Caption: Birthday Puller

CPR S-2 7020 (serial 72855) celebrates its 23rd birthday by pulling by CN S-4 8142 on Saturday, October 7, 1967. The pair are immediately west of Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto as the CPR switcher handles a transfer from Lambton Yard to downtown. At the same time, the CN switcher waits to access Union Station.

Front Street is off to the right of the picture and it was here that my father introduced me to train watching in the early 1950s.

The CPR rostered 45 Alco of the 1,000 horsepower switchers in five orders from the first in 1943 through 7064 in 1947. (Alco delivered three more for service in New England in 1949.) Beginning in late 1948, the railway purchased an additional twenty S-2s from MLW. Starting in 1950 and continuing through 1959, they acquired 124 660hp MLW switchers, which, at the time, were deemed adequate for industrial switching and smaller yards. Hence, MLW delivered just twenty S-4s in three orders between 1949 and 1953. CPR 7020, class DS-10b from the second-order, was assigned initially to Toronto and, I believe, remained there throughout its service life. Retired in January 1986, it's now honourably displayed at the Toronto Railway Museum at the former CPR roundhouse.

CN 8142 is noteworthy as it was the CNR's first S-4 and one of the earliest of that model. The S-4 evolved in Canada a year ahead of the transition at Alco in Schenectady as railways standardized on the GSC truck. CNR's order followed the one from the CPR. The Montreal Locomotive Works outshopped the 8142 in August 1949 (serial 76481) as the 7995, and the CNR renumbered it in 1956. 8142 was one of the last Canadian units to house a 539T engine manufactured in Auburn, New York, as MLW transitioned to engines made by Dominion Engineering Works in Montreal.

CNR had acquired 20 S-2 switchers from Alco in 1947 and a further ten from MLW in early 1949. The CNR bought 105 S-4s between 1949 and January 1957. After that, they received 89 more turbocharged S-7, S-12 and S-13 models from MLW. CNR also dabbled in the S-3 model, buying 49, 8450 to 8498, between November 1951 and August 1954. S-4 8142 was retired on Tuesday, June 11, 1974, and scrapped at the reclamation yard in London, Ontario.