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Caption: Morning at West Toronto: a lone CP S3 switcher, 6545, thumps over the West Toronto diamonds heading westbound on the North Toronto Sub back to Lambton Yard as light power. The tracks it's crossing are the CP MacTier-Galt Sub connecting track, and the double track mainline of the CN Weston Sub (since made into a grade separation for GO Transit/Metrolinx). The MacTier Sub can be seen curving eastward in the background to Osler Ave. behind the section houses.
When CP dieselized their yard operations in the 1940's and 1950's, they bought lots of 1000hp Alco/MLW S2 units, but eventually determined that the extra horsepower and turbocharger were not needed for yard duties and were an added maintenance expense. MLW produced a non-turbocharged 660hp S3 for CP to test, and before long they had switched to buying them in spades: eventually accumulating a fleet of over 100 of the little switchers for service across the railway (far outranking competitor GMD's SW8/900 model, of which CP only ordered 21).
In the Toronto area, S2 and S3 units were maintained out of John St. Roundhouse downtown (until it closed in the mid-80's and all the remaining 539-powered switchers retired), and saw service for decades working local freights, switching, and yard jobs out of Parkdale, West Toronto/Lambton, and Agincourt Yards. A few former CP S2 & S3 units have been preserved, notably S2 7020 at the TRHA museum downtown (ex-CPR John St. Roundhouse).
Mike Mastin photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection.
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And just think, none of this is around today. None in the sense of the diamond.
Great photo as always from Mr. Dell’Unto
This is excellent! Those little S-3′s really were a CP staple for a few decades, every bit as iconic as the bigger MLW’s that overshadowed them.
In fact, the S-3s were also used for wayfreight and roadswitcher service too. When I started on CP in 1973, we used both 6589 and 6590 at Woodstock on the day & afternoon roadswitchers and the Tillsonburg/Port Burwell jobs.