Lyon Valley Northern

This site is designed to promote the hobby of ferroequinology. It also provides an opportunity to show the development of the "Lyon Valley Northern": an HO railroad featuring CN and BNSF action in the West. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions or comments at cnlyon@sympatico.ca

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Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Retired

Saturday, April 28, 2007

SCHEMATICS OF THE LVN

For quite a while now folks have been trying to get a handle on the LVN trackplan. Hopefully the schematics will serve as a good starting point so you can see the operating potential of the layout.
Aa the layout does have two continuous loops lets pick a spot and start at the northern end. As you proceed south you pass through a double crossover and have the opportunity to enter a major classification yard with drill track, arrival departures, classification tracks, industries and lead to Rchmond.


As you pass through Dunvegan you enter the Wainwright Sub at the south end of the major classification yard and here you can service your locomotives, classify trains as well as service industries such as Intermodal and grain terminals, furniture, lumber industries etc etc.
Shelby is south of the Wainwright sub and it host a number of yard tracks and industries. Also it leads off to a coal mine past the golf course. This brings you full circle on my double loop layout.
Oh Yes..Then there is Richmond yard which is east off the Dunvegan Sub. This special area has a timesaver with oil, lumber, paper and baked goods industries. Also the CN Fairview shops and caboose track are located there.

Hope this was helpful to give you some idea of what the LVN is all about.

Monday, April 16, 2007

A great week with the Friday Night Group

Well it was another great week for the Lyon Valley Northern. After the OVAR dinner on Tuesday, I had to clean up the room for OPs Wednesday night and write the train orders on Thursday. Here is what it looked like just prior to operations.



During the session everyone was careful running at prototypical speeds, however the odd accident did occure when the train crew decided to put a caboose into a full siding. Hmm...One car to many...hey guys:)





Here is a crew operating the Richmond Yard. Don, Mike and Michel had a full evening with this timesaver...22 cars in and 22 out. Then grab the caboose and off to staging.


Here they are after departure with the CEFX SD90Mac in the lead. They are about to meet with a BNSF hotshot intermodal on the outside main heading southbound.



Here is a picture of Mike Hamer's great work putting in a curved wooden crossing at the yard lead into Richmond.






Here is Mike hard at work on an earlier work night. It is sure fun having friends in the hobby. Just great to motivate you to do more and you can learn a whole bunch from their expertise.







I got an email from a fellow forum member (Syl) from Quebec who asked if he could post this blog on his web site. I visited his site and I encourage everyone to have a look. He has a great model railway and some interesting links.

http://www.freewebs.com/rail/index.htm

I am going over to Michel Boucher's D&H tonight. The progress on the extension is going well. He sent me a picture yesterday and I will post it for you to see.





Sunday, April 08, 2007

Richmond Yard in Progress

Mike and Joel came over on Saturday to help wrap some of the lumber loads. We had a real assembly line going. The next day I went right to work adding dirt ground foam and static grass. I am going to have the Fridaynight group over on April 13th so this long weekend was ideal to get some work done.


This first picture shows the lumber mill. I painted the buildings with krylon spraybombs including the weathering. The signs came from some Logos I found on the internet. White Glued them to styrene and mounted them on the building. The load wraps are home made based on an old kit I had. The full loads were made by my friend Richard Caig in Edmonton.

The backdrop was painted using my old tried and true 3 inch brush and fan brush with yellow and black acrylics.

Ah yes the helo shot. Stood on a chair for this one.

More shots showing the run around track in front of the mill and printing companies.

This is the yard lead. You can see the caboose track to the left and the fuel facility to the right. Static grass really makes a great 3D look.

This picture was taken where the Richmond yard joins the classification yard. Will have to name it soon. All in all a great day of work. Tomarrow I will head down to continue with this fun endeavour. Chow for now!!!!!!

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Cement Distrbution on the LVN

Lehigh Inland Cement







Finished that Walthers Madusa Cement and redid it as an Inland facility. It is located near the duck under opposite from the Open Pit Mine. It was lots of fun doing the scenery around the plant and I started using my Noch Static Grass Applicator. A very nifty product that stands up like Elvis' brush cut in GI blues.




This picture is taken from the laundry room door. The sign is paper on Styrene. I downloaded it from an image file on the Internet.








In this shot you can see the grass better. Mike Hamer made the crossing out of strip wood.










The last photo is taken from the Richmond Yard lead looking back across the classification Yard. The industry is in a great location and can be viewed from all sides.