AGM Party

AGM Party

The crowd assembled at Fred's this Saturday for our Annual General Meeting and kick-off party.  

Steve's wife graciously donated the chili and sausages were served.  

We have decided that our first session will take place on the Victoria Day long weekend, Saturday, May 21st.

We remember our good friend Ken Brunt who we lost this past off-season.

Remember, you can enlarge any image by clicking on it and return to the default look of the page by clicking outside it.

Johnny Chuff-Chuff created three of these remarkable renditions of Ken, of which Fred owns one.  Please ignore my highly expensive band-aid on my thumb...a result of a silly modelling accident!

Steve brought out this recent acquisition.

Streetcar 1003.

This was an estate sale and Steve told a remarkable story of his visit to the home where the sale occurred. 

When you catch up with Steve at one of our operating sessions, get him to relate the story to you.  It is most interesting!

Marcel brought a gift for the railroad.

Thanks Marcel!

The Lake Simcoe car is in the shop in the board room.

Some more purchases!

Paul was the first "runner" of the season.

His loco is arriving Ironwood on a road inspection tour.

Here's Paul!

Andrew brought out this live steam acquisition.

Which he operates with remote control!

Wow!  That's impressive!

The throttle.

Check out how he can manipulate the controls in this awesome video!  

Simply click on the white arrow once and then a second time to engage the video

Andrew, Marcel and Grant in Craig Leigh.

Grant with Andrew.

Skipper Pat...coming ever so closer to retirement!  He's counting the days now.

So nice to see Doug out for the morning.

Barry too!  All the way from Belleville!

Len shares a laugh with Pat.

Mr. Bill, one of our trio of dispatchers!

Doug and Moe join Bill deep in conversation...or is it laughter!

We had twenty-three orders in total for our OVGRS golf shirt initiative including the three Neil had purchased.  Hats will be available for the group in short order should anyone wish to purchase one.

The hat on the left has the logo offset to one side, but you will be able to order hats in many colour choices like the one on the right where the logo will be placed in the center of the hat.  While Neil does not have an exact price at the moment, he suspects they will be offered for about twenty dollars.

Pat brought out a caboose for Mike to enjoy!  You're a man after my heart, Pat!  Thanks to Henk for selling it to Pat...thus keeping this little gem within the group!

Video footage of Pat's run.

Grant brought out his Denver, South Park & Pacific steam locomotive.  We catch him on the ascent into Firgrove at "The Ledges".

Ditto for this little puppy making its way upgrade.  This Colorado & Southern 2-6-0 locomotive belongs to none other than our very own Marcel!

I believe this is Len's acquisition from last season.  This wide bodied behemoth is cooling its heals in Ralph Yard.

Someone also brought along this A-B set of diesels.  Looking very smart!  Identify yourself via an e-mail and I'll add your name to the caption as well.  (I was kept quite busy organizing the golf shirt funds with Fred and Neil and was unable to catch up with who was running which locomotives.)

Yeah, Moe!  Chow time!  Also a note of thanks to Steve's wife for providing the chili for the group!

George, Marcel & Lawrence in conversation.

Bernie & Bob.

Yum, Yum!

Barry brought out some large scale kits and asked if anyone would like to take them to build for him (or to keep) - not 100% sure.

Some nice-looking kits there Barry.

Chris rose to the challenge and offered to build one for Barry.  We spot Malcolm and Robin to the left with Barry and Doug to the right.

Thanks to Lawrence for making the new magnets for our three dispatchers who will note some identification changes in relation to train numbers for this coming season.  Eastbound magnets are white while westbounds are black.  The new identification sheet will be posted in the dispatch hut.  This probably does not concern the crews as much, but dispatch and train masters creating the train orders for the sessions will need to know and understand the new id's for the trains.  Of note is that the middle digit of the three-digit identification numbers refer to the "trick" for each crew.  Your first trick will have a "0" as its middle digit, your second trick will have a "1" and your third trick of the morning will have a "2" in the middle.  Also remember that all eastbound trains are even numbered and all westbounds are odd numbered...just as we have identified direction since the beginning of operations on the railroad.

Robin and Bernie share a drink.

Love that classy looking logo on your shirt, Bill.

Another Mike visited later in the morning and brought along this rendition of the streetcars as they hope to run them in Ottawa at some point in the future.

Marcel in Craig Leigh

With his Arizona Big Train Operators shirt!

Mike with Steve near the engine house.

Streetcar 1003 once again.

This time in the great out of doors.

As always, folks are invited to share what they are doing in other areas of railroading.  While not totally finished as of yet, the four module O-scale diorama Doug and I have been making can see the "light at the end of the tunnel".  Yup...almost done!  The machine shop and all of its workings were built from scratch except for the machines and the water tower.  The machines were kits from Sierra West Scale Models and the water tower came from B.T.S. Models...Better Than Scratch.

Here is the machine shop module with the depot module in the distance showcasing the station at Tyrone.

A closer view of the depot Doug purchased from the estate of the late Peter Nesbitt.

A view of the farm wagon and the buckboard wagon.  These were a joy to build.  All of the horse teams and wagons came from Berkshire Valley Models.

This Blair Line general store fit the bill nicely along with the banjo pickers and the checker players!  The structure is weathered lightly although my camera was unable to pick that out.

The freight house and coal dealer are the only facility served by the railroad with a separate spur track.  There is tons of kitbashing and scratchbuilding going on here.  I even made the crane "moveable" and scratched some parts to make it operate in a more realistic manner than what the Model Tech Studios kit offered.  The freight house is from Bar Mills.

As I was waiting for more of Doug's items to come in on order for the O-scale project, I got to work on this HO scale endeavour for David Gardner.  This is the Builders In Scale "Tidewater Wharf" kit.

There are four buildings which come with the kit, a boat building and repair shop, a lighthouse, a sailmaker's facility and a cafe diner.

I love the bottomless boat entrance to the Lighthouse Cafe...a delightful touch offered up by the kit manufacturers who actually came across such a restaurant entrance on their southern travels.  I scratch built all of the seawalls and the deck where the figures are standing.  Seeing as we are close to the shore I bunched the waves at four foot intervals as per my research.  Lots of fun!

Here we see the little lumber area in back of the boat building and repair shed along with the brick office set off to the side.

Here I was modelling in what I call the "4th Dimension"...below ground level.  The boat ramp is quite steep and the seawalls offered in the kit are too short for the height that the land must appear so I simply scratched a plaster wall in a few minutes time.  the rocks below the lighthouse were also scratched in about ten minutes time.  All structure are "Tack glued" for easy removal off the diorama for when I go to place them on David's layout.  Note how the base of the ramp is hovering over the water...I didn't want it to touch the water as it would become damaged during the removal process.  All in all, it was a month of evenings to make the structures for David.  They will go on his layout, but I wanted to first place them on the diorama to bring out to OVAR along with the huge Machine Shop project for this coming Tuesday where I will be the guest speaker.  Feel free to come on out and bring a bag of tomatoes to throw up at the front!  (Big grin!)  Funnily enough, as mentioned...it took me a month of evenings in creating all four seaside structures...whereas the diorama for the sole purpose of displaying them at OVAR took only one day of modelling.  The diorama will be thrown away following the OVAR meeting.

H-e-r-e's Skipper Fred...in his new OVGRS golf shirt and cap, the handsome lad!  Thanks for hosting the great party today, Fred.  

I'll create a second section of this posting in a couple of days.

All the best, Mike Hamer, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada