banquet

Champlain Flyer Banquet Program:

Dinner Menu

Entree choices:

✴ Grilled 6 oz NY Strip Steak

with Peppercorn Demiglace

✴ Grilled Breast of Chicken topped with

Parmesan, Tomato & Lime Herb Sauce

✴ Penne Primavera with fresh Vegetables

& a light Parmesan Cheese Sauce

Meal includes tossed garden salad, rolls, fresh vegetable, rice or potatoes & chocolate mousse pie

Guest Speaker

STEAM AT MIDNIGHT

BY DAVE MCLEOD

Dave Mcleod has always been captivated with steam engines, so much so that he has been chasing and documenting working steam around the world for the past 20 years. The operative word

here is working steam. Working steam, as opposed to tourist steam, are steam locomotives that are still producing freight revenue miles and transporting people as they go about their daily life. While he enjoys tourist steam, Dave says that it “is like a tiger in a zoo, instead of one roaming free in the wild.” The clock is ticking toward that Midnight Hour, when working steam locos will cease to be a part of the landscape on our planet.

Dave, along with his wife Diana, own Tradewinds Imports, on the Church Street Market Place in Burlington, Vermont. They travel around the world seeking gems, jewelry, indigenous artisan crafts and antiques for their emporium. Dave and Diana’s wanderlust and interest in railroading goes back several decades. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, they traveled out west, hopping freight trains from Denver to California and back.

In 1990, while travelling in Nepal, they found themselves caught in the revolution against the monarchy. Since most of Kathmandu was shut down and very dangerous, they were limited to the tourist district where they met a silver jeweler, which started them on their current line of business. Dave makes use of his business travels around the world to also document vanishing working steam. In addition to documenting working steam in the US, Canada, China, Burma and Indonesia, he has actually operated steam locos in India, Java and Cuba.

Following our banquet, in a program that will appeal to everyone, we will see some of the fruits of Dave’s documentation of Steam at Midnight in a multimedia presentation. Dave is an accomplished photographer and raconteur who will keep everyone fascinated with his dramatic and evocative photographs, videos and entertaining narration. We will view aspects of steam not often seen from around the globe - two foot gauge 0-4-0’s to double headed 2-10-2’s, dramatic shots of steam at night, in below zero weather, moving hot slag in a steel mill and much more. We will ride along in a Jordan Spreader in China and with livestock in a passenger a car in southern China. Dave’s presentation will showcase rapidly disappearing working steam railroading, with local color from many countries, that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

Please join us for what promises to be a most interesting program.