Preserving & Presenting Toronto’s Railway Heritage

The Toronto Railway Historical Association (TRHA) was established in 2001 to work with the City of Toronto to establish a railway museum at the John Street Roundhouse. The TRHA is incorporated and is a Federally registered charity. Its primary purpose is to promote the development of the Toronto Railway Museum. On this website you will find updates regarding our current projects, news and events, as well as a wealth of knowledge on Toronto’s railway history.

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About Us

The first public meeting of the Toronto Railway Historical Committee was convened at the Scarborough Model Railroad Club in 2001. Its purpose was to investigate the possibility of organizing an excursion hauled by a steam locomotive in the Toronto area. The organization soon turned its focus towards the establishment of a railway museum at the John Street Roundhouse, renaming itself to the Toronto Railway Historical Association in 2004 and incorporating as a charitable organization a year later. Through the actions of a passionate group of volunteers and assistance from the City of Toronto, the TRHA succeeded with the opening of the Toronto Railway Museum in 2010.

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Museum

For more information on the museum itself, visit the Toronto Railway Museum Website. There you can also find information especially pertaining to museum-specific news, events and activities. The location of the museum can be found on our contact page.

Collections

Browse the historical pieces we have in our collection. These range from small items like lanterns and uniforms to passenger cars and locomotives. It is our goal to find a place for each and every historical piece at our museum, a challenge as we are working with limited space and resources. Our team of volunteers work hard to return these pieces of history to their original appearance, and to keep them maintained afterwards. Have a railway artifact you would like to donate? Please contact us.

Structures

Locomotives

Passenger Cars

Freight Cars

Simulators

Artifacts

History

The Greater Toronto Area has a long and storied history of railways. To fulfill our purpose in communicating the history of these railways, a large portion of this website serves as an educational resource. The information found in the three sections below represent hundreds if not thousands of hours of historical research on the part of our volunteers. The railways section contains complete histories of Toronto’s railways and the events and figures that were related to them. The stations section is where we seek to document all of the passenger stations that have historically existed in the Greater Toronto Area. The articles section includes written material that does not fit into either of those categories, most of which was written by the late Derek Boles, Chief Historian of the TRHA.

Stations

Railways

Articles

Volunteering

The Toronto Railway Historical Association and the Toronto Railway Museum rely heavily on our volunteers. We certainly wouldn’t have much of a museum without them and the work they do! Our volunteers fulfill a number of different roles, from our restoration crew to docents and tour guides to managing the website you’re on right now!

Would you like to gain valuable experience as a volunteer? Click the button below to find more information and access our digital volunteer application form.

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Donations

The Toronto Railway Historical Association is a not-for-profit and a federally registered charitable organization. If you would like to make a monetary donation, you can find instructions on our donations page. We would greatly appreciate it, especially in the current circumstances. If you have a historical item that you would like to donate, such as a piece of equipment or a photograph, please contact us.