Comments on: It was the day of the annual Toronto-area Christmas train show, held every November down at the Mississauga International Centre, but before pleasure there was business to attend to in Brampton: There had been a then-rare GMD-1 regularly assigned to the Brampton Intermodal Terminal set for switching the yard, and like Scooby Doo and the gang, we needed to go down and catch it.Departing around noon, after a visit to shoot a train on the BIT pullback track pulled all the way to Automatic Drive, the next stop was a visit to the Highway 7/Queen Street overpass. There was our target GMD-1 1423, visible in the yard but tucked away with her GP9RM-slug set on a track in the distance not doing anything (8-ball says crew lunch break). Since we weren’t getting any action along Queen, a side-trip was made to the Malport Yard area to shoot CN #577 and #393, before doing some other shenanigans (probably lunch) and heading back to BIT for another look.Sure enough, 1423 with slug 242 and mother GP9RM 7265 were busy drilling cuts of intermodal cars at the north end of the yard, as other mainline trains yarded and did their switching. If this looks like a busy scene, it was – as CN’s main Toronto-area container terminal, BIT is usually busy. Some photos were had, as 1423 had the significance of being the first GMD-1 built (CN 1000), before entering the late 80′s rebuild program and emerging as GMD-1B 1423 (it’s now preserved by the CRHA out west). The neat thing about shooting off Highway 7 is you can see part of Pearson Airport in the distance. Unfortunately was also really really cold and windy on that overpass, so this shot was not without sacrifice to the comfort of gloveless extremities.

By: Stephen C. Host

Stephen C. Host — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:39:45 +0000

excellent photo