Throwback Thursday - Root For the Underdog.

CN 9309 is among friends as it reposes on the shop track at the Rectory Street locomotive facility in London, Ontario on Feb. 09, 1992.

I always enjoyed encountering one of CN's GP40 locomotives.  Built by GMD in 1966/67, there were originally 16 of these units.  They were numbered in the 4000-series, right after the two GP35s.  By the time of this photo, 14 of these units remained on the roster, and they had been renumbered into the 9300-series.  Our subject locomotive would originally have sported number 4009.  In 1992, most mainline freights were handled by one or more of CN's ubiquitous GP40-2 diesels, so seeing one of the 9300s in a consist was a bit of a treat.

As so often happened as locomotive rosters transitioned from first generation to second, this was actually CN's second use of this 9300 number series.  CN 9300-9344 (even numbers only) were CLC CFA16-4 C-Line locomotives, while 9301-9305 (odd) were model CPB16-4.