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accommodations of the MLW safety cab. More recent developments include EMD’s Whisper Cab in which the cab is acoustically isolated from the rest of the engine. On occasion, locomotives with wide noses had a W added to the model number (GP40-2W) but this was not an official designation of the manufacturer
and was generally used only in advertising and by railfans. You will occasionally read references to “wide-cab” locomotives. All of the cabs are pretty much the same width – it’s the noses that change. Canadian modelers seem to favor the terms Comfort Cab or Safety Cab,
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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q. I’m having difficulty understanding the difference between a Canadian cab, Canadian safety cab, wide-nose cab, and whisper cab? Please explain. A. The short answer is that although they look pretty much the same, there are significant differences inside. Here are the details: In the early 1970s the Montreal Locomotive Works (MLW) developed a unique cab that incorporated collision protection and several comfort accommodations for crew members. Improvements included electrically heated windows, significantly improved weather stripping on the cab doors, and widening the nose to create additional space for crew Page 16 • Apr 2012 MRH
members to move about. For the safety of the crew, the widened nose was heavily reinforced.
Standard Nose
Rather than the regular sheet metal used on locomotive bodies, the wide nose was fabricated from 3/8” steel plate with additional bracing behind the plating. Windows in the cab were fitted with glass capable of withstanding the impact of a cinder block or a .22 caliber bullet. Canadian National specified safety cabs on 51 GP38-2 locomotives it ordered from MLW in 1973. Although EMD built the FP45 and DDA40X locomotives of the 1960s with full-width noses, they were not designed with the advanced collision protection and crew
MRH Questions, Answers, and Tips, page 1
Wide Nose
Figure 1: The difference between a standard and a wide nose GP38-2s is clearly illustrated in Athearn’s HO scale model. The standard-nose SP version replicates a locomotive built by EMD in 1980, while the CN model is of a wide-nose locomotive built by MLW in the early 1970s.
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