Caption: The ditch lights of newly rebuilt CP SD40M-2 5491 cut through the rain as it leads an SD40-2, a Conrail GE and a rebuilt GP9u on freight #526 north on the Hamilton Sub, coming around the curve at Main Street near Aberdeen Yard in Hamilton.

More set in expanding their fleet with secondhand SD40-2's and not impressed by new SD50's or SD60's, CP briefly looked to the rebuild market in the early-mid 90's as a way to acquire more power. Around this time, other railroads like SP and MARC were turning to locomotive rebuilders like MK to satisfy their motive power needs in an economical or specific way that the large builders weren't able or willing to. MK was "building" a large 133-unit order of SD40M-2's for SP using old cast-off SD40 and SD45 locomotive cores acquired secondhand through other railroads, lease fleets, backshop deadlines, etc, and CP decided to place a sample order of 10 SD40M-2 units in 1995. Basically, MK took an old SD40 or SD45 and rebuilt it to SD40-2 standards, complete with either replacing or cutting down the V20 engine blocks in the SD45's into 16-cylinder 645's. The CP units were a mix of SD40 and SD45's originating from a handful of different railroads (SP, UP, C&O, D&RGW), with 5491 originally being built as UP SD40 3022. This experiment was brief and did not result in any follow up orders, as later that year the first of CP's new modern AC-powered GE AC4400CW's arrived, and the rest was history. The SD40M-2 units fared as well as the rest of CP's SD40-2 fleet, and at one point some found themselves in yard service in Thunder Bay and Calgary.

Karl Bury photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.