Caption: A CN westbound pulls down the Toronto - Vancouver mainline while awaiting an eastbound to pull up the siding at Mileage 190 of the Edson Sub at Entrance Alberta in September 1997. The train had just passed Hinton and is continuing up the valley of the Athabaska River towards the next division point of Jasper. Entrance derives its name from the fact that it is an eastern gateway to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. GP40-2L(W) 9554 (3-1975 #A3189) is one of 268 ordered new from GMDL in London, Ontario, with deliveries of four orders between March 1974 and May 1976. CN acquired a further ten from GO Train in 1991. CN's Research Centre developed a Positive Traction Control system that GMDL adopted and introduced as a factory installation on these units. The new system reduced wheel-slippage, which enabled them to accelerate high-priority, high-speed trains more quickly. The units traversed the system and became a mainstay on Toronto - Edmonton trains because their lightened and raised frames allowed the installation of 3,000 imperial gallon fuel tanks. The larger capacity eliminated refuelling between Toronto and Winnipeg. GMDL installed standard, 2,300-gallon tanks on the final 35-unit order, which are GP40-2s.

CN's Research developed improvements to the lateral clearance on the centre axles of C-C trucked locomotives beginning in 1975 so that the superior tracking abilities of the GP40-2s became redundant. Their higher fuel consumption as compared to newer units, led to their early retirement from CN. Today only 59 of the 278 units remain, mostly in yard and local service.

9554 left the roster in 2000, and it became Yadkin Valley 9554 in North Carolina and later RLHH 3049 in Southern Ontario. In March 2019, RLHH traded it in on a GP38-2 from Metro East Industries in Fairview Heights, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.