FNGers Ops Session Spring 2010

Ten FNGers visited the LVN last Friday. My good friend Gilbert brought a new loader for my open pit mine. It looks at home and adds alot to the action.

You can see the new orange beast hard at work.

Here Ron and Chris are getting their Van for the local way freight.

With Van in hand they are now proceeding out of Richmond Looks like Chris and Ron are reading their train orders for the next move.

They have arrived at the first industry. The cement plant needs to be switched and then they will pick up their train wich is on the left in the photo.

Meanwhile Mike and Bob are starting to block their cars in the Richmond classification tracks.

Chris looks like he has all in hand while the RS18 pulls a string past him. The SD38-2 is on his throttle as they start tto work the cement plant.

The action continues.

Meanwhile a block of grain cars are being pulled through Hamer's curve.

Lots of operators are in the action here with the grain train, coal drag and mixed freight.

Now who is the happiest???? James, Ron or Chris???

At the other end of the yard you can see Jim with the SD90 Mac ready to switch the grain terminal. He has left his string of hoppers on one of the yard classification tracks.

Here Ron is switching the Glycol plant in Shelby.

Joel and James are giving the thumbs up as they pull a string of hoppers at the Port coal mine.

Here Dave is giving hand signals to Jim as they slow to stop. Nice to catch this delicate maneuver of joining the strings of hoppers.

Here Mike is closely watching the back truck of the RS18. He wants to clear the switch and there is not much room for error.

The grain train exiting Hamer's curve by Tower BX.

Joel is bringing his pair of SC70 Mac's to get the green hoppers for the STBD Coal mine.

Here he is switching out the mine.

fred giving us his favourite look as he brings a string of loaded Procor hoppers to be linked with Joel and James' train.

Here is James bringing the coal drag to the double crossover at the Port Mine.

With all the cars now on the train there are 42 loads. You can see Joel in the back indicating the end of the train. The orange hoppers are just exiting the curve in front of the farm on the back wall. James is shading his eyes as he looks all the way back

Here Ron and Chris are switching out the GE plant.

James is watching the switching action in Richmond as Mike uncouples and Bob drives.and

The wayfreight exits Hamer Curve as the coal drag on the yard lead is being split into the classification yard.

All in all it was a great operating session and it is time for us to sit back, have a beer and some cheese curds. Time to relax and tell stories about the two hour adventure on the LVN.

Easter Sunday Railfanning

Here we are at Dorion jusr across the bridge from St Anne's. The CN CP double track main from Montreal to Toronto passes here. It looks to be a great spot for train watching as there were many dads out with their kids. The difficult part is the lighting angles and the power lines, however I got a shot of one of CN's newest SD70m's heading for Toronto.


Coteau Junction was the next stop. This junction includes the Toronto Montreal CN route plus the Alexandria sub to Ottawa (Old OCR) to the North and the CSX south to the good ol' US of A. Here we can see GP38-2W 4810 and GP38-2 4730 at the west end of the junction. They are working a string of cars at the south yard. This old power is allocated to the Alexandria Sub to Ottawa and replaced the mutch more interesting ALCO RS18 fleet of the OCR .

The trainman is about to step down at the station.

This side on shot really shows the paint gone right down to the primer.

With the trainman back onboard. the train is now backing past the station to the south yard for local switching before it returns to Ottawa.

On the way home we went to the diamond where the CN Alexandria sub crosses the double track main from Montreal to Smith Falls. This west bound was a pleasant surprise as the lead unit is an SD40-2 Red Barn.

All in all it was a warm and sunny blue sky day for April. Happy Easter all.