This handsome American OO model was built by Pierre Bourassa, and it is one of at least two of these CN GP9RM that he built.

His starting point for both models was the Kemtron GP7. I always think, if you are thinking to do a conversion like this you have to be ready to complete the project. In his case, he very much was.

CN 7052 came to me not in working order, but was not a huge project to get working again. The main issues were it needed a new belt for the Baker drive (from the plumbing department of a large home store) and the drive line was touchy to get set up. Lubed up and with clean wheels it runs quite well, with three lights wired in to good effect. 

What I really like as well is that as they were retired from the CN these engines made their way to short lines, such as my MQS. I’ve been enjoying running the model with my modern era equipment.

I have a number of photos of models from Pierre, and have several photos of this companion engine, CN 7053. It looks to have been rebuilt in the same manner. He built a whole series of modern engines in his later years, mostly from plastic. I own one other of these, a big CSX GE Dash 8-40C, and hope to someday perhaps own a couple more of his creations. On the layout these days I mostly run either a late 50s era or a 80s era. Although probably slightly off my era for my road (the rebuilds date to the 1980s, so they would not have been sold off for some years), I will still make good use of CN 7052.