Ontario Railway Stations - Gallery
Outline and Copyright Notice:
These images are provided from my personal collection solely for your personal research and pleasure. Note that for research purposes I have included at times more than one view of a station, either as to date, or angle or panorama view. And at times the photographic quality is not always the best. That could be due to the age of the image, ad hoc copying of the image - or speaking absolutely strictly for myself, limited photography skills. ☺
Each image will have a set of initials (where applicable) in the caption to indicate source. This will appear after the date of the image if known or where applicable. Please consult my Image Credit Abbreviations page to identify the source of any specific image. I respect copyright, so if there is anything that has been missed or should be added/corrected, please let me know. Terms of use are that any of these images may be copied for personal research or collection. For publication in any form however, copyright permission ought to be sought. Please feel free to contact me in case I may be able to assist with that. Thank you.
For anyone who wishes to check on the survivor status of any station, Robert J. Hughes produced successive directories during the 1990s.
Here is Issue V from 1994. With our thanks to Robert for the incredible amount of work that was put into these directories:
Ontario Station Directory Robert J Hughes A to H
Ontario Station Directory Robert J Hughes I to Z
Each individual gallery provides a link to the Image Credit Abbreviations and features each station sub-alphabetically and by date (where known)
in two categories:
POST CARDS AND HISTORICAL
POST WWII
This section features post card and "historical" railway station images (with some related scenes such as trestles and wrecks). For the most part, these images are in the public domain. Their photographers are mostly unknown; but where known and applicable, they are noted together with the archival source location.
Post card images are a major research source. For a seminal treatise on the evolution of the post card medium, please see Post Cards - Stations, Railway Scenes and Wrecks - a primary research source - by Ralph Beaumont. As discussed in Ralph's article, there are two major research-worthy types of proven post card images: - the colourized card - and the photo card.
It should be noted that some of the so-called colourized cards were also produced in black & white. In other cases, the scanning process may have converted the card to b&w, and in some cases the scanning or copying process has resulted in the cropping of the card edges.
Some images do not bear proven evidence of being a post card image, but likely appeared as such. For instance it is likely that all negative-inscribed "white-write"-captioned images appeared locally in post card form. Other similar images had no kind of identification on the reverse (image) side, but the caption would have appeared on the (obverse) message/address side of the card.
Click on each image to enlarge. If there is no image in the space, click on the space anyway, or refresh the page.
Other websites featuring similar images may be found through my Links page, three in particular:
- Canada-Rail at http://www.canada-rail.com/
- Colin Churcher's Ontario stations at: http://churcher.crcml.org/Heritage/Heritage_Stations_Ontario.html
- Paul Duncan's Ontario stations at: http://www.niagararails.com/station.phtml
I would be most remiss not to acknowledge here the generous contribution from collectors such as Allan Anderson, Ross Gray, Wayne Lamb and Dave Spaulding, as well as the generosity of members of the Toronto Postcard Club for allowing me to attend their meetings over a number of years for the brazen purpose of letting me make copies of prized cards in their collections in the celebration of our railway history - in particular Wilf Anthony, Bob Atkinson, Hubert Brooks, Salvatore Canepa, Wilf Cowin, Ralph Friske, Glenn Gardiner, Bob McEvilla, Calvin Katz and Gary Mauthe. Latterly, many are from Facebook group posts, with particular acknowledgment to the Ross Gray and other collections where identified, even though these images are for the large part in the public domain.
L to R: Glenn Gardiner, Bob Atkinson, Wilf Cowin. 1979.
Post WWII
The reason for the division between postcard and historical and post WWII views is twofold:
1. To make for faster loading of the page.
2. To distinguish between images that are largely in the public domain (although ownership copyright may still exist, where known or identifiable), and images where photographer (author) copyright likely still exists.
With that noted, this section features a collection of railway station images, some taken by me over the years, in slide, film and latterly in digital formats, but mainly consisting of images that have been donated to me over the years, many by late fellow station chasers Dave Spaulding and Edward Emery, but also by Lloyd Baxter, Jim Brown, Hubert Brooks, Harold Culham, Wayne Lamb, John Riddell, Bob Sandusky, Dennis Taylor, John D. Thompson, Barry Westhouse, John Vincent and others; and also those acquired to a major extent from the Al Paterson and (Keith) Sirman Collections, and to a lesser extent from the Dave Shaw and Ross Taylor Collections. Also many from the Internet and Facebook groups.
The images appear alphabetically, together with the railway (in cases of doubt, simplified to GTR, CNR, CPR, MCR etc.) and date taken where known. In many cases there are views taken over a period of time, rail-side and forecourt views, or rail-side views from each end of the building. In a few cases brightness has had to be enhanced, or the image may be of poor quality. Also this collection is by no means exhaustive, and if you do not find a railway station name that you are looking for, chances are I don't have it. Click on each image to enlarge. If there is no image in the space, click on the space anyway, or refresh the page.
Other websites featuring similar images may be found through my Links page, three in particular:
- Canada-Rail at http://www.canada-rail.com/
- Colin Churcher's Ontario stations at: http://churcher.crcml.org/Heritage/Heritage_Stations_Ontario.html
- Paul Duncan's Ontario stations at: http://www.niagararails.com/station.phtml
For any question, please check with me.