This Class O-18-a 0-6-0 switcher was built in 1920 as #1781 by the Grand Trunk Railway's Point St. Charles Shops in Quebec for Canadian National Railways. The Grand Trunk built fifty of these locomotives between 1919 and 1921 and designated them F9 Class, as well as ordering twenty-five from Lima in 1920 for use in the US. In 1923, when the Grand Trunk was absorbed by Canadian National Railways, the home-built locomotives were reclassified O-18-a and the Lima-built F9s became the GTW O-18-b class. They worked on the Stafford Subdivision in Ontario. The O-18-a locomotives were renumbered from #1749-#1798 to #7423-#7473 and operated right up until dieselisation.
A coal burner, #7456 weighs 174,000 lbs with 51” drivers and
22” x 26” cylinders. Operating at a boiler pressure of 175 psi, it delivered 36,703 lbs tractive effort. The tender weighs 130,000 lbs and has a capacity of 5,500 gallons of water and 9 tons of coal.
After retirement, all but three of the original fifty locomotives were sold, two of which survive, #7470 and #7456. #7470 is in the collection of the Conway Scenic Railway in North Conway, NH.