In 1998 I was lucky enough to attend the NMRA national convention at Kansas City and found, on one of the stands, a brand new Lifelike Proto2000 SD9 in Burlington Chinese Red livery for a very attractive price. Of course, every C&O modeller needs one of these ...!!!! Back at home I was involved with a group of friends in building a layout that modelled a ficticious 'lumpy' bit of Colorado, similar to the Royal Gorge. It didn't take much persuading to alter the fanciful history to include a connection from the Joint Line for Santa Fe so I thought that a CB&Q SD9 wouldn't be out of place either.
On my return to the UK I started doing the research and found out that the only SD9s that the CB&Q and its subsiduaries owned that matched the Proto2000 model were the group 'owned' by the Colorado and Southern. So far, so good. However, here my luck ran out. The only two engines that had been repainted into Chinese Red livery were the 'Leadville' engine and 825. As the Leadville engine had a special large snowplow arrangement to cope with the weather up there and this was meant to be a quick conversion without having to repaint I was left with one alternative, number 825. (At least there was one!)
So 825 it became. There were very few additions to alter an already good model to be a better match to a specific prototype. The position of the horns, the addition of the steam boiler arrangements (which come with the P2K model, for the modeller to add if appropriate) and the additional light clusters that stuck up above the short and long hood ends were the most important. A little treatment to remove the CB&Q number that was on the model and the addition of the C&S number and sub-branding were the only real treatments required to the pre-painted model. A fine looking and powerful model - I could use a lot more but most of my modelled roads (even the growing number!!) didn't use them. I suspect that I will submit to the odd buying urge if I see them at a good price - at least the PRR had several.
