Caption: Here's some GO 708 action to go with Steve's shot of CN 9675: GO Transit GP40-2W 708 heads up a short consist of five Hawker Siddeley single levels and an APCU, heading westbound out of Toronto Terminals Railway territory at Bathurst Street bridge. 708 was part of GO's final GP40-2W order, units 707-710 built in 1975, continuing GO's trend at the time of ordering freight power to run with power cars in passenger service. In 1991, 708 and most of the GO -2W fleet would become CN 9600's.

Following the busy and colourful 50's, 60's and 70's eras, I suppose one could call this the bland or malaise era of Bathurst Street: freight operations are gone as CN has finally pulled out of their old Bathurst Street freight yard, and GO has taken over the rest for storing commuter trains. The old CN yard tower that was here is gone. The new concrete "flyunder" has been built tracks haven't been laid yet (note the fresh-looking re-aligned mainline tracks in the foreground to make way for its construction, as well as the yard leads on the left being reconfigured). The downtown skyline has a healthy growth of office towers, but still looks plain and uncluttered compared to today's condo and high-rise boom. The colourful mix of red CP and black/white/red CN passenger trains have been merged into the blue and yellow of VIA. And the old CN/VIA Spadina roundhouse and coachyards remain, but for only a few more years until VIA moves all operations to Mimico in the mid-80's to clear room for the Skydome.

Things didn't improve too much by the mid-2000's (much of the coachyard lands to the south were just starting to see development), but by the 2010's condos started popping up everywhere downtown.

Robert D. McMann photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.