Canadian Pacific SD9043 - another impulse...

As it was my birthday last week I made two 'impulse' buys, the first was the Oxford Rail Janus, that at least will be usable on my industrial micro layout - however this second buy, a Kato N gauge EMD SD9043 MAC in Canadian Pacific is decidedly less usable!

Back in 1999 I visited Canada for the second time, and whilst at Field having lunch I watched a cavalcade of freights heading from and towards the Kicking Horse Pass with a pair of SD90s up front and a second mid train. These impressive beasts were so much larger than the SD40s I had grown up being used to on Canadian Pacific trains I'd seen ten years earlier and in books and magazines and left a big impression on me.

In my teens my Dad and I built a HO scale layout, but I never managed to get my hands on an SD90 - until now, and this time in N gauge. This is a superb looking model, working ditch lights even, and a lovely slow crawl. Once I dig out my slides of the prototypes I saw in 1999 I'll renumber it and then weather it to match their appearance - and it will then probably go in the display case along with my WP&Y GE shovel nose, also inspired by locomotives I saw that same year.

As way of comparison to the usual items on my workbench, here it is pictured with a Baldwin, sharing a gauge and showing the difference between the two scales! More soon...