Since railways first entered Toronto in 1853, safety at grade crossings has always been a concern. This was especially the case as the city’s population grew and grade crossings became increasingly busy with both pedestrians and train traffic. The first crossing protection systems in Toronto would have been controlled manually from small structures like our Watchman’s Shanty, but the first automatic crossing signals wouldn’t appear until after 1909 and only in limited capacities early on.

PNR Railworks, the company which put into place the various full-sized trackwork throughout Roundhouse Park, donated a pair of crossing gates in 2010. Later that year, our volunteers got both of them fully functioning as seen in this post. They are representative of the crossing protection technology of the past 70 years and equipped with the red-and-white crossbucks federally adopted by Canada in 1985.