Greetings, I have been to three railroad shows and to date I cannot seem to find an N scale club that actually has operating sessions. It seems the clubs meet to talk about the shows they are going to do. The "operate" at the shows, which seems to boild down to roundie rounds with long trains. I have looked on-line for an operating club but can't seem to get anywhere. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
s~
On YouTube at It's My Railroad
Don't know anything about how they operate (or don't operate), but there is the San Diego Society of N scale: http://www.sdmrm.org/#/model-rr-clubs/4534470759
(scroll to bottom)
Whereabouts in Southern CA? There are a bunch of N scale clubs around here it seems. For operations, you might want to go with a club with a permanent layout, as modular clubs do the show circuit, which involves a lot of prep, travel, setup and "showtime" to take up much of their schedule.
Belmont Shore Model Railroad Club in San Pedro has operating sessions on the 3rd Tuesday of the month: http://belmontshorerr.com/visit.html. East Valley Lines at Travel Town in Los Angeles' Griffith Park has a permanent layout. Their showtime is on weekends as their layout goes on display to Travel Town visitors, but I'm sure they do op sessions during the week: http://www.trainweb.org/EVL/
Type in "Orange County 'N' Gineers on Google. That's an N scale club.
While the Los Angeles Model Railroad Society (LAMRS) layout in Hawthorne is HO scale, several of the club members and guest operators have private N scale layouts that the LAMRS based group operate fairly regularly. If you check in with LAMRS and get on their e-mail list, you'll be able to attend ops sessions both at the club as well as at a fairly large assortment of private layouts. Be aware, though, that you would probably not be able to operate your own equipment on these private layouts as the owners tend to have EVERYTHING pre-staged prior to the beginning of their sessions. You could always check to see whether they would agree to run an "extra" to mix things up a bit. It's a really good group of people, too!
Hornblower
Originaldirtguy,
The LAMRS club in Hawthorne has formal operating sessions every month, usually the last Sunday of the month. We run HO standard, HO narrow gauge, and HO standard gauge logging sessions. HO narrow gauge is almost like running N-gauge. (sort of)
Anyway, if you ever want to run operations with us, check out our Facebook page or website and post/send a message and we would be glad to have you operate with us.
Marty Bradley (VP of Operations at LAMRS)
www.oakhurstrailroad.com
"Oakhurst Railroad" on Facebook
You could also check out the Operations Special Interest Group.