO sent an MP40 down to MPI for Tier 4 conversion into an MP54, as "Tier 4" and "clean diesel" were some of the PR-friendly terms thrown about to appease the residents (since all the studies and implementation of electrification wasn't practical or possible in the given timeline for many reasons). Ultimately nothing really became of it, as after the trench went in and the new efficient UPX service started up, the residents soon forgot about electrification and everything quieted down.

Someone else had the last laugh though: after all that work, CP's MacTier Sub was left fully at-grade next to the trench, forcing residents to keep waiting for long CP diesel freight trains to pass through.