Our watchman’s shanty was originally built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1914 to protect a railway crossing about half a kilometre north of our museum. That year, Canadian Pacific built a large freight shed occupying the entire block north of Wellington Street between Simcoe and John Street. The tracks entered from the west side, and as a result a total of ten tracks crossed John Street at grade. While automatic crossing signals were in their infancy, the nature of this crossing near the point where these tracks ended meant trains would only be traveling at low speeds here. It was determined that a more archaic form of crossing protection would be suitable for that location, and a watchman’s shanty was built there instead.

The watchman’s shanty, also called a crossing gatehouse, provided shelter for an employee who was responsible for protecting train movements over a railway crossing. They were most common in an age when horse-drawn carriages were the predominant form of road travel, though some like the one at John Street were built in the early automobile era. Some crossings like this required the employee to walk out into the street and prevent people from crossing the tracks, often with a flag or lantern with coloured lenses in hand. Others would have gates which were controlled by the employee, usually paired with a bell that they would ring from inside the gatehouse. Most crossing gatehouses were elevated on a post with a ladder for the employee to climb up, so that they would have a commanding view in both directions down the tracks. Again, this was not necessary due to the nature of the John Street crossing and our watchman’s shanty was positioned at ground level instead.

The gatehouse was in service for 63 years until the closure of the CPR freight shed in 1977, after which it was donated to the Toronto Historical Board. It was immediately passed along to the Canadian Railway Historical Association’s Toronto & York Division, which had just opened a railway museum at Pier 4 on Toronto’s waterfront two years earlier. That museum began using the gatehouse as a parking lot booth in May 1978 and it remained in this purpose until the museum went under in 1985. The gatehouse was moved into the John Street Roundhouse shortly thereafter with the hopes that it could form part of the collection of a new railway museum in the future. Volunteers of the Toronto Railway Historical Association restored the gatehouse in time for the opening of the Toronto Railway Museum in 2010, and it is currently the smallest building in our “railway village” in Roundhouse Park.