Caption: During the early months of the Ontario Government's experminental GO Transit commuter operation, GP40TC 606 heads up an eastbound commuter train bound for Pickering, seen departing Scarborough GO Station and about to cross the St. Clair Avenue East grade crossing. Commuters and auto traffic patiently wait for the train to clear the multiple-track mainline crossing on CN's busy Kingston Subdivision (a grade separation here would follow a decade later).

What we know today as the sprawling GTHA train and bus commuter operator GO Transit was initially launched as a single line (the Lakeshore line, from Oakville to Pickering), run by eight specially-built GMD GP40TC commuter locomotives, an order of 40 single-level commuter cars built by Hawker Siddeley Canada, and nine self-propelled versions intended to handle lighter runs and off-peak service. All of this was envisioned as a forward-thinking trial service by the government of the day to help curb the effects of congestion due to current and future projections of growing automobile traffic coming in and out of downtown Toronto. Its success, coupled with growing suburban sprawl popping up around Toronto, would result in the beginning of a new bus network three years later, and launches of multiple new commuter lines and expansions over the decades that followed.

J. William (Bill) Hood photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.