The West Toronto Railpath - Part 2 of 2
Click on each image for a closer look!.
In a recent news posting, we reported on the initiative to develop the West Toronto Railpath.
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In the above left image above, we see the rail corridor viewed from the Dundas Street Overpass looking south. In the middle image, we see the Wallace Street pedestrian overpass which provided me with a spectacular viewpoint in my youth to watch the steam engines in all their glory in the 1950's. In the final image we see some wonderful detail in the lights on this pedestrian overpass.
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Derek Boles, the TRHA's historian, offers the following historical insight into this important rail corridor:
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"The Railpath has an important and rich railway history. It is a wide rail corridor that once accommodated four different rail lines, which is why part of it has become redundant. The actual path runs on what was the route of the Toronto, Grey & Bruce (1875). This was taken over by Canadian Pacific in 1884 and I am told that railroaders continued to call it the "Old Bruce" up until it was abandoned in 1996.
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The section from Strachan Avenue to Lansdowne parallels the original Ontario, Simcoe & Huron (1853). At Lansdowne, the OS&H branched north and the Grand Trunk (1855) continued to the end of the path at Cariboo Ave, just before the junction with the North Toronto Sub. The fourth railway that ran along this corridor was the Credit Valley (1879).
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The new Railpath will cross over Queen Street on the very first subway (underpass) built in the city in 1885. The subway cost so much that it almost bankrupted the Town of Parkdale and delayed its takeover by the City of Toronto, who didn't want to assume the debt."
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Posting by Russ Milland; Images from the West Toronto Railpath website.
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