Parkdale railway station (Toronto)

Parkdale
GTR and CPR North Parkdale stations, circa 1900
Location	Queen Street West Parkdale, Toronto, Ontario Canada
Coordinates	43°38′31″N 79°25′39″W / 43.64194°N 79.42750°W / 43.64194; -79.42750Coordinates: 43°38′31″N 79°25′39″W / 43.64194°N 79.42750°W / 43.64194; -79.42750
Location

Parkdale railway station or North Parkdale railway station as it was also known was a passenger train station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The station served the Parkdale village on the then-outskirts of Toronto. The station served trains on the Canadian Northern Railway and Credit Valley Railway, later the Canadian Pacific Railway, railways. It was situated at the intersection of Dufferin Street and Queen Street West. The train station was decommissioned in the 1970s.

The first station was built in 1856 by the Ontario Simcoe and Huron Union Railroad Company, which later became the Northern Railway of Canada in 1858. It was a small wooden building situated to the east of the lines, south of Gladstone Avenue and the Gladstone Hotel at Queen Street. In 1885, it was expanded and re-oriented to face the rail lines. The track traversed Dufferin and Queen Streets at an angle, just east of the intersection, at a level crossing from the north-west to the south-east.

In the 1870s, the Grand Trunk Railway built a railway station at Jameson Avenue, on its east-west line. It was named South Parkdale, and the Queen Street station was given the name of North Parkdale station.

A second set of rails parallel and to the west of the earlier lines was installed with the coming of the Credit Valley Railway (CVR). In 1879, a new station building was opened on the west side of the tracks, to the south of Queen Street and east of Dufferin Street. The two stations became a "union station" between the two rail lines. A small rail yard was also constructed south of the location, alongside the rail lines south to King Street, and including a roundhouse, a car shop, a paint shop and a blacksmith shop. In the 1880s, the line was subsumed by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). In 1888, the Northern Railway station became part of the Grand Trunk, which had taken over the Northern Railway.