Caption: It looks like this may have been a special occasion for Reg to head all the way out to the eastern reaches of Toronto on a gloomy Saturday morning: spotless, freshly minted GMD SD40-2F's 9000 and 9001 (that even on a lousy November morning around 8am look great) head up SD's 5410 and 5945 on freight #904, departing at the north-east corner of Agincourt Yard in Scarborough. The train will depart the yard eastbound and take the connecting track southward to reach the Belleville Sub at Staines. A pair of rebuilt SW9u's are visible near the east yard tower and old "van alley". Perhaps someone with knowledge of GMD outshopping dates could see if this was their maiden voyage east after arriving from GMD London?

The 25 SD40-2F "Red Barns" were a bone of contention between CP and EMD early on. In the late 80's, CP wanted 645-powered SD40-2's to match the rest of its fleet, even though by then EMD had moved on to producing the 710-engined 60-series lineup. So, EMD (at GMD London) built 25 SD40-2's in a cowl-body "Draper Taper" package for CP, powered by 16-645E3B engines.

It wasn't long before they started experiencing engine problems and showing high silver content in the oil samplings (which signified impending engine problems and that a unit should be sidelined before a critical engine failure happens). They were sent back to EMD and repaired, and sidelined again, and sent back to be repaired again a few times until the exact problem was figured out. The problem turned out to be defective rocking wrist pins in the E3B power assemblies of the 645 engines, caused by an assembly machine making them out of specification (apparently by the time they figured out the exact problem, the machine making the defective parts had been already replaced due to old age).

In the end, these cowl-bodied units proved to be rather unpopular with CP crews. In the mid-late 2010's, despite being the newest SD40-2 units on the roster, all remaining Red Barns were sold off to either shortline Central Main & Quebec, or to J&L Consulting for scrapping. In a cruel twist of irony, CP's takeover of the CM&Q will reunite them with some of those previously unwanted barns.

Reg Button photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection.