The Soo Line, despite being a fairly tightly coupled CPR subsidiary, retains a few vestiges of individuality. CPR was working at collapsing it into the CP rail system before CPKC’s merger with the PV&T Trust, but after being thrust into the wild garden of railroads that the Trust had ridden to enough success to actually be able to merge with CPKC as equals, has relaxed to the point where the Soo can continue to have it’s own corporate identity.
In operational terms, this means very little – the Soo is still dispatched from the western district (CPR) offices in Calgary, and the agents still announce themselves as being from the CP Rail System – but locomotives have been stopped being painted into the CPR paint scheme and new deliveries (a handful of big GEs that had been ordered before the merger) will be delivered in Soo’s candy apple red paint & giant SOO logo (the smaller Canadian railways in the United Railways system have been encouraging the Soo to go back to their much more striking white w/ red bow wave scheme, but neither the Soo or parent CPR have any particular interest in splitting their identities quite that much.)
The Soo is intending to join the march of electrification eventually (by electrifying their ex-Milwaukee Road mainline from Chicago to the Twin Cities) but, aside from some preliminary engineering there is no urgency unless some fairly substantial electrification grants materialise.