The first locomotive painted for Canadian Pacific Kansas City (9375) was revealed on May 13, 2024. It took me a year and four days to see my first CPKC-painted locomotive.
As usual, I was railfanning while running errands. I spotted a train moving east through the Winnipeg yard, and I pulled over to grab a shot. As it emerged from behind a string of cars, I saw the CPKC paint scheme and quickly snapped a few shots with my phone as it rolled past.
The grubby trailing locomotive was CP 9675. That golden beaver is looking pretty faded.
Now that I’ve seen it in person, I have to say that it’s the mullet of the locomotive paint schemes – all business in front and all party in the back.
In the end, my opinion doesn’t matter!
I decided to walk up onto the Slaw Rebchuk bridge. This bridge carries Salter Street north-south over the CPKC yard, and is east of the infamous Arlington Street bridge, now closed. I hadn’t been on this bridge for years (for railfanning) so it was time.
Slaw Rebchuk was a long-time Winnipeg city councillor (serving from 1950 to 1978) and the new bridge was named for him in 1984. There’s a nice gallery of photos here that shows the demolition of the old bridge and the construction of the new bridge. In a few photos you can see where CP had its cabooses serviced.
This is the view from the bridge, facing EAST.
Below is the view facing WEST. You can see the Arlington Street bridge in the distance.
As I walked north across the bridge (on the east side), CP 9365 came rolling east.
It looks like it is chasing that outgoing train, but in reality it pulled past the switches, then backed up to become the lead engine of a tank train just outside the photo on the right. You’ll see it again.
I finished walking across the bridge, and immediately walked back (south) on the west side of the bridge. Getting my steps in!
Whipping out my telephoto lens, I shot a few switcher pairs in the yard. CP 4525 is the closer locomotive and CP 3112 has a crew member on it. The closed Arlington Street bridge is visible with the casino in the background.
As I reached the south end of the bridge, I saw that a train was departing to the east, so I walked back up the east side a bit to photograph the trailing locomotive (8056).
On the right is CP 9365 at the head end of the tank train.
I took the opportunity to take one more photo of the CPKC unit before I left the area.
What do you think of the CPKC paint scheme?
Myself, I would have liked to see them just put the beaver logo on the existing KCS paint scheme which I really like! It has all the colors of both railroads!
The new paint scheme is a dud to me. The big change is on the back end that doesn’t do a photog much good. Would have preferred the other selections that had some changes up front. But, the employees picked the worst of the bunch, so we are stuck with it…
I think they could have come up with a better looking scheme but in a year or two it won’t matter as the entire engine will be black and grimy. I’m not slamming CPKC just reflecting on what I see around the Montreal yard. Too bad but I guess washing freight locomotives is not cost conscious.