Caption: Hazy day in "The Big Smoke": the Maple Leaf billboard reads 26 degrees as switch tenders in charge of the manual ground-throw interlocking switches watch the tail end of CP train #11 "The Canadian" (Toronto-Sudbury section) departing downtown Toronto at Cabin D, leaving Toronto Terminals Railway trackage onto the start of the CP Galt Sub near Tecumseh St. tower. Today's train is a long summer consist, with power appearing to be two F-units bracketing an RS10. A silver-painted 2200-series steel coach or two can be seen near the head end. In the distance on the right is CP's Parkdale Yard, with the headlight of a switcher barely visible. The red farm equipment on flatcars on the right (off CN's Weston Sub) was from the nearby Massey Ferguson plants in the Liberty Village/Parkdale area.
On the left, a CN Tempo train powered by two RS18's (with one of the three HEP baggage cars) is seen departing west on the Oakville Sub. In the distance to the left, an inbound GO train approaches, with the tail end of an outbound train visible under Strachan Ave. bridge (possibly stopped at Exhibition GO Station). Also next to them is a CN switcher working the Bathurst South Storage yard.
The usual Bathurst Street 70's set pieces are in attendance: -Cabin D interlocking tower presiding over the manual interlocking (tower removed and location renamed "Bathurst Street" when the interlocking plant was rebuilt/automated around 1983, remotely controlled from John Street tower) -CP's Tecumseh St. tower further back (controlled movements from CP's Galt Sub & Parkdale Yard across CN's Weston Sub to the Simcoe St. freight shed lead on the far right). -Steam-era "tell-tales" strung west of the bridge to warn any crew members riding the tops of freight cars of the Bathurst St. bridge (Bathurst North Yard behind us was still a CN freight yard at the time). -The ever-prominent Inglis appliances sign facing the Gardiner Expressway, and the sprawling buildings of the old Inglis plants and other industrial buildings of Liberty Village (today, all mostly gone or converted into condos/lofts, dwarfed by more and more new condos).
Bathurst Street is still as busy as ever today, but about the only thing that hasn't been changed, added, removed or upgraded today is the fact that it's still a rail junction!
Keith Hansen photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.
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