Canadian Railroads > MLW Monday CN C-424 and how not to paint a Geep

CN purchased forty-one C-424 units from MLW.  About a decade after delivery the units fell out of favour and were stored whenever traffic slumped, making this photo of one at Coteau, Quebec in 1987 relatively rare.

When CNR introduced its now logo and paint scheme in 1960, stripes were applied only to passenger cab units.  The stripes went down to the right on the engineer's side and down to the left on the fireman's side.  This meant that when two A-units were couple back to back the stripes went opposite directions.

In 1973 when the safety/comfort cab was introduced by CN the decision was made to apply stripes to the hoods of all roadswitcher and road freight locomotives.  In this case the stripes were painted down to the right on both sides of the units so that regardless of how they were facing in a lashup the stripes always went the same way.  This required new paint scheme drawings be prepared for every class of affected units.  This task fell to draughtsmen in Headquarters in Montreal.

Unfortunately, the drawings for two classes of locomotives were prepared incorrectly with the stripes going down to the left on both sides of the locomotives.  A handful of GP9 units and at least one RSC-13 were painted with the incorrect drawings before the error was noticed and new drawings issued.  No matter which way these "backward painted" units were coupled in a lashup their stripes were backwards on both sides.  Shown in the 1987 photos from Coteau is "backwards Geep" #4426.

Ken Goslett



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/16 02:59 by kgmontreal.

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There were quite a number of striped units done backwards.  First one I saw I only noticed because it was coupled to one done right.  And I always liked CN 4529 which was striped but then got a hood swap so it had the orange cab with a noodled hood !

Bill Miller
Galt, ON

There was one C-424 that got a red cab and no stripes.

KG