When Canadian Pacific Railway discontinued their transcontinental passenger service, they sold most of their inventory through their 'CP Bygones' shop opened in the mid 1970's. This seller purchased these two plates directly from CP Bygones and has stored them for 40 years.
This is a CLC (Canadian Locomotive Company) set of plates from CPR 'B' unit #4472. This FM unit had serial #2729 (see photo #1) and was built in 1954, retired in July, 1971. It was then rebuilt by CP to Robot Control Car and renumbered to Robot-10 in Sept. 1972. And then was finally retired in May 1984. Photo #2 shows the tag attached by CP Bygones with their catalogue item number.
Photo #3 taken at Alyth, Calgary, AB in 1969 by an unknown photographer and is from the Bill Sanderson Collection.
Photo #4 was taken by Claude Prutton at Port Coquitlam, BC on June 12th, 1977.
All locomotive photos courtesy (and permission obtained from) mountainrailway.com.
The diamond shaped plate comes complete with the 'Powered by Fairbanks Morse' bar plate. Both plates are in excellent shape with little damage around the mounting holes which is usually not the case when these plates were removed. There is one small gouge on the diamond plate above the letter 'O' (see photo #2). I did not attempt to clean them as most collectors prefer them in 'as is' original condition. The plates are made of heavy sheet aluminum with stamped-in data.
These plates (as a pair) are exceedingly rare to locate. Plates will be shipped in their original wrapper from CP Bygones which has the catalogue number written by the Bygones Shop on the wrapper with photos and history sheet all boxed to protect the contents.
