GO Transit cab car No. 104 was built as C754 in 1967 at the Hawker-Siddeley plant in Thunder Bay, Ontario, now a part of Bombardier Transportation. It was used in push-pull commuter service between Pickering and Oakville via Union Station starting on May 23rd, 1967. At the time, Toronto-based commuter service offered by Canadian Pacific and Canadian National was actively being scaled back as more people opted for private vehicles using an extensive highway network that was constructed during the previous two decades. GO car C754, like all other cab cars, was built with full engineer controls to power the engine at the opposite end of the train. This allowed the train to move in both directions without having to be turned around.
The car was renumbered to 9854 in 1970, then to 104 in 1975. The following year, GO Transit began purchasing bilevel cars to provide increased capacity over the original fleet of passenger cars. After 27 years of service in Toronto, GO Transit car 104 was retired in 1994 and subsequently sold to the Agence Métropolitaine de Transport (AMC) for use in Montreal-area commuter service. It was sold once again to Société de chemin de fer de la Gaspésie in 2010 for passenger service in eastern Quebec. The car was reacquired by Metrolinx, the provincial Crown agency that is responsible for managing GO Transit, in December 2016 for the transit system’s 50th anniversary. They converted the car to its 1975 GO Transit appearance and moved it to Roundhouse Park on the night of May 12th, 2017, where it remains as a permanent display piece. Numerous other artifacts from GO Transit’s early history were also donated alongside this cab car and incorporated into a display inside Stall 17.
This car has been generously donated by Metrolinx.