2025 PNR Convention

Hosted by: PNR 5th Division

Dates: May 9 – 11, 2025

Location: Pasco, Washington

The 5th Division invites you to join us for the 2025 PNR Convention in Pasco, Washington! Come see old friends, make new acquaintances and share your love of the hobby with others. The Convention will offer self-guided layout tours, free-mo layouts, operating sessions, clinics, achievement program evaluations, and more!

Ainsworth, WA, ca 1886. Courtesy of the Washington State Historical Society.

Why the “Ainsworth Connector”?

Our convention’s location, Pasco, was originally founded as the result of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company’s attempt to find a route to the Puget Sound. The initial railroad camp was at Ainsworth, a depot named after John C. Ainsworth, President of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. The Northern Pacific (NP) Railroad Company engineer recommended a bridge to be built there over the Snake River. This turned out to be perhaps the original “bridge to nowhere” and its cost of $1.3 million in 1879 bankrupted the NP Railroad Company, which was then taken over by the Northern Pacific (NP) Railway Company.

NP Railway engineer Virgil Bogue, who determined the NP route through Stampede Pass, moved the camp about 2 miles and (according to the most-favored version of how the city was named) christened the new location Pasco as it reminded him of a similar city where he had worked in Peru: Cerro de Pasco. (Meyer, 1959, p. 22-27)

We named the convention the “Ainsworth Connector” in recognition of the 140th anniversary of the railroad’s relocation from Ainsworth and the establishment of Pasco, Washington.

Source: Meyer, Delbert W., “A Study of the Development of the Tri-Cities, Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland, Washington” (1959). Masters Theses. 4683.
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/4683