Caption: April showers bring May flowers: with white lights lit up on the lead unit, four CP 4-axle MLW's head eastbound on CN's Oakville Sub through Burlington West on an extra freight, exercising trackage rights from Hamilton Junction to CP's Canpa Sub at Canpa (near Mimico). CP C424 units 4201, 4225, another 42xx sister and an 87xx RS18 lead the consist.

A little-known tidbit is 4201, the first conventional CP C424 built (4200 was a unique earlier phase one-off) sports nose-mounted flag brackets, one of only two units delivered with this feature (4200 was the other). Units 4200-4209 also originally had high-mounted headlights on the flat part of the cab that were relocated to the nose in the late 60's, matching all the other C424's in the fleet. Trailing 4225 sports the "flipped intake grills", apparently installed incorrectly during painting and subsequently flipped to the correct orientation here (many units ran around like this until the grill paint was properly touched up). By this time, the C424's had all been upgraded for roadswitcher service with extra rear pilots, headlights and numberboards, but there were still unrebuilt 8700's like the trailing unit around.

Bill McArthur photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.