Caption: After shooting VIA #84 at Fletcher's Creek, a quick jaunt was made Bovaird Drive for the OBRY (a no-show, it came later) then across to Mount Pleasant GO station for VIA #85 due in about half an hour. Today's consist, lead by F40PH-2D 6431 and #85's usual two Budd HEP cars, blasts through Mount Pleasant like a scalded jackrabbit after ducking under the Bovaird Drive/Highway 7 overpass, hell-bent on exiting the Brampton city limits and hitting its next stop at Georgetown before jumping onto the Guelph Sub at Silver. #85 was usually up to a pretty good clip through here, as passenger track speed was about cheetah speed at 70 mph, and 3000 horsepower was more than enough to get two Budds up the grade from downtown Brampton (I've got video of #85 flying through Mississauga Road crossing to the west, for the day Steve makes a railvideos.ca...). Then an FPON-crazy #394 showed up later downtown, which was nice.

In the mid-2000's, Mount Pleasant GO station was a bleak marker at the edge of civilization at the time: suburban growth encroaching to the east, but all rural farmland to the north, west and south that was waiting in the wings to be gobbled up and redeveloped. A farm had once existed just north of the station itself until it was cleared two years ago. There was no bustling walkable suburban neighbourhoods, no community centre, scant transit services with buses that didn't seem to want to be there, and a lonely GO station with barely any GO trains surrounded by a large empty parking lot (that sometimes had amorous individuals doing things on Sundays, shhh).

Mount Pleasant never had a train station until the current GO station was built in 2005. In the GTR/CN days, the nearest was Norval to the west, or the busier Brampton station a little further to the southeast. Some reminders of its past as a small farming hamlet once known as "Pleasant" centered around Highway 7 and Creditview Road remained, such as the old Presbyterian church, an old restaurant/gas bar building and Beckford's Motel (pictured on the left), all located on the old dead-end alignment of Highway 7 (renamed Salvation Road) before it was bypassed with the current Highway 7 overpass sometime in the 60's. The only patrons I noted at the motel most days were a few trucks, and after it closed the Urban Explorer crowd did poke around a bit before it was ultimately demolished a few years later. The old former gas station/restaurant building looked boarded up and vacant at the time. An old 1950's photo of a CNR Northern passing by in 1958 shows there was likely an Esso gas bar out front back in the day, servicing through-traffic between Brampton, Norval and Georgetown that likely dwindled after the bypass. Both that building and the motel were demolished in the early 2010's for more GO commuter parking.

Today Mount Pleasant is a happier walkable transit city-type suburban place, where the railfans can graze on the platforms and shoot all sorts of modern CN GE and GO trains without the bleak reminder of suburban progress encroaching on farmland (maybe I just visited on too many cloudy winter days). It's also a popular hub of ZUM and Brampton Transit activity for the bus foamer types.