So, after about 67 hours of accumulated time, I have picked up quite a few things.
1. I found the community I desired
I'm was in an odd spot. I have a very niche hobby, so very few people I know shared a common interest with me. The club I joined is everything I ever wanted. A lot of the guys over there specialize in a certain field (DCC, Operations, Wiring, Scenery), so if I ever need someone to talk to about a certain issue I have, they have someone that could help me. And, a few of the guys come from the East Coast and Midwest, so they add to the many West Coast railroads already on the layout.
2. I discovered I like kit building
Well, I finally stopped dragging my feet. One of the newbie workshops was slapping together a Proto 2000 50' boxcar kit. I loved it. While it was mildly annoying breaking the stirrups and grab irons, everything else was pretty amusing. I have a couple more kits I need to put together, still, so I have some more work to do.
3. I have a place to run my equipment
My house has no room for a layout, so I never bothered buying track. Why should I when I have nowhere to put it? The club has one of the largest layouts in the Western Hemisphere, with many long straights and heavy grades, I have been told that if they run smoothly there; they'd be fine everywhere else. Of course, I buy a ton of Kadee 148's, but if it makes my stuff run well, it's an expense I have to make.
4. I need to back off my ambitions
I think I spent a little too long on the pontential projects rather than the realistic ones. Some of the members brought me down to Earth. Instead of trying to prepare for superdetailing my Athearn Genesis F3 and Walthers sleeper, I shelved those ideas and started focusing on what I really need to know; operations of the prototypes.
Will my projects ever happen? Sure, but not with my skills at the moment. Esepcially the sleeper. I tried handpainting the interior of a throwaway car, and I didn't like how it turned out, so I'm saving up for an airbrush and looking for ways to scratch build interiors. The information I have received on superdetailing has not fallen on deaf ears, it just needs a little time and experience.
With my 80 hours as an apprentice almost up, I'm preparing for my eventual membership. What will I do then? I don't know. But, I shouldn't worry about what may happen.
The Jet Clipper1. I found the community I desired
Honestly, I am happy for you and I don't mean to dump on your thread. But this has bothered me for some time.
I went to a MR club, hoping to learn about DCC. It was a DC club, as I was told in no uncertain terms. A handful of guys, all very friendly, were talking about local railroading.
Two guys, both young, no more than in their 20's, were running their trains, swapping in phono plugs to activate the next block. Their engines got stuck in a tunnel, dirty track I think, as there seemed to be no other explanation offered.
I thought I might see what a real operating session was like, or learn about DCC. There was nothing there. I did not go back for a second time.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Jet clipper, what's the name of your club if you don't mind me asking.
Also clubs aren't for everyone and every club is different, a special way of doing things, sometimes it's good sometimes it's not.
I am a member of two clubs one is the roundy roundy type which is cool, the other is a prototypical operating club with a large layout. Both have pros and cons. Thing to remember is when joining a club is you're the rookie newbie and not to make waves. No club is perfect, there will be that ONE guy that is just a horses patoot, and therell be that ONE recurring issue that makes operations grind to a halt. Have patience.
Eventually I'd like to start my own club that models heavy mountain railroading with a variable time period from 20s to the 80s, mainly the 40s-60s though, that way it allows the members some freedom. Also it'll model at least two divisions for operations. Of course I'll have to wait a little while till I have more connections in the modeling community.
Good luck!
Steve
If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough!
NWP SWPEventually I'd like to start my own club that models heavy mountain railroading with a variable time period from 20s to the 80s, mainly the 40s-60s though, that way it allows the members some freedom. Also it'll model at least two divisions for operations.
.
That sounds ambitious.
I was there for the founding meeting of Scale Rails of Southwest Florida about 35 years ago. It took 25 years before the club had a permanent home and built a beautiful double decked operational layout.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I live in rural Arkansas and I wish I had a club close enough to join. I know it would be a mixed bag of people but so is life. Just like eating fried chicken - enjoy the meat and spit out the bones.
I doubt I would participate as a routine member since I have my own good size layout. However, I would love to discuss many aspects of layout construction and operations that I am clueless on.
Paul D
N scale Washita and Santa Fe RailroadSouthern Oklahoma circa late 70's
I've been a member of my club for 25 years, and was a youth member 3 years before that. I have learned much from my membership and made life-long friends because of it. I'm glad someone else is enjoying the club experience, because most dicussions online are anti-club (to say the least).
Where else can one get the opportunity to design and build a 6300+ sq. ft. layout? Or get cab rides and throttle time on real locos? Or tour rail facilities and Trains hot spots with a group of friends? Being in a club doesn't have to be just model trains; you make friends with wide variety of people you would otherwise never meet. At my club, we've got: train engineer, conductor, fire dept. captain, insurance agent, ambulance EMT, electrical engineer, architect, hobby shop owner, computer programmer, IT manager, electrician, cabinet maker, carpenter, contractor, retailer, mechanic, civil engineer, accountant, house painter, and so on.
Heck, today is my club's annual pool party. It starts at 2PM and lasts 'til 10PM.
I was fortunate to find an informal operations round-robin group a few years ago with several layouts in different scales within a short driving distance of my home. It turned out that a lot of these same people also belong to the Los Angeles Model Railroading Society (LAMRS) and I have repeatedly been invited to participate in the frequent LAMRS operating sessions. Virtually everyone I have met through these groups have been great people who not only share my love of model railroading but often other interests as well (music for one). I wish I could join LAMRS but they meet on Tuesday nights and my Tuesday nights have been booked solid for over 30 years by one of the band's I play in. Our round-robin group could probably use a name as well. I do enjoy picking the brains of the various members for ideas and techniques to try on my own layout. I also enjoy being able to help out when I have an idea, skill or technique to offer. I have been trying to ready my own layout for operations but still have some timetable kinks to straighten out.
Hornblower
I was a member of a club in SW. fl for 10yrs or so loved it. Made friends and learned how to do all aspects of the hobby. FA-1
belonged to two clubs over the years , most of the time i've been a lone wolf modeler as lived in remote areas. but will say the two i've belonged to left me with a bad taste , the first one started ok then some non modelers joined and it became a political club . the second was ok for a while then they started making all kinds of rules as to what one could run , what brand of kits were ok to use on layout, ect. ect.
NWP SWP Jet clipper, what's the name of your club if you don't mind me asking.
The Pasadena Model Railroad Club out near Los Angeles.
If you'd like to see the layout itself, there are a few pictures here.
hornblower I was fortunate to find an informal operations round-robin group a few years ago with several layouts in different scales within a short driving distance of my home. It turned out that a lot of these same people also belong to the Los Angeles Model Railroading Society (LAMRS) and I have repeatedly been invited to participate in the frequent LAMRS operating sessions. Virtually everyone I have met through these groups have been great people who not only share my love of model railroading but often other interests as well (music for one). I wish I could join LAMRS but they meet on Tuesday nights and my Tuesday nights have been booked solid for over 30 years by one of the band's I play in. Our round-robin group could probably use a name as well. I do enjoy picking the brains of the various members for ideas and techniques to try on my own layout. I also enjoy being able to help out when I have an idea, skill or technique to offer. I have been trying to ready my own layout for operations but still have some timetable kinks to straighten out.
Huh, funny you mention the LAMRS, because that would have been my second choice if I didn't like my current club.
Maybe I'll drop by?
Woo, this thread got a few replies, so I'm pretty happy for that!
Let me clear up something I stated initially:
The Jet Clipper What will I do then? I don't know. But, I shouldn't worry about what may happen.
What will I do then? I don't know. But, I shouldn't worry about what may happen.
I have a tendency of being cryptic and forgetting what I want to say while I am typing.
I do have a few things to mildly stress over regarding the club.
DCC
The club I'm with used to run with a complex DC system (supposedly the most complex of it's type) until about 2015, when they almost completely gutted the original wiring in favor of a Digitrax system. While a good 95% of the conversion is complete, there still are a few issues we need to work out still. A major issue is one of the yards having a dead spot, and as such; trains tend to die leaving or entering, requiring the yardmaster to physically pull the trains to a section of powered track. Is this a huge problem that ruins the experience? No, but we do want to get it completed for...
The Open House
The big public relations event happening in November. I like to call this my 'trial by fire'. Here, the club is open for all to see. The lighting gets changed, everyone has their job to do, and we (the operators) get to running the stars of the show; our trains. With the general public showing up to this, we gotta make the club look good to attract more potetial members, so a lot of our problems should be solved by then.
(Not really a club problem) My Problem
I really want something of my own to run, really just for pride. This isn't too much of a pressing issue, so I can drag my feet with it until about October, but even that may be pushing it.
Clubs are a wonderful thing to have. I have been in three of them through the years. I started out going to the Stillwater Model Railroad club in Stillwater OK when I was about 13. They taught me a lot about the hobby. I was with them through two layouts. The first one was upstairs in a downtown building and controlled with CTC16. They lost that building and moved to one by the fairgrounds and built a nice layout. I often wonder how many hundreds of pounds of plaster we slung on the floor to ceiling mountains. They went through a couple of building losses and I wonder where they are now. When we moved to Indiana there was no club in New Castle. We were there several years and ironicly a modular club got formed several months before we moved but I was in it for that time. Today we live in Danville VA and have a great club here with a huge layout. We just had a young man about the age I was when I started join. It has been fun to try and help him out. I have been a couple of places where there was a club but did not join- mainly due to time constraints.
Club 1: Tiny membership, more or less free premises. "We've always done it this way and we have to be running for the November show."
Club 2: No coherent plan, but the railroad fit in the space available. Five guys did fine work and the other 20 sat and BS'd. And ate all the cookies.
Club 3: "We're building a railroad to run from X to Y in this particular part of this US state and we dispatch the line-up using track warrants."
I'm having a lot of fun with Club 3 and have met some really smart people. Same in Club 2, as far as people. They really get you to stretch your skills and learn new things.
The biggest thing I've learned is that if I want to have all my railroad, all my way, it will have to be at my home.
I've been a member of the Santa Susana Pacific Historical Society in Simi Valley (about 30 miles due northwest of downtown L.A.) for about 10 years. I joined in order to get reaquainted with the hobby and learn about DCC, creating scenery, learn operations and bascially get up to speed after about a 40 year hiatus. I made a lot of progress on my original goals, met some great folks along the way both at he club and in the hobby. I held several offices in the club during my membership Became actively involved with the NMRA Division and gained a wealth of knowledge.
I retired last year and have since moved to Northern California and plan to build my own layout. I'm not sure if I'll become a member of one of the clubs in the area but I do plan on actively particpating in some of the round robins in the area.
My advice for club membership is to try it on for size and fit before making a commitment. The Santa Susana Club had a 6 month Probationary Member status to give both members and perspective members to meet and become acquainted before a vote was made to accept them as a new member. Ask for a copy of the club's bylawas and observe how they are followed. Club membership is not the right fit for everyone but in my case it was.
I had been a member of a model railroading club in my student days and that has taught me never to join any club in my life again. Club life with all the bye-laws, formal things and the necessity to appoint officers, just isn´t my thing.
Happy times!
Ulrich (aka The Tin Man)
"You´re never too old for a happy childhood!"
Tinplate ToddlerI had been a member of a model railroading club in my student days and that has taught me never to join any club in my life again. Club life with all the bye-laws, formal things and the necessity to appoint officers, just isn´t my thing.
I can kind of understand that. We have a business meeting every month. Basicly we just do the financials and give progress reports on the layout. Not a lot of major business. However we have to have one as we are sponsered by Parks and Rec and that is required. Ours go pretty easy- I only remember a couple of no votes. Saw one club elsewhere that I visited where they were having a real fuss over where to have the Christmas dinner. Some clubs are more formal some are less formal. It may be the one you tried has changed too.
Graham LineClub 1: Tiny membership, more or less free premises. "We've always done it this way and we have to be running for the November show." Club 2: No coherent plan, but the railroad fit in the space available. Five guys did fine work and the other 20 sat and BS'd. And ate all the cookies. Club 3: "We're building a railroad to run from X to Y in this particular part of this US state and we dispatch the line-up using track warrants."
At different points in its 35 year history, Scale Rails of Southwest Florida has fallen into all of those categories.
I think club quality and appeal changes from place to place. In Utah we don't have to many clubs. Only one of them has a building to call home and house a full time layout. The rest are either modular clubs that only get together for shows or auctions, or clubs that are trying to find a new place to settle down. There is a live steam club building a track in a public park, but I don't have the cash or time to start live steam right now. I really don't have an interest in joining any of the clubs here at this moment.My most fun though socially has been through a bit of an 'informal club' i.e. the operators group at a local private layout. That has been pretty fun, and I enjoy getting out there when I can and the style of operations with CTC and waybills, etc. interests me far more than any other local club layouts. My friends and I have actually bounced around the idea of just formally starting our own group; maybe a Free-Mo style modular club based on one specific prototype or something... but none of us really have the time to sit down yet and make that a reality.
PED I doubt I would participate as a routine member since I have my own good size layout. However, I would love to discuss many aspects of layout construction and operations that I am clueless on.
Yeah, that's what every club needs: ANOTHER person hanging out and jakkin' but not doing much work ("I doubt I would participate as a routine member...").
Ed
drgwcs Some clubs are more formal some are less formal.
Some clubs are more formal some are less formal.
Even if I'd ever had a bad experience with an overly formal club, I wouldn't write off the entire concept of organization. I'm in a modular club that has, functionally, no rules beyond the module standards. No idea how it could be less formal than that!
In my limited experience I believe that there are two types of 'bureaucracy' involved in running a club. The first is the government/liability stuff. The second is how the club conducts it's daily business.
The government/liability bureaucracy is a necessary evil. By "club" I mean an organization that is paying rent and carrying insurance, and which could be sued if someone decided to do so.
You might ask "why incorporate, why follow the rules?". Well, you don't have to if someone is willing to put their financial security on the line by putting everything under their name, but guess who gets sued if something goes wrong? Some kid falls off a chair at a show (that they shouldn't have been standing on in the first place) and cracks their skull open causing permanent damage. If the people running the club don't have a corporation and the proper insurance between them and the law suit, there is the very real possibility of losing everything you have.
My club, the Barrie Allandale Railway Modellers (BARM), got itself into a bit of a pickle because we were not following the rules for a non-profit corporation and hadn't for several years. The new Executive Committee elected in 2017 has finally sorted that out, but we had to jump through a few hoops to get there. All that is behind us now and it will take very little effort to meet our formal legislated requirements each year.
The second type of bureaucracy is more insidious. It is related to how the club operates on a daily basis. In other words, are the daily operating rules so strict and formal that nobody is having any fun. I think that might be the sort of situation that Ulrich was referring to. If the rule book has to be consulted every step of the way, in my opinion that is going too far.
BARM has been a 'run what ya brung' club for many years. That was primarily because our layouts were not designed for operations. We are now in a new home with a new layout under construction which will provide lots of opportunities for operating. However, the Executive has agreed that we will not ram operations down the club members' throats. If people want to do loops we will provide time for them to do exactly that. Those who want to do operations have been invited to come in on another night so that they can have the layout all to themselves to do their thing. Hopefully, once the operations guys have things sorted out then we will invite them to do a few sessions on the regular club nights so that they can introduce the concept to the roundy-roundy guys and get them involved.
The bottom line is that we are conciously trying to avoid too many rules. We want the club to be relaxed. We don't want the members to require approval for every locomotive and car they put on the track. If somebody has derailment or uncoupling problems we will work with them to sort the problems out, not banish them from the layout.
So far our approach seems to be working.
Sorry, long post.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
I lived on the west coast from age 7 thru 24 so I've always been a western rail fan. The Pasadena club looks like a good one and the trains they run appear to be mostly what I enjoy seeing. Unfortunately I'm in northern Virginia so about the only way I'm going to be able to enjoy runing trains of that nature is to do it myself.
Looks like you found a nice club however!
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
riogrande5761 Unfortunately I'm in northern Virginia so about the only way I'm going to be able to enjoy runing trains of that nature is to do it myself.
Unfortunately I'm in northern Virginia so about the only way I'm going to be able to enjoy runing trains of that nature is to do it myself.
Understand that. I am in southern Virginia and run Rio Grande. Our club is a run what you bring and we have me with Rio Grande, one fellow is into Chicago Northwestern, one that does New England roads and a couple that bring stuff from all over the country, running alongside Seaboard, Southern and Norfolk and Western. Gotta run the anachronism police are after me.......
drgwcs riogrande5761 Unfortunately I'm in northern Virginia so about the only way I'm going to be able to enjoy runing trains of that nature is to do it myself. Understand that. I am in southern Virginia and run Rio Grande. Our club is a run what you bring and we have me with Rio Grande, one fellow is into Chicago Northwestern, one that does New England roads and a couple that bring stuff from all over the country, running alongside Seaboard, Southern and Norfolk and Western. Gotta run the anachronism police are after me.......
At the Timonium MD show, there are definitely some guys running western trains on some big layouts which I get to enjoy, but otherwise it's all eastern stuff. Don't get me wrong, some run some very nice trains, weathered and pretty faithful as far as I can tell.
At least there are a few Rio Grande folks flying the fallen flag around here! Where is your club in case I get a wild hair to come visit? I'm just north of Stafford on 95.
Regarding the "run what ya brung" concept, I think it's fun to do both.
Meaning.
Sometimes (a LOT of the time), I want to run stuff for MY favorite railroad. And it truly doesn't bother me if there's an N&W coal train out on the main, too. In fact, it's fun to watch, also.
But.
Once in awile, it seems it would be nice to run a coherent set of trains. Thus I have a kupla locomotives, a switcher, and a caboose for: WP. ATSF. RF&P. PC. SP steam era. So, should the group decide to run one of those, I can play, too.
It's never happened, but I'm ready.
Ed,At my club, we'll run anything as long as it has Kadees. But every once and a while we will have an "all steam night" or an "all Alco night" or "all EMD night". This gives us a little spice; something different. I'm working towards an "all electric" night; perhaps after the Rapido NH EP-5's come out.
Steam night is especially interesting because we have to put out helpers and dig out a bunch of switchers. Most members prefer diesels to switch with over steam. Having them run steam instead makes it fun because everyone is in the same boat. It just takes longer to do things with steam; and since everyone is using steam, no one can complain about it taking too long.
Which reminds me: I also have a New Haven Merchants Limited. Or I will, once Rapido makes the food service cars.
Just in case.........
Back to the orginal question: About 80 percent of what I know in model railroading I learned in the first club I joined, or from the friendly non judgemental types who operated in my basement for a dozen years.
After ten years between clubs I joined a second club 1 year and a half ago.
I have learned a large amount of theory for DCC, but have done nothing with it home. Learning scratch building, and other things now.
davidmurray Back to the orginal question: About 80 percent of what I know in model railroading I learned in the first club I joined, or from the friendly non judgemental types who operated in my basement for a dozen years. After ten years between clubs I joined a second club 1 year and a half ago. I have learned a large amount of theory for DCC, but have done nothing with it home. Learning scratch building, and other things now. Dave
The original question was:
"What will I do then?"