National Model RR Month follow up

[rogerhensley]

Some time back, I posted a message about National Model Railroad Month and some ideas about what could be done for it. This is my follow up on what we (Central Indiana Division, MWR, NMRA) have been able to do so far.

As a division, we held our `Free' National Model RR Month meet in conjunction with a Lion's Club Pancake Breakfast. We didn't count heads, but quite a number of folks looked over the layouts that we brought in from Z, N, HO and O (no G,
sorry). We held three clinics. One was our new CID KIT (Kids In Trains) clinic where we matched one of our members with a young modeler and assisted them in building a car kit. We had thirteen kids that took part in this over a period of three hours. We purchased the cars and tools used in this clinic at cost or less from one manufacturer and from local dealers.

The second clinic was aimed at raw beginners explaining scale and gauge and giving background on the hobby. The third was a scenery clinic that was also well attended. We also gave away a number of back issues of magazines (MR, RMC, MRg, etc.) that a local dealer donated in addition to NMRA Bulletins and NMRA materials.

The radio station at Butler University in Indianapolis gave us a lot of free air-time helping us to promote this meet. Alas, most of the other print and air media did not respond to our PR requests.

One of the local newspapers in Anderson Indiana did respond to the month promotion with a nice spread with photos on two local model railroads in the Sunday `Hometown' section. They also ran a sidebar promoting the hobby with a nice mention
of the NMRA and a local club in the library.

Promotion of the hobby still CAN be done, but it does take an effort on the part of a number of people to get it done. I began working on the local paper nearly three months before the articles were run.

For those who may be interested, photos have been uploaded to the CID web site at: http://cid.railfan.net/
Simply take the Photo Album link for 2001-2002.

Roger Hensley
http://cid.railfan.net/

[Cox 47]

Roger congrats to the CID sounds like a great way to show folks model railroading...The CID is a great bunch I attended many meets in the late 60's, 70's and 80's...I live in Illinois but had a good friend who lived in Terre Haute and he and I car pooled...You have some great home layouts in the Division too....Cox 47