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Caption: CN G8 854 pauses for its picture in Yorkton, SK on June 20, 1978. The unit was delivered to CN in June 1954 as 7674, renumbered a number of times to 1574, then to 1104, and finally to 854. One has to wonder what CN was thinking when this group of 5 units (850-854) was ordered as CN had already received all their F7s, GP7s, and many yard units by this time and GP9s, SW1200RSs, and FP9s were only a couple of months out. These export style units seemed destined to become standard gauge orphans.
Location in Yorkton is a guess.
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One of the really odd things about those was the trucks. CN bought them as 6-axle A-1-A units, but at some point removed the centre idler axles, plated over the side, and converted the trucks from A-1-A to B-B, as shown here.
I can only guess they were purchased as lightweight prairie branchline units before the GMD-1′s were ever designed (G8′s purchased 1954, and the first GMD-1′s purchased 1958), and later converted to B-B for other use (yard and local switching?) when displaced by the GMD-1′s.
The six narrow-gauge Newfoundland G8 units (800-805) arrived in 1956 and seem to be separate from those earlier 850′s. They also had the very rounded cab roofs, versus angled cabs like this unit.