I have received several questions about the Fraser Canyon recently, both from people here and in the Atlas Forum. Since the largest and gabbiest N scaler's are here I will post my response here. The Fraser Canyon begins just beyond the Fraser Valley. Hope British Columbia marks the beginning of the mountains outside of Vancouver BC. Greater Vancouver is a 2 million city, in which BNSF, Amtrack, Via, CN and CP terminate. In North Vancouver, where I live, BC Rail terminates delivering wood and other products from up North. Vancouver is the second largest port in North America, after New York city. Consequently there is a great deal of train freight,wood products, grain, coal, sulfur, pottash, etc, etc, etc, delivered to Vancouver for the rest of the world. I don't know if my next statement is accurate, but I suspect it is: Vancouver is the largest Grain port in North America. The great news in all of this is that if you are a rail fan, there is this incredible pot pourri of entertainment available at any time. If you have a problem peninsula and you can't come up with any ideas, in Trains about a year and a half ago, they did a section on Robert's Bank which is in Greater Vancouver. It is a ready made Design Element for some buddying modeler; it would keep Tony Koester, et al very happy. The Fraser Canyon follows the Fraser River which in the late spring and early summer is thunderous, treacherous, and soul grabbing in its intensity as the snow melt from the mountains feeds it. The Fraser canyon has 4 geological regions that I can ascertain (I am geologically challenged). It starts out with mountains getting higher, but highly populated with evergreens. CP runs on one side of the canyon and CN on the other side of the canyon. Until about one year ago, each competed with the other as traffic went up and down their lines on their own traffic. In a rare moment of intelligence in the rail roading world, the powers that be decided: why not directional running? That is, CP would run all trains in one direction, and CN would run trains in the other direction. In other words, they would "share"; quite a concept for companies that have competeted since the beginning of time in Canada. The next geological region become less treed and more rugged, the river narrows in areas and the mountains take on a "hard" look. In many railfanning spots, you turn your head one way and you can see long trains of 150+ cars running in direction, and you turn your head in the other dirction and you see another long train snaking its way through the canyon. Tunnels and snow sheds, there are a plenty. In this region are two famous bridges that are above and below each other, with about 50 yards between them. They are called the Cisco bridges of CP and CN. The canyon narrows here which vortexes the wind. Sometimes it's almost all you can do to stand. Many photographer's from all over the world come here for photographs. Overland just released the Cisco Bridge in Brass for $3500 (I believe they released one hundred of them). The next geological region has almost no trees with incredible light sand coloured browns and oranges and purples in the rock. It is the most "dramatic" (and hot) area in the canyon. It is my favourite location. The third location is the mountains turning into large sand mountains with another sparce vegitation. Farming is sparse, where it exists at all and irrigation is the order of the day. For railfanning the whole area is excellent. I can remembering reading a book and napping when I heard a train approaching the Cisco bridge. I looked up and on the other side of the river was a CP F7 unit A & B, with older business cars and sleepers from the 30 and 40 traveling through. I thought WOW!! who says we contemporary modelers can't have our cake and eat it to. Also through the canyon runs VIA (the canadian passenger train) and the Rocky Mountainer (a tourist train through the Canadian Rockies). Also once or twice a summer you will spot the American Orient Express bombing through. All in all, a wonderful location to go to....
Check out the Canadian National topic. I have posted a couple of pictures of the Fraser Canyon there. Any one else with pictures of the Canyon or CN are welcome to post their pctures too. ------------------ Robin Maberly and Tayside
Good info on Fraser Canyon. I hear people talk about it but didn't know too much about it. To bad I live about 2000+ miles away from there. Oh well,..maybe someday I'll be adventurous and take a trip there. When I'm not messing around on the internet on my computer I sometimes fire up the "Microsoft Flight Sim 2000" and "fly" around. I "flew" to Vancouver the other day and I'm not sure about this but I did manage to find a deep river valley north of Vancouver. I'm thinking this may be the Fraser area and it did look cool for a computer simulation.
If you are flying in the flight simulator, find the major river in Vancouver...it is the Fraser...just fly following this river...heading north...heading south takes you to the ocean.
