In the late 1950s, the Canadian Pacific decided that it was time to pull the wire down on the CPEL lines in the golden horseshoe, because diesel fuel was cheaper that electricity + maintaining the overhead. This plan didn’t take into consideration all of the people who lived along the CPEL system, some of whom greeted the first run of the diesels with something less than complete enthusiasm (and in the case of Galt, an ordinance saying that diesels couldn’t be run on the downtown industrial spur outside of the 9-5 window.)

So, after a month of increasingly agitated debate, the CP backed down on dieselising the switching districts in Brantford, Galt, and Kitchener, and they stayed under wire until the CP put the lines up for abandonment and the newly-formed ORRC took them over.

However, when the plan to keep the wire up on those switching districts was put into place, the CPR shops built a pair of tiny steeplecabs for the Lake Erie & Northern (#79) and Grand River Railroad (#80) to station in Galt & Kitchener instead of dragging a bigger motor between districts for whatever industrial switching needed to be done. These little units used the trucks & electrical systems out of a pair of recently scrapped interurban coaches, set in a shops-built frame & cab, and equipped with all the modern conveniences that had been fit to the LE&N/GRR’s larger & older steeplecabs.

GRR #80 lasted until about 1992, when the lines in the Waterloo/Kitchener area were sold to the region for future use as LRT lines (that unit went with the lines, but sadly was left out on an unprotected siding, was heavily vandalised, and then scrapped.)

LE&N #79 was still shuffling cars on the 20 block Galt industrial spur in 1986, when the ORRC purchased the last bits of the Lake Erie & Northern as part of their project to connect the two separate segments of their system together, and there it stayed until the last customer closed in 2007.

It is still on the roster, but is on loan to the Simcoe Railway Historical Society and only sees operation hauling their excursion trains.