We were in Toronto this past Thanksgiving (October 2021) to visit my daughter. I had convinced my wife that we didn’t need to rent a car while we were there, so we were becoming familiar with riding the trams and taking subways in the city. The Toronto Transit Commission may have its problems but they run a pretty good system, in my opinion.
I negotiated a few hours on Sunday morning (October 10) to head west to Mimico to see the GO Transit / VIA Rail yard there. GO Transit has their Willowbrook Yard there and VIA’s Toronto Maintenance Centre occupies a portion of the former Grand Trunk Railway / CN yard.
I set out at around 7:00 AM from our hotel on Yonge Street, intending to take the subway downtown to Union Station, then ride the GO Transit Lakeshore West train a few stops to Mimico.
Unfortunately I didn’t realize that the subway didn’t open until 8 AM on Sunday! The doors to the subway were closed. Drat.
As I was walking south toward Lake Ontario and Union Station, I kept seeing buses roll along Yonge Street. Since I still had an active 24 hour pass in my pocket from Saturday’s adventures, I decided to take the bus. I hopped on and rode my first bus in Toronto in many years.
I arrived at Union Station at 7:34 and took a photo before entering the station.
It didn’t take long to find a ticket machine and buy my one-way ticket on the Lakeshore West. Off to track 25!
The Lakeshore West makes 11 stops, according to the sign above, but I was getting off at the second stop.
This was my first time riding GO Transit. I boarded nearly empty bilevel car GOT 2324 and headed upstairs to the second level.
The train rolled out on time at 07:45. We had a brief stop at Exhibition Place before proceeding on to Mimico.
The platform at Mimico is functional but pretty bare, with a shelter, a few benches and not much else. There is a little station building with a map and ticket machines.
I took a brief video of the train as it departed Mimico for points west.
It was time to walk!
It’s about 1.35 km from the GO Mimico station to my destination, the middle of the Islington Avenue overpass over the yard. It was a decent morning and the sun was coming out, so it was a pleasant walk. I tried to find a convenience store on Royal York Road but nothing was really open yet, other than a few coffee shops with long lines outside. Oh well.
I walked along Judson Street past the GO Willowbrook Yard facility to Islington Avenue, and walked up the overpass.
This is what I came for!
The north side of the yard is for GO Transit, and VIA Rail’s TMC is on the south side of the main line.
You get a pretty good sense of the scale of GO Transit by seeing how many passenger cars are here.
It was time to take some photos!
More to come…
Actually that is only part of GO’s fleet. On at least several of the lines where the trains operate into Toronto in the morning and out in the evening they store the trains at the outer station – so they store Milton line trains in Milton overnight/overweekend, Stouffville line trains in Lincoln, etc.
Yes, GO Transit stages trains for the morning runs at places like Milton, Kitchener, etc.
This is true, they do stage equipment at the ends of the lines, and the new east maintenance centre in Whitby to split the fleet, but, even those far flung stored trains would rotate through here during their downtime in Toronto during the day for necessary servicing as that can’t be done in the storage yards at the ends of the lines. I do love occasionally making a quick illegal stop on the wide shoulders on the bridge there to hop out and take photos!
Stephen
Back when I lived in Toronto the subway didn’t start until 9 am on Sundays. Mimico is a neat place to check out as you can get good overhead views. I had a reno project nearby and was able to get a few visits in while they were under construction. Did you note the old station on Judson Street? https://tinyurl.com/yckedu74
Hi Eric, I liked Mimico a lot. That was convenient to be able to swing by Mimico to/from work.
I did notice the station – coming in part 3.