Caption: A 4-car set of Montreal Locomotive Works (MLW) built "M1" subway cars sits at the back of the TTC's new Greenwood Yard in storage, as viewed from CN's Kingston Sub mainline to the south. Greenwood Yard was built in the 1960's in Toronto's east end to store, maintain and service trains on the under-construction Bloor-Danforth subway line. The opening of the B-D line was still 3 months away (February 1966), and Greenwood wasn't fully operating yet, but since May it had been taking deliveries by rail of new H1 subway cars that would provide service on the line.

The M1's (numbered 5300-5335) were the first new subway cars built in Canada, and featured a 75-foot light-weight aluminum bodied design that's basically still the standard for new TTC subway cars today (compared to the original steel 57' "Red Rocket" Gloucester cars made in the UK). They were built a few years earlier to serve on the then-new University subway line. MLW only got one order from the TTC in the early 60's, all subsequent orders of the same design went to Hawker Siddeley Canada (H1, H2, etc). Due to their historical significance, the first two cars of this order (M1's 5300 & 5301) were donated to the Halton County Radial Railway museum for preservation when the series were being retired in the late 90's.

The standard-gauge railway siding (or spur) into the yard had two legs that formed a C-shape, visible in this photo and in aerial imagery. The western leg went to the unloading ramp that was used to unload new subway cars that were delivered by rail flatcar. Another siding looped up by one of buildings on the south-east side (perhaps for delivering materials). The first deliveries by rail here were the H1 cars in 1965, and the final ones were apparently the T1's in the late 90's/early 2000's. Some of the siding is still intact but out of use (with the switch to the mainline removed), and all current subway car deliveries are trucked down from Bombardier in Thunder Bay.

Robert D. McMann photo (slide unnamed, but likely), Kodachrome from the Dan Dell'Unto collection.