The Toronto Rocket officially launches

The Toronto Rocket has officially hit the rails! After a brief ceremony this morning with Mayor Ford, TTC Chair Karen Stintz and other dignitaries at Downview Station, the train pushed off towards Wilson and regular service on the Yonge-University-Spadina Line. At present, only one of the trains will be in the system (though at least three more are in testing), but if you'd like to catch a ride on the newest member of the fleet, the TTC Notices Twitter account has been tracking its movements throughout the day.

We've already covered the new trains in some depth, but here's one additional tidbit worthy of sharing courtesy of the National Post. As the fleet of Rocket subways builds up and the T1 cars migrate to the Bloor Danforth Line, the decommissioned H-series trains are apparently "headed to Nigeria where they will form the core of a yet-to-be-completed rail network in the country's largest city of Lagos."

PHOTOS

Photos by Christian Bobak