Once again, Dave Howard of the CRHA Niagara Division has dug into his archives of decades spent capturing the history of railroading as it unfolds. He brings us these images of railways right in our area featuring our own Cabin D in its original location.  Dave says:

“Here a few shots from the Toronto Bathurst Street Bridge, I took them in October 1975, looking westward. So much of the railway infrastructure was changed here over the years. The manual lighted switch stands and the  Cabin D signal control tower have all been upgraded to powered switches and CTC (Centralized Traffic Control). Here are the extended captions for the photos below:

Bathurst Bridge Oct 1975 Cabin D:     A nice overview of the scene looking West, with the base of operations “Cabin D”, in the center left. The switch tenders would manually align the lighted switch stands with instructions from the operator in Cabin D. It looks like they had a set of chairs and small dog house to relax in between the mainline tracks on the right I wouldn’t want to be there with trains on both tracks! The power on the CN freight is very interesting, especially with the 6519 cab unit and big MLW diesel on the front.

Bathurst Bridge Oct 1975 #5550:     A “Caboose Hop” with 3 mainline units is headed somewhere, and another caboose hop appears in the background. Note the “Tell-tale” stung across all the tracks, left over from the decades ago when crew sometimes rode on top of cars. If a tell-tale hit them, it was time to duck, or be hit by the bridge.

Bathurst Bridge Oct 1975 GO:     The early days of GO train service, with 3 single level coaches. In the background is a train of empty piggyback flat cars, popular in the days prior to containerization.
May 24th, 2014 Update: As a follow-up to the Bathurst Street Bridge 1975 images, on the way to Doors Open Toronto on Saturday, we made a quick stop at the Bathurst Bridge, for a “Current”  comparison view. As expected, lots has changed. One of the few structures that remains is the smoke stack on the right side of the 2014 image, compared to the seven smoke stacks in the Bathurst Bridge Oct 1975 GO image. GO Transit has done well, progressing from 3 single level coach trains in 1975 to 10 bi-level coach trains in 2014.”

CRHA Niagara Division meets monthly at the Lock 3 Museum in St Catharines.  But our last meeting of the spring season is this coming Wednesday at  a nearby restaurant.   Click here to find out more about it and do come as a guest by contacting us if you wish.

Posting by Russ Milland & Dave Howard; Photos by Dave Howard

Click on each image for a closer look!

Cabin D – October 1975

#5550 Caboose Hop – October 1975

Go Transit – October, 1975

Today – May 2014