Comments on: An overhead overview of CN’s old Hamilton freight sheds, out of use for a number of at the time of this photo, located adjacent to the CN/Southern Ontario Railway’s Stuart Street Yard. The main offices were in the brick portion on the right, while the bulk of the building was warehouse space with truck loading docks. Four rail sidings (two on each side, some still visible) ran along both sides of this end of the building for spotting boxcars for loading/unloading.According to the informative “Building GO Transit” article by Wilfred Sergeant, as part of the relocation of much of CN’s freight yard operations in downtown Toronto, Mimico and Danforth to Vaughan in the 1960′s (the new Toronto/MacMillan Yard), their downtown express and LCL operations were to be consolidated from their old Simcoe Street LCL freight sheds (along Front Street, near CP’s own sheds) and the express building adjacent to Union Station into a new, modern, larger express-freight facility located within the new yard up in Vaughan (known as Maple). This was due to a study at the time that found many shippers were moving their operations out of the downtown area to new industrial areas and business parks being developed in the suburbs along Highway 7.The new Maple express/freight shed was also to feature new modern automated sorting processes and equipment. In order to test and refine this, a smaller test shed was built here in Hamilton and outfitted to test and refine the new technology and processes that were to be implemented in Maple. It replaced some of the older local freight/express facilitiesAs per other notes and photos by Doug Page, the Hamilton shed was built in 1964 (on the site of the old CN Hamilton roundhouse), and closed in 1997. By the time of this photo in 2007 it was vacant, and two years later in 2009 it would succumb to the wrecking ball.

By: Aitch

Aitch — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 16:28:17 +0000

Look at all the traffic in the yard ! Most of the times these days it’s looking very sparse.