Large Scale Central

2009 American Invasion

Doug Matheson posted this over at another site, and I thought I’d repeat it here. Fred Mills is the contact here. :wink:

Each year the Ottawa Valley Garden Railway Society ( www.ovgrs.org ) host an event in Ottawa Ontario called the American Invasion. This year’s American Invasion is scheduled for Friday through Sunday July 17-19. The American Invasion is a get together of garden railroaders in the Ottawa Valley with many of our friends from south of the border. The event itself is focused on prototypical operations in a garden railroad setting. We also host some members of the Finger Lakes Live Steamers and the Upstate New York Live Steamers so live steam takes its place beside the battery operated motive power of other attendees.

The weekend is kicked off on Thursday afternoon as the participants arrive … Doug’s Northland Railroad hosts some steaming and free running. Friday morning, Fred Mills’ IPP&W is the host venue for a formal ops session. Friday afternoon will again see a visit to David McCurdy’s enormous version of the RGS. Saturday will feature a day long ops session broken by lunch. At this point, Sunday is still undecided … some folks will be heading home but for those who stay, some interesting activities will be developed. At this point, we are still working out the details of a possible visit to the Finger Lakes Live Steamers in Marengo NY for Monday’s trip back to the USA.

Everyone is welcome to join us for this weekend of operations and the camaraderie that has long been part of this annual event. If anyone is considering coming to Ottawa please contact Fred Mills for full details.

Jean and I have been attending for some number of years and we always have a great time. The operating sessions are a lot of fun with maybe a dozen trains being run at once. It’s a lot of fun to visit with folks and we hope to renew old acquaintances and meet some new friends this year.

Interesting choice of dates :smiley: That may just work out for us. It looks like a memorial service and internment for my dad will be in Buffalo the weekend before. Could swing around the north side of the lake on the way back if I can get the time off and coordinate with the rest of the crew.

I just talked with Fred a few days ago on the phone and he now has a boarder. What I failed to find out is whether his kitchen will be available to us if we decide to do what we did last year, but we do have plenty of time for that. I’m guessing we will go that route and the kitchen will be available, but I’ll wait for Fred’s 2 cents on that before we get to involved in meal plans.

food??? Man, just don’t mention eggrolls to Ric, he’ll be drooling till July… :slight_smile:

…grinning…