Canadian Railroads > FM-Friday at Tochty BC

With a lot of head end traffic for the smelter at Trail, H-Liner 8720 leads a extra west at Tochty in September 1973. Richard Yaremko

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Wow! That consist is pure 1970's!!

-Trevor

Train symbol 981, west of Nelson, timetable schedule 55

Great shot.  Love it.

KG

Wow, just look at that!

BE

On all these old CPR pictures, their motive power lashups are a complete mixture of manufacturers and loco types. Did they standardize on anything ?

Eventually they did, at least from my observations in the west. After early flings with motive power from all builders, they seemed to standardize on GP9s for just about everything, and with the expansion of unit train operations in the 1970s they first tried SD40s, then big MLW M630s, but when neither of those proved satisfactory they went to the SD40-2 and bought over 500 of them. As they needed replacement they started purchasing 4400 hp GEs in 1995, and other than trying the SD90MACs haven't bought any other kind of big road power since.

Branchline power is also standardized these days, GP38-2s (over 100 of them) and recently supplemented by 130 GP20Cs.

To illustrate, in February I saw 370 locos, 83 % of them were either ES44ACs or AC4400s. Variety? Not out here!

Darren Boes
Lethbridge, AB
Southern Alberta Railfan