Welcome to the S Scale Lake Superior Northern Railroad

The Lake Superior Northern Railroad is my freelanced S Scale model railroad set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula between the years 1968 and 1972 with a bit of modeler’s license thrown in for good measure.

The Lake Superior Northern Railroad connects the rich iron ore and timber lands of Michigan's Upper Peninsula with the country's steel plants and lumber markets in cities like Chicago and Detroit. The LSN runs from Marquette, Michigan to Iron Mountain, Michigan.  The railroad interchanges with the Soo Line and LS&I at Marquette and the C&NW and Milwaukee Road at Iron Mountain as well as the Escanaba and Lake Superior at Northland. Marquette and Iron Mountain are the north and south staging yards on my layout. The towns on the visible portion of the railroad, from north to south are Harvey, Little Lake, Northland, Spruce and Hillside Yard at Forest Lake. There is no attempt to model the actual towns but they are, with the exception of Forest Lake, in prototypical order.

I began building my layout in the winter of 2018. Progress is slow but (usually) steady. The layout occupies an 18’-6” x 18’-6” room in my basement. The staging yards occupy additional areas of the basement. A continuous run connection is also present but will not be used during operating sessions. I have been doing most of the construction by myself. The track is Shinohara and Tomalco code 100 flex track with Fast Tracks #6 turnouts on a combination of homasote and cork roadbed. Turnout control is a mixture of hand throws and Tortoise switch machines. The minimum mainline radius is 36". Train control is RailPro by Ring Engineering. Locomotives and rolling stock are a combination of American Models, S-Helper Service, MTH, Pacific Rail Shops and a few American Flyer conversions. All equipment uses Kadee 802/808 couplers and all of the cars have metal wheels.

The layout is being designed for operating and it should be able to keep 3-5 people busy during an operating session. Freight car movement is planned to be controlled by car cards and waybills. Operations will be a mixture of through freights and locals and extra pulpwood trains (more local switching) with cars being cycled on and off the layout from both visible staging yards. 

Thank you for visiting the Lake Superior Northern Railroad webpage. Feel free to check back often as I’m building and updating the pages as work progresses. I hope you have enjoyed your time while rail fanning the "The Superior Route!".