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BN 1789

BN GP9 1789 was built by EMD in April of 1957 as the Great Northern 716 delivered in the classic Empire Builder scheme. It also should be noted that GN operated their early GP's long hood forward so the long hood was the front.. From what I know the 716 went from the Classic orange and green straight to Big Sky Blue skipping the simplified orange and green. The 716 was assigned to Lines West - Spokane Division out of Hillyard, WA. Checking my GN roster notes I never did see the GN 716 in service here in Western Washington.

The GN 716 was renumbered to BN 1789 after the March 1970 BN merger and remained assigned to Hillyard, WA. It was later painted BN green with the white stripes applied to the front of the long hood.

I first saw the BN 1789 on March 9, 1975 at Interbay, WA in a power set of 1771/803/1794/1789/1783/1915 (GP9/F9B/GP9/GP9/GP9/GP9) Of these GP9's the 1794 and 1789 had been assigned to Hillyard in 1972 but by 1973 both had been reassigned to Interbay.

On 3-8-79 I photographed the 1789 at Auburn, WA on one of the old NP roundhouse whisker tracks looking as if it was awaiting some mechanical work.

I took one last roster shot of the 1789 at Interbay, WA 2-3-81. In this shot you can clearly see some GN Big Sky Blue showing ahead of the cab.

The 1789 was retired on 7-12-83 and soon sold to the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority becoming the MBTA 1923 in January 1984. Here are photos of the ex-1789 on the MBTA from rrpicturearchives. Apparently retained the BN green while in service.

The Don Ross Group website states the MBTA 1923 went to the Cape Cod RR 1923 in 1992 and then to Bay Colony RR 1703 in 1999. There are photos of both on this website.

There is no further information on this GP9 but as the last photos were taken in 1999 chances are it is out of service or scrapped.