Caption: On Vancouver Island and from the era when clean locomotives were an everyday sight (and a great starter job for me), northward daily-except-Saturday freight train No. 51 from Victoria on Sunday 1972-06-11 had a pair of shiny GP9s, CP 8821 and 8679, as it approached the midway point in its journey to Stockett then as a yard movement on the spur to the yard and barge slip at Wellcox in Nanaimo.

Viewed from the Macmillan Bloedel log-haul truck road bridge paralleling CN’s Tidewater sub. bridge over the railway and TransCanada Highway at Koksilah, one detail that jumps out at me is the solid horizontal handrail on the front of 8821 where eventually a hinged crossover platform would be installed for secure movement of personnel between coupled units.