The Toronto Railway Museum is located in the historic John St. Roundhouse National Historic Site. Open year-round to visitors interested in Toronto's rail heritage.
Toronto Railway Museum
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Although the railways had built many hotels in cities across Canada, this was the first in the country's second-largest metropolis. It was designed by Montreal architects Ross and Macdonald, who were also involved with Toronto Union Station, Maple Leaf Gardens and Eaton's College Street. 2/3
Jun 11, 1929: Lord Willingdon, the Governor-General of Canada, officially opens Canadian Pacific's Royal York Hotel, now the Fairmont Royal York. The opening of what was then the largest hotel in the Commonwealth was one of Toronto's most glittering social events of the 1920s. 1/3
Jun 9, 1846: the Montreal & Lachine Railroad Company is incorporated to build a line over eight miles (13 km) from Montreal to Lachine Wharf. From there it would operate steamboats to points on the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers. The line opened in 1847. 1/2
Armstrong also established the Toronto photographic firm of Armstrong, Beere and Hime, and captured many local scenes in the 1850s. These are among the first photographic representations of Toronto, including the city's earliest known railway photographs. 3/3
Jun 8, 1914: Artist and engineer William Armstrong dies in Toronto at age 92. Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1822, Armstrong emigrated to Canada in 1851 and began his engineering career with the Ontario, Simcoe & Huron Railway. 1/3
Armstrong then took up art, initially as a hobby. His paintings are among the finest records of 19th century life in Canada. His 1859 watercolour of Toronto's first Union Station has been widely published and was long thought to be the only picture of the station. 2/3
Toronto Railway Museum
The Royal York had 1156 rooms and cost $16 million to build, an astonishing sum at the time and the equivalent of over $263 million today. The 28-storey Royal York was the tallest building in Toronto until 1931, when the Bank of Commerce Building opened on King Street. 3/3
After several mergers, the M&L became the Montreal & Champlain Railroad in 1857, which was leased by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1864 and acquired outright in 1872. The M&L's Montreal terminal later evolved into Bonaventure Station, which became the GTR's principal Montreal terminal. 2/2
Toronto Railway Museum
The GTR had begun operating passenger service between Toronto and Brampton eight months earlier in October 1855. Due to anti-German sentiment during the First World War, Berlin was renamed Kitchener in 1916, after the recently deceased British Field Marshall Lord Kitchener. 2/2
Jun 10, 1856: the first Grand Trunk Railway train arrives in Berlin, Ontario, from Toronto. Passengers aboard the train included Walter Shanly and Casimir Gzowski, the engineer and contractor who built the line as the Toronto & Guelph Railway. Regular service began a few days later. 1/2
