What do you do in a club?

[Anonymous]

I've heard about model clubs, but what do you do in them? Do you have to have a layout? I've seen the clubs at shows...........

[Anonymous]

well you can run trains tell other people about this hobby that is so much fun it would be a shame to keep it to ourselves. you can help others get started in the hobby. you can help put on shows with other members of your club. iam a past president of a club in utah. i just wi***hat there was a club here in central ark. that i could join.

[Anonymous]

Complain about the skills/taste/ability of others.
Wonder why no new members want to join.
Nitpick the efforts published in magazines.
Drag in more political discussions than the average homeowners association.
Much of the work while the "Old Guard" complains and drinks coffee.
Try to convince the holdout members about this newfangled DCC stuff.
Make more rules than the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Ten Commandments combined. None of them are observed, just created.

[dave9999]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TiVoPrince

Complain about the skills/taste/ability of others.
Wonder why no new members want to join.
Nitpick the efforts published in magazines.
Drag in more political discussions than the average homeowners association.
Much of the work while the "Old Guard" complains and drinks coffee.
Try to convince the holdout members about this newfangled DCC stuff.
Make more rules than the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Ten Commandments combined. None of them are observed, just created.

Amen. Dave

[nfmisso]

4884;
At Comrail (www.comrail.org) we mostly ran trains, worked on the layout, put on several shows a year, and relaxed. Everyone was there to have fun, and share. Unfortunately, I have not found a similar club in MN.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TiVoPrince

Complain about the skills/taste/ability of others.
Wonder why no new members want to join.
Nitpick the efforts published in magazines.
Drag in more political discussions than the average homeowners association.
Much of the work while the "Old Guard" complains and drinks coffee.
Try to convince the holdout members about this newfangled DCC stuff.
Make more rules than the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Ten Commandments combined. None of them are observed, just created.

You got that right[:(!]

[cacole]

The Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club in Sierra Vista, AZ has a 20x40 foot HO-scale layout that members are free to run any of their train on, and trains can be operated using either DC block control or DCC. We hold open houses twice yearly in May and November, and have a modular layout that can be set up at public locations as the opportunities arise. Members participate in layout construction, open houses, etc. as the occasion calls for.

[Anonymous]

Clubs allow you to have access to or participate in building a layout or layouts larger than you could either afford yourself or have space for. There are always 'negatives' to everything as the two earlier posters seem to dwell on. If you are a TRUE train enthusiast, you will over come those 'negative folks'. I've been through the "fight's over dc or dcc". You make the BEST decisions based on FACTS not your "age old (and probably outdated) personal feelings". Our club went DCC. Two members did not want to do such, listing some if the most bizzarrre escusses as facts that I've ever heard. They did little research on anything, but were bound and determined to scare everyone else away from trying out new things or ideas. They are gone! Though they are gone, they are welcome back anytime, providing they are willing to return as 'club members', not 'nitpickers' , complainers, or negative critiquers, or CAVE persons (Citizens Against Virtually Everything). I myself have donated several thousand dollars to the club, as have several other members, in order to build new layouts that all members can participate in and enjoy. Out with the "old Guard" and in with the new. Clubs are very beneficial to all who join them, if the "old Guard folks" are removed from postiions of power and that power is returned to all the club members.. Clubs can and do benefit the hobby greatly through their efforts to expose the hobby openly to the public through the use of shows and 'open house' sessions. Many clubs put on free clinics to help new folks into the hobby. Home layouts are great, but how many model railroaders would want hundreds of people wandering through their homes to view their personal layouts/ This is where club come in. They allow many folks to share their modeling experiences and their 'rail fanning' experiences with others on a large scale. I've found that (for the most part) most (but not all) folks who speak poorly of clubs are those who wanted everything their way (or else) and when they couldn't get that (and were over rulled), often quit. I often found those folks to be of the category that I defeine as the "old Guard". They do not often understand the 'new' technology, haven't tried it and do not want other to try it. After all, if others in the club try it and likeit, they'd be stuck.

Myself - I enjoy trying "new" technology (DCC) and spend hours researching things out before making a decision. I always enjoy learning new ways of doing things in model railroading. Handlaying track, hand laying turnouts, laying flex track or 'store bought commercial' turnouts; they are all ok by me. I enjoy doing scenery, but of no particular era or area. I enjoy showing and helping others with what I learned and equally enjoy learning from other. That is why I joined a club and donated most of the money for my own planned home layout to our club for a club layout. We have many great members in our club and I thoroughly enjoy associating with them all.

So, what do you do in a club? Hopefully, whatever is best for all involved and the hobby, as a whole. Basically, do the best that you can and participate!

[:D]

[cmitcham]

i want to be in his (nsdra1) club!

calvin.

[Anonymous]

We are always looking for new members. The more, the better!

I'm sure we are not the only club in town. There are plenty of great ones. I've visitied several and view many of their web site. Just look for one in your area and join the fun!

[Anonymous]

Kudos to nsdra1, you are right on the money!
The main reason I joined a club (WOW, its been 13 years already![:0]) was to learn more about the hobby, and to have fun![:)] Over the last 13 years, I have learned alot from the other members. From electrical to mechanical to scenery, everyone has thier own 2 cents to chip in. Some of it is total garbage, some of it is pure genius, and most of it falls somewhere in the middle. You just need to filter it and draw your own conclusions.
Beware of the negative trolls[}:)], they live beneath trestles and in tunnels, and only come out when any new ideas are aired. They can kill a good idea in a heartbeat, yet have not contributed any worthwhile suggestions since Moby *** was a minnow. If you find a club full of trolls, keep looking. If a club has only a few trolls, but the rest of the membership is ok, then do the following. Join the club, learn what you can, and help steer the club in a positive direction. Keep a smile on your face[:)] and NEVER let a disagreement get personal. Most Trolls can be "saved" if treated correctly.
As an example, in 1995 our club lost its lease on our "permanent" layout site, and not having the funds to purchase a site, took the entire club concept to a modular layout to heart. The trolls were all saying, "it will never work" or "I'm not interested in dragging a part of the layout around". A few of the trolls dropped out, but a few of them stayed with us, and gradually took up the cause. The rest of the members kept building, creating and refining out modules. Meetings were held round-robin style in members homes and at local libraries, and the layout began to show up at local train shows.
Soon the membership started to rebound in numbers and at our last show we did we had a 30 x 60 ft "L" shaped layout that had a longer mainline run than our old "permanent layout. [:D]
Clubs are a great way to learn from others experiences and to meet other folks with similar interests. Try one![:D]

[eastcoast]

Go there to escape a little while and have fun running on a
much larger layout than mine. I talk to people face to face
who are local and can come over and help. Although I no
longer do my main job , structure building , I have kept my
membership active so that when I am ready to do some other
projects, I can.

[Anonymous]

I was a member of a club that doesn't exist any more, and I miss seeing the guys every week and running the timetable. If you enjoy timetable operation, there isn't any other way to do this except at a club. Running the timetable, using car cards and waybills became the most important thing that we did.

[Anonymous]

Hmm..weel when i go to the Clubs, it's to meet people and have fun and get slightly drunk...oh wait you mean a Hobby club, well umm...never seen one round these here parts. ;)

Jay

[CP5415]

I've belonged to one club. The Sarnia Model Railroad Club.
They were a decent group of guys who let you run anything.
I moved away from there which is the only reason I don't still belong to the club.
The local clubs around me have way too many rules for my liking. You either have to have DCC or you can't model anything past 1965. Kind of hard when I have over 30 locomotives & most of my fleet consists of SD40-2's.
I was at one open house one of them had when I mentioned Athearn. I was laughed out the door
The other one, in the city I live in, told me at a show a few years ago that they wern't looking for any more members.
I know not all the members are like this, but the few I've dealt with, really didn't make me want to continue to inquire about a membership.
This is the reason why they can't get any new members.
This is the reason why I'm going to stick with my own layout. $50 a month goes a long way towards building my layout.
That's my attitude towards railroad clubs
If ya wanna come over, bring a train!

Gord

PS.

What you're suppose to do in a model railroad club is model trains, any trains. Build layouts, maintain layouts, run trains on the layout. Nothing more.
By the way, just because I or any other person has had a bad experience with club, doesn'y mean you're going to.
But that's my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Unfortnately, if there is one single aspect of this great hobby of ours that will destroy it, it's the narrow minded arrogance that does exist in many, many clubs around this country. Wheather it be from rivet counters or from control freaks that are there for no other reason but to assert their self perceived power over every other member in the club, this arrogance and attitude can and does drive long standing members and new members away, never to return. I for one wouldn't join another club if you paid me. Twice was definately enough for me. I feel that those who are lucky enough to have a good club should stay with it, but those who don't, get out now before it destroys your enjoyment for the hobby, and what ever you do, don't ever look back, always look ahead.

[Anonymous]

I haave enjoyed the club I currently a member of for over 23 Years now. I have been through the good and bad times. Like not having a meeting place. No permemant layout. Bickering among the members. and a host of other distractions from enjoying the running of trains. We have had several places that we called home, from a room above a machine shop to a store front in a mall. At the present we are building our own club house on county flood control property. It involves a lease agreement with them for the land. What makes this unique is the fact that it is shared with two other model railroad groups into a splendid railroad park. With approxamitely 160 acres total to "play" on it is a modelers dream. My group has about 5 acres for the clubhouse which will house both an HO and N layout. Outside The Garden layout is under construction on an area of about 175 ft X 200 ft.

I have found that the complainers are usually the ones that do the least amount of work to further the construction, enjoyment, or help others in the group. Always with the negative but no postive words, and the attitude that it should be done my way.
Since they are usually not around, The majority of the group that wants to better itself justs makes the decision and goes ahead without the dead weights.

Having this good cllub has made being a part of it a pleasure to say I belong to. All of the active members are pullling together to have something to be proud of. and to say I helped to get it to where it is today, and to make the best in the future.

[brothaslide]

I joined a club once and was persoanlly turned off by the "over the top committment" of many of the members. I felt that some of these members spent more time with their trains than with their families. I've looked at a few other clubs over time but I seem to find the same type of individuals. I like spending weekends with my wife and kids - model railroading is fun but I have many responsibilities to priotitzie and balance.

[Anonymous]

Like some here, I didn't really think that joining a club would be the best thing. Getting some rivet counters looking over my things and telling me how wrong it was.

But, my brother and I decided to go and give it a whirl. That was 2 years ago and we are now very active in the club.

Our club might be a unique one. We hold monthly meetings, have a model contest each month, have a different program each month (from how to's to what I did on my rail trip). Then on the following saturday we have a layout tour (one of the members opens up his/her house for the club to see their layout, what they have done, operate). Once a summer we do a rail trip somewhere in Colorado or Nebraska (pretty tough huh? Riding a narrow guage train for a summer activity. heheheh)

My brother and I have become pretty active in the club now. He is running the contest and I am running the website as well as serving as a member of the board.

I think that you get out of a club what you put in, but I also believe that there are some clubs that would rather sit and talk about models vs. teaching folks how to do stuff.

(If you want to check out our website, the address is www.450thbg.com/ncmr )

Craig

[CBQ_Guy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TiVoPrince

Complain about the skills/taste/ability of others.
Wonder why no new members want to join.
Nitpick the efforts published in magazines.
Drag in more political discussions than the average homeowners association.
Much of the work while the "Old Guard" complains and drinks coffee.
Try to convince the holdout members about this newfangled DCC stuff.
Make more rules than the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Ten Commandments combined. None of them are observed, just created.

I hate to sound negative but this is what I have heard, too. Years ago I was looking for a local club and I eventually did find one. Nice group of guys who get together informally at each others homes monthly to social ize and shoot the breeze. Occassionally well have an op session. This was fine but at first I was looking for the "traditional" OPERATING model rr club with BIG club layout since at the time I didin't think my small house had room for any kind of layout (I have since proven that ASSumption wrong!).

Many members of our informal group have been members of those bug clubs, some up in the Chicago area, and at least one down in Peoria (Illinois). One of them was even president of the club for awhile. To a man they all told me horror stories of what they had experienced and if you distilled their experiences down into a list, it would pretty closely match the one above.

I don't want to leave a totally negative impression of the clubs and I want to believe there are really good ones out there, too. So let's hear about them from those who are lucky enough to have found them.

Take care,

[Anonymous]

One club I go to has a monthly dinner meeting with invited speakers to give a presentation. There is a brief "business erport" where people can stand up and update others on specific goings-on. There is an annual swap meet, and an auction night. The newsletter is monthly, and contains an interesting variety of stuff. The dinner meetings also have a display, and a "Chairman's Choice" is awarded (how the winner is selected I do not know). Overall, it is not really clear what the benefit of membership is, but I am relatively new... There is no club layout, and no workshops or anything. It seems to be networking, and it is hard to get into the networks...

Another local club meets bi-monthly, often at or near an interesting rail location. We have a "how-to" seminar, and a "prototype" seminar. There are door prizes, and the afternoon is usually given over to touring real rail places, or layout tours. It is very interesting.

A third club is the modular group, and I am just starting out with them. They get together every month to set up all their modules (or most of them) and run trains. It looks like a lot of fun. They have an open house every year where the NTrak modular group and the HOTrak both set up at once. There are several hundred feet of main line to run in either scale. They offer design and build help.

So there are a lot of things to do in a club. Which one you join depends on what you like to do.

Andrew

[Big_Boy_4005]

Keep in mind that the person who posted the original question is 13 years old.

Every person is different, and every club is different. And I stand by my original comments (see my earlier posting). In every club there will be issues that rub someone the wrong way, but it is unfair to knock the entire club concept, just because one may have had a bad experience.

There are many kinds of clubs. There are modular clubs, clubs that meet in member's homes, and even clubs that only discuss trains. But when I think of a club, I think of the traditional club that has a permanent layout.

As for those who have had bad club experiences, perhaps it was simply a matter expectations that were not met.

There is clear evidence that clubs do work, and that people enjoy them. It can be found in the pages of Model Railroader almost every month. All of those beautiful layouts don't happen by magic. It takes long hours, by lots of dedicated people who love their hobby, have a common goal, and are willing to cooperate and get along with one another.

The longer a club has been around, the more difficult it can be for newcomers to fit in. Seniority can be easily be mistaken for snobishness, but its those senior members that built and maintained the layout. They have the experience and have paid their dues (litterally and figuratively). Nobody should expect to walk into a club, and be equal, that respect comes with time and has to be earned.

It is much easier to get into a new club, or an old one that is building a new layout. Work hard, have fun, and before you know it, you have seniority. I have actually done just that, twice, in my model railroading career. In both cases, it was an old club that had been forced to find a new home. There was lots of work to do before trains could be run, and that kept everyone focused.

Clubs aren't for everyone, and I'm not trying to say that they are. I recently tried to join an outdoor 1" and 1 1/2" club, but after a year decided that my time would be better spent working on my home layout. It was still an interesting experience, and I learned a lot and met some great people. It turned out that trains that size (large enough to ride) are a whole different deal, and I wasn't up to the challenge. How about ready to run diesels for $3000 and up, and cars starting at $200.

[randybc2003]

Run Trains
I am a member of a loose-knit Modular group. We have a layout set up in a vacant store, and every week we get together and run our trains. Some times we just run on the main line, sometimes we work switching, sometimes we work on our modules:
including improving track, scenery, buildings, electronics, anamation, or whatever. We all try new things, offer help, get in each other's way, exchange ideas, and afterwords go to the local slop-shop and feed and converse.
We encourage new members to come and join, and encourage everyone to build a module. That way everyone gets to do a bit of all phases of construction, and help (or hinderance) is available in abundance.
Right now most of us are running DCC, we are experimenting with a particular dispatching procedure, and trying out epoxy water for scenery. We are also palying around with automatic signaling. (& this on a Modular system!)

[Anonymous]

I'll stand with my original posting concerning clubs.

[Anonymous]

I really like Big Boy 4005s posts. I am a member of the McKeesport Model RR Club in McKeesport Pa...i have only been at this club about a year now...however i was a member of the Western Pennsylvania Model RR Museam (Formerly the Pittsburgh Model RR Club). I quit that club after being there for 7 years, i got so tired of the Rivet counters (which is about 95% of the membership there, the fact that we could NOT run our own trains on the layout during the shows. No one would show up for operating sessions (well we all had keys to the building so i used to just go in on saturday nights and stay till like 5am sundays LOL)...basically i left beacouse the people there all knew everything and no matter what i did...it was never right. My modeling skills to them were considered crap, however at the McKeesport club...(and im not blowing my own horn beacouse i really dont think im all that great) they say im one of the best modelers there. Why am i telling you this? Well i agree with Big Boy...I LEARED SO MUCH from the guys at the WPMRM...and hey ill even give them a shameless plug in this post. They have a great layout, and they are a bunch of great guys...i just couldnt stand to be around them LOL.

[Anonymous]

I don't belong to a MRR club although I have been thinking of an Ntrak module or two, a train in my office downtown is the attraction and I think a club would help especially if there was module connecting involved.

I currently have Friday night sessions where a bunch of friends, usually 5 or 6, show up and we mess around in the train room for a few hours. I would like to see the serious guys show me the correct way to play trains...haha.

I'm somewhat amused by this topic, not because our young friend is 13 but because many years ago I was an executive member of a car club that was petitioned for membership by a 13 year old. The club rules had no minimum age and the executive had mostly decided that this was the time to make one. Old enough to drive seemed the most reasonable minimum.

Adopting my most polite and dignified British affectation I bounced off the walls spitting nails. A demand to know the purpose of the club resulted in a reading of the published purposes. After I finished explaining that this club, any club, any organisation whether social, political or commercial has only one real purpose and that is self preservation and perpetuation anything else is an aim or a wish, we let him in. He was huge fun and had an infectious enthusiasm.

[CBQ_Guy]

Speaking of Clubs, I thought the following was kinda weird.

My LHS owner recently told me about a club he and other local model rails put together many years ago. They acquired a building to rent, set up a dues structure everyone was happy with, I guess some sort of track plan. It sounded like everything was perfect and all were in agreement on pretty much every facet of how the club would work. People even consistantly paid their dues on time, etc. Problem was, he couldn't seem to get anyone to come to the club building and actually do much of any work on the thing. Finally, after a year and a half of this and basically getting nowhere, they decided to disband the club. He said they all got a nice check after they split up because most of the dues money had just been sitting in the bank collecting interest which got split ultimately among all the former members. Go figure.

[Anonymous]

I don't care much for the club scene, but to each his own. I find informal invites to a friend's home to just run the equipment and chew the fat if you will much more pleasant. The few times I've visited formal clubs, there seemed to be an air of chilliness, like "you don't really belong here". Or the guys took themselves way too seriously, like they were running a corporate empire and everything had to be perfect. Too restrictive and stifling.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by NTDN

Hmm..weel when i go to the Clubs, it's to meet people and have fun and get slightly drunk...oh wait you mean a Hobby club, well umm...never seen one round these here parts. ;)

Jay

[:D]ROFL