Canadian Railroads > Random CP thoughts

Okay, CP is under new leadership, and obviously one of EHH's marching orders is to watch expenditures. That said, even while he was at CN, that company was much more aggresive than CP when it came to painting rolling stock. That brings me to my question: Would it not seem that CP would want to change their image at this point? The whole red thing is old, used up, and (mostly) looks terrible. Worse, the main competitior also uses red. Why not switch back to maroon, grey and yellow on the forthcoming horde of EMD rebuilds? Would be a great way to put a fresh foot forward.

Stranger things have happened...

There is upwards of 500 ECO units coming from Progress Rail starting shortly and ongoing for 2-3 yrs , as well the rebuilt SD 60's and GP38's all in the red so its obvious that image does not concern EHH.

The shade of red is slightly different of late but while the scheme is simple-properly maintained it looks good.

The maroon and grey was hard to maintain and apply and from a railfan perspective only looked good on real clean units and nice days.
The scheme weathered oddly as per attached.

Mike Bannon
St Catharines, ON

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Can't see a major change, maybe www.cpr.ca on the side or something. However, some places red now runs you might well see black.

Bill Miller
Galt, ON

The original post was just a late night muse. I think it would really (and economically) improve the red scheme by adding nose stripes and switching the hood lettering back to the late 1960's script. Thanks for the feedback.

Bring back the Multimark!...and for crying out loud, wash stuff every once in a while...

CP has sooooo many other issues right now that they are painfully trying to work through, corporate image is the last thing that will be addressed. Trying to move traffic and get trains over the road with less than 3 crews per subdivision in some places is just the beginning. Customers are behind 2-3 days and traffic in some terminals is grinding to a halt. Here in Lethbridge they have added another yard job and still are calling 2 extra switchers per day. Despite even that cars dwell for 2-3 days here. It is ridiculous. It took 4 crews to get a road freight from Alyth to Lethbridge a few weeks ago because they cancelled the North wayfreight between Lethbridge and Alyth and now are having the road crews do the work. One whole crew was burned up just sitting in the yard at Alyth waiting. There has been a temporary reprieve with the North wayfreight as they are taxing a crew up to Aldersyde to switch Cargill and some other customers in that area. I don't know if they are leaving a unit up there for this move or not. Trains 466 and 467, the BNSF-CP and vice versa trains between Lethbridge and Coutts, are now 518 and 519. Why they changed these to wayfreights is beyond me, I imagine something to do with having the crew able to perform more work or something with the shell game that is numbers and the books. They are combining this train with 468 (UP from Eastport to Alyth and beyond) at Lethbridge for the run to Alyth and 469 from Alyth to Lethbridge. Watch for more big changes as EHH desperately finds ways to cook the books to bring the operating ratio down in a hurry. Alyth is basically all but shut down as a switching terminal. There are currently 12(or so) yard switch crews throughout the week and this is rumored to be reduced further to close to 6 in the new year. It is a ghost town up there with most of the yard empty. Currently there are 60 running trades employees laid off there and as many or more carmen. This is the tip of the iceberg as Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and many other smaller terminals are laying people off en masse to bring the operating ratio down. EHH will try everything in his power to run CP with as few people as possible. There are many days during the week that every single Conductor in the assigned pools and the spareboard in Lethbridge is on rest. They are constantly calling employees to ask if they will break their rest to go back to work. Like the old saying goes may we live in interesting times. If only they knew EHH.

A.J.

I guess that explains the big increase in the number of crew taxis on the highways in every direction outta Calgary the past few months. ''Precision Railroading'' at it's finest.