Canadian Railroads > CN's Turcot yard, Montreal, 1978

Just after 1900, the Grand Trunk Railway did a massive upgrade of their facilities in Montreal and Toronto, and doubled tracked the entire route between the two cities.
Their freight yard and roundhouse was at Turcot, a few miles west of downtown Montreal. Turcot was a huge facility and it survived intact as the CN's main yard and engine facility until the late 1950's. At that time, CN built a new classification yard and hump a few miles west of Turcot.  The old yard still remained in service as an intermodal yard where freights picked up trailers and containers.

In the mid-1960's, a portion of Turcot yard was taken over by two large highway interchanges and a multi-lane freeway. Even with that, there was still much empty space around the former freight yard. An oddity of the highway construction was a little used overpass over the yard from the freeway, and a similarly lightly used frontage road along the perimeter of the yard. The highway interchanges have undergone a multi-year rebuild and I don't know if these little used portions have survived or have become busier with time.
In the 1970's, no one bothered photographers standing on the overpasses or clambering up a chain link fence.

The first image shows a westbound freight switching at Turcot, with the huge empty space that was the old yard behind it.
The second is an eastbound switching at the east end of the yard with TOFC on the head end.


 

Terrific photos of virtually all-MLW consists (I think I see a GMD in photo one.) Like many fallen rail facilities, Turcot was full of activity. Plus a pretty large roundhouse that made many steam era photos. Hardly a reason to slow down now.

Thanks for sharing these memories.
Bob

I like the look of Pic 1!!

One would not recognize these locations today.  There is a massive rebuilding of the highways, railways etc.  The only thing that is constant are the bluffs!