Caption: It wasn't very common to see the new GO Transit F59PH units operating with older power, partially because of the short overlap of only a few years that both co-existed on the roster, and partially because the F59's were more than capable of handling a train themselves and providing their own HEP, but it did happen as evident here!

GO Transit GP40-2W 707, running out its final miles on GO just a few months before retirement, double-heads a 10-car bilevel consist with F59PH 526 on train #1908, heading eastbound over Clarkson Road North east of the GO station just before 9 in the morning. The service track to CN's Clarkson Yard, the east end of the wye and Petro Canada's Clarkson refinery can be seen in the foreground.

By this point in time GO had amassed a fleet of 42 F59's in three orders, allowing it to sell both its GP40TC's (to Amtrak in 1988) and F40PH's (to Amtrak in 1990). Their GP40-2W and rebuilt GP40-3's remained on the roster, often leased out to CP for freight service, but around the fall of 1991 ten GP40-2W's including 707 would be sold to CN for freight use and renumbered above their own 9600-series units (a lone unit, 703, was sold to Tri-Rail).

The ex-Rock Island GP40-3's would solder on for a few more years (often being leased to power-short CP for freight service) before being traded in to GMD on the last order of F59's in 1994, giving GO a solid roster of 49 F59PH units. Aside from a sale of 4 surplus units to TRE in 1997, the fleet of F59's would remain as GO's sole power until the first new MP40 arrived in the fall of 2007.

Peter Jobe photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection.