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| Last updated on May 29, 2024
After debut in Kansas City, first unit heads north in revenue service
After making its public debut on May 18 at a Final Spike Steam Tour event in Kansas City, CPKC ES44AC No. 9375 — the first locomotive to wear the railroad’s new paint scheme — is now in revenue service. Paired with sister ES44AC KCS No. 4805, also repainted into the new scheme, the locomotive was photographed leading Kansas City, Mo., to St. Paul, Minn., train 251 at Nahant, Iowa, on Saturday, May 25.
— Updated May 29 at 9 a.m. with corrected information.
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Apparently CPKC is still not a recognized reporting mark. Note the small CP on the cab under the unit number.
PAUL — Good observation but likely a wrong concluion (your first sentence.)
I, too, noticed the “CP” reporting mark. It’s not unusual and likely has to do with non-unique road numbers as between the two merged fleets. It’s easier to keep “CP” as a reporting mark than to renumber the loco.
I have seen freight cars with CMO and CHTT reporting marks that appear to have been built long after MOPAC was dissolved into UPRR. In other words, bought by UPRR but not labeled “UP”. “CMO” and “CHTT” were either paper railroads from the MOPAC family, or else non-existent railroads whose initials were convenient to use.
Recall that when Conrail was split into NS and CSX, “PRR” and “NYC” initials were resurrected to be be slapped onto Conrail rolling stock until other arrangements could be made.
This is often the case with mergers where if all cars were to be shown with their “merged” reporting marks, a lot of expensive change would have occur or they might run out of usable numbers. This happened to UP with all the locomotives who entered their system from SP/SSW, MKT and CNW and was about to require 5 digit numbers which would have required a massive and expensive upgrade to their computer systems. Instead, the UPY reporting mark was created for all yard and switching locomotives. With rail cars, it is many times easier to keep the RM’s the same until the car is wrecked or retired. Some reporting marks have been made obsolete through these methods. It does make for interesting train watching…
that’s actually another ES44AC trailing not an AC4400CW
The two freshly painted units look really sharp together back to back.
If CPkc cleans these loco’s as often as they clean their current units, they will end up red and black blobs with a splash of white. For all intents and purposes they still look like CP locomotives with the dominant red and white and the Beaver Shield that is “Clearly Canadian” with only a slight nod to the KCS heritage…