REAL TIME COAL OPERATIONS

To help celebrate the 1/2 million You Tube views on CNLVN, I have put together a real time video which depicts what the FNG operators do with the Coal Drag.  In this series, I wanted to show a real time appreciation for the Coal Drag Run on the Lyon Valley Northern. During Friday Night Group (FNG) operations this is only one of 5 trains that is running simultaneously in a two hour session.

 

 In Part One, a CN SD50AF leads a NAR  SD38-2 from Richmond Yard to Edmonton yard where they lash to the Port Coal Mine empties.  They depart and navigate their way across the layout through double track mainline scenes to Shelby, After stopping for a crew change, the train pulls forward and cars are dropped at Hobb's Farm.  Then the locomotives run around and head for the mine.



In Part 2, the locomotves go to the Port Coal Mine and pull loads out put and empties in; also handling the idler cars.  The interesting aspect of this operation is working the long srings of cars and sequencing them to open tracks to minimize moves.

In Part 3 of 3, the Port Coal loads return from Shelby to Edmonton.  The engineer gets new orders to take empties to the Starboard Coal Mine.  In this situation, all the switching moves to the mine are facing.  Interesting track work was designed to make this work smoothly and also keeps the main clear.  This is also a real time FNG run.

 

One can appreciate that what you see in this series is done in a 2.5 hour Friday Night Group session and is complicated by other trains doing their runs as well.