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Caption: CP C424's 4200 and 4212 lead an eastbound freight past by the platforms of London Station in November of 1965, both sporting their as-delivered maroon and grey "script" livery. Built in 1963 by MLW, CP 4200 (originally numbered 8300) had the distinction of being the first C424 ever built, even pre-dating any built by ALCO. As-delivered it featured a high-mounted front headlight, and rear numberboards built into the radiator housing (that were later plated over), as well as an RS10/18-style fuel tank. Some of the initial units of CP's next order of C424's were also delivered with high-mounted headlights, but gradually they were all lowered to the nose.
CP would go on to accumulate 51 C424's (versus only 24 of competitor GMD's GP35 model), and after a rebuild in the early 80's many operated into the 90's until the last few were retired in 1998. CP 4200 was ultimately scrapped, but other units live on in museums and operating on shortline railways.
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8300/4200 was the oddball in the fleet, as most of the other CP C424′s (4201-4250) looked very similar to each other. This was also during the period CP was experimenting with trade-ins as a way of upgrading its fleet, hence wrecked RS10 8474 was the trade-in unit for 8300.
According to the Dean & Hanna CP book, various FA/FB, RS3 and RS10 units would be traded in by CP for new C424′s (and various F’s and GP’s to GMD for new GP35′s) until CP realized it wasn’t really growing the fleet by doing one-for-one trade-ins for new power.
Wonderful photo.