Rails to Trails

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     A new apartment development, Compass Creek, now defines the course of the TSR at the point just south of the level crossing with Burnhamthorpe Road. The iron fence seen here protects Compass Creek’s residents from tumbling down the ravine and also outlines the path of the TSR. Crossing Burnhamthorpe just west of Robert Speck Drive, the TSR’s path is now a peaceful bicycle path.

    At the time of development of the Mississauga Executive Centre, north of Burnhamthorpe, a transmission corridor that inherited the TSR’s suspension towers was removed and replaced by a walkway landscaping project. Light standards for illuminating the path may occasionally stand where a trolley pole once stood, but if so they occupy the same spot by chance rather than by plan.

     The TSR crossed Hurontario north of the Shipp development. A stop here was listed on timetables as "Centre Road", but officially the street that Mississaugans today call "Highway 10" has always officially been Hurontario Road. The location of the TSR stop is now part of an on-ramp leading Highway 10’s itinerants onto the 403.

     North of the 403 alignment, the TSR’s old right-of-way can still be imagined by walking the urban bicycle paths. East of McLaughlin Road however, the right-of-way has completely vanished under the efforts of bulldozers. The meandering pattern of streets in the Staghorn Woods development do not adhere to the old right of way. When residential developers arrived, there was no trace of the interurban left to influence the planners. The radial line can still be seen angling across the southwest corner of the Peel Board of Education’s Britannia Farm. The rails, ties and trolley poles are gone but a colony of staghorn sumacs now thrives on the raised roadbed.

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