The Memory Junction Railway Museum preserves a collection of railway memorabilia in Brighton, Ontario's former Grand Trunk Railway station, which opened in 1857 and served intercity rail passengers until the 1960s.HistoryTiny Brighton is on the Toronto-Montréal mainlines of both the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railway, which run side-by-side through the village. It once had a third railway, the Canadian Northern Railway, whose tracks occupied the Prince Edward County Railway right of way into Trenton, Ontario. At its peak, ten trains daily stopped at one or another of the three local passenger rail stations, all within a few blocks of each other.Brighton's rail history dates to the October 27, 1856 opening of the Grand Trunk line from Montréal to Toronto. The current-day Maplewood Street was Railroad Street, agriculture was slowly displacing forestry as the primary local industry and communities long reliant on water transport were eagerly awaiting the rails as a means of access to larger markets.In its heyday, the Brighton GTR station was a group of seven buildings and a stock yard; there was a freight shed, two private coal sheds, a 35foot wooden water tank and large piles of lumber (GTR's steam trains originally burned wood). The station itself is a "Type C" second-class wayside station, much like those still in rail service in Napanee and Port Hope; a single-story building with five door or window arches on the sides and two arches on each end. Most of these were built from limestone to a standard GTR design with a stone chimney on each of four corners; the Brighton station differs from the others in its use of brick. The original chimneys are now gone.
