The Coach Yards

The Coach Yards. . John Street was one of the largest passenger car maintenance facilities in the vast Canadian Pacific Railway system. The coach yards could hold 450 passenger cars, each over 80 feet in length. Coupled together, these would comprise a train more than seven miles long., When John Street opened in 1929, there were dozens of different types of passenger cars. These included baggage cars, coaches, colonist cars for immigrants, and tourist sleeping cars, one of which, Jackman, is in the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre (TRHC) collection. First class equipment provided an even wider variety of configurations that included parlor cars with individual seating; dining cars that featured full restaurant service; and sleeping cars with several different arrangements priced according to size. There were also observation cars with rear porches and lounge cars that featured various luxurious amenities, such as the solarium-lounge car Cape Race, also in the TRHC collection., The cars on many of the CPR's most prestigious trains were cleaned, provisioned, maintained and repaired here. These trains included the Dominion, the Canadian, and the Trans-Canada Limited, an all-sleeping car train that was reserved exclusively for first class passengers. The northern coach yard was the first part of John Street to be redeveloped in the 1970s to make way for the CN Tower.,