With the Dash 9 generation, General Electric skipped the option to offer four-axle road switchers and only offered six-axle locomotives. The first model introduced in 1993 was the Dash 9-44CW, officially called C44-9W. So it basically was a modernized successor of the Dash 8-44CW, meaning it has 4,400 hp, the C-C wheel arrangement and a wide nose. With this generation, the wide nose could be found on the vast majority of locomotives built.

Power still came from the proven 7FDL16 engine that had been in use for decades. While this locomotive had DC traction motors, the AC4000CW was offered with three-phase AC traction motors. As many railway companies were still sceptical about the new type of traction, the Dash 9-44CW could find more customers than its AC counterpart. By 2004 when the Evolution series had been introduced, GE had built 3,668.