Abandoned & Repurposed Rail Infrastructure

Neighbourhood: Downtown / Leslieville / Junction · Address: Belt Line Trail: access at Chaplin Cres (Eglinton) or Allen Rd. West Toronto Railpath: Cariboo Ave · Hours: Public trails — dawn to dusk year-round · Price Range: Free · Editorial status: Not yet verified

Why Visit

Exploring Toronto’s abandoned and repurposed rail routes gives you a front-row view of secret cuttings, overgrown sidings, and surprisingly beautiful old bridges you won’t find in guidebooks.

What Makes It Unique

Unlike the completed portions of the GO rail network, these corridors reveal raw urban history where nature is reclaiming engineering that shaped the city’s layout. The West Toronto Railpath feels like an accidental urban park, while the Belt Line’s crumbling bridges hint at long-lost ambitions — you’ll spot old signal bases and mysterious concrete blocks the city has just left alone.

One of the nicest post-rain secrets in Toronto isn’t really a place you can pin down on a map. It’s a timing thing. After a heavy rainfall, parts of the city’s ravine system suddenly start doing something they don’t do most days of the year: they grow waterfalls. Not big, named, permanent ones with lookout platforms and signage. I mean temporary cascades that appear when the ground is saturated and the runoff starts spilling over clay banks, ravine walls, and little side channels. Then, a day or two later, they’re gone again. That’s what makes them fun to look for. You’re not heading out to “see the waterfall” so much as walking through the ravines with your eyes open. In the Don Valley, especially around the Brick Works and along the trails toward Rosedale, water can start sheeting down the exposed clay bluffs in thin silver curtains. Some of them look like someone turned on a tap in the side of the hill. Around Brick Works Pond, overflow after a serious rain can create some of the more reliable moving-water scenes, and the smaller ravine channels nearby start sounding different too — more trickling, more sudden rushes where there’s usually just damp earth and roots. The Humber Gorge is another good bet, especially around Lambton Mills. After a storm, the gorge walls can suddenly produce these short-lived cascades that spill through breaks in the vegetation and over rock and mud. They’re not always dramatic from a distance, but up close from the trail, they’re beautiful in a very Toronto way — a little messy, a little surprising, and easy to miss if you’re moving too fast. Highland Creek has its own version of this, especially in the Morningside Park area, where seepage runs through fern-covered slopes and turns into delicate ribbons of water. It feels quieter there, more tucked away, more about small details than spectacle. If you want the best chance of seeing them, go 24 to 48 hours after a major rainfall, or during spring melt. That’s usually the sweet spot. During the storm itself, don’t go. Seriously. Ravines can flood quickly, trails get slick, and those clay slopes are unstable in exactly the kind of conditions that create the waterfalls in the first place. Stay on official park trails and just look from there — you do not need to scramble down anything to get a good view, and you really shouldn’t. For a first try, I’d start at the Brick Works if you’re taking transit. From Castle Frank Station, it’s about a 20-minute walk to the trail network, and there’s enough variety around the pond and valley edges to make the trip worth it even if the runoff is already fading. If you’re heading to the Humber, coming from Jane Station by bus is straightforward. What I like about this is that it doesn’t feel packaged. You go for a morning walk after the rain, the air still smells damp and green, the mud is fresh, birds are louder than usual, and then somewhere off to the side there’s suddenly a waterfall where there wasn’t one yesterday. That’s the whole appeal. Toronto does that sometimes. You just have to catch it in time.