Why do people join model railway clubs in 2017

[The Johnster]

DC? Luddite?  Go to your room young lady and think about what you've just said, and don't come back until you are very, very, sorry.

 

Actually, you've got a point, it's just that I'm too old and feeble to understand DCC, and too poor to afford it!

[Pete the Elaner]

My club experience sounds similar to many.

I started as a teenager & found myself with a couple of others of similar age who I got on very well with.

We built a layout with some very welcome adult guidance, learned a lot from it while enjoying the building process.

As we grew older, membership changed a little & I found myself with others who I did not get along so well with. By this time, I had learned a lot about layout building & the newer members seemed to be reversing most of the work I was doing. The committee felt that our layout had become a money pit (which I agreed with) so suspended any further funding of our layout.

I stopped enjoying it & when I realised I was continuing to go there just out of habit, I stopped going.

I still see some of the other club members at shows & get on with most of them well.

 

I keep in touch with some of them although, oddly enough, we were all members at different times. We sometimes meet at the pub where we often discuss ideas & plans. We don't have a joint layout. I have tried that but it just does not seem to work because you all have different ideas of what you want to do & how you want to do it. We do sometimes help out with each other's layout but this seems to be different because the owner knows what they want to do & the others help them to achieve it.

 

I believe the best way to learn some skills is to work closely with someone & a club is the most practical place for this.

[Pete the Elaner]

I joined a club to get modelling motivation and to improve my modelling skills.

 

I left the club when I realised that I was spending most of my time trying to motivate other members to improve their modelling skills.

 

 

It sounds like you were quite happy to benefit from other's experience & motivation but had no interest in passing these on to others.

 

That sounds rather selfish, but I am sure you didn't mean it quite that way?

[Chris M]

I find that for me joining a club is about meeting people who are doers with a range of skills. I can turn my hand to a lot of things, but unless it involves electricity I tend not to be in the skilled class. It is nice to be part of a team that is achieving something way beyond what an individual could achieve and I think it is the teamwork that motivates me to join a club.

 

I would not join a club that was either luddite (clockwork/pushalong/DC etc.) or one that was primarily a social gathering.

Tut tut. DC is not Luddite. As I understand it DCC is for those who aren't capable of wiring up their layout.

 

 

Edited July 26, 2017 by Chris M

[Chris M]

 

I tried to put a smiley on the end of the last post but it doesn't show up. Maybe I am a bit of a Luddite after all.

[terrysoham]

Having completed the track laying and then the wiring of a friend's dcc layout over the last four months, I can catagorically state that using dcc does not mean less wiring! I can only think that the "only two wires are needed" proposition must have been a sales gimmick when dcc first started to encourage the take up of, what was then, new technology.

In my opinion, dcc has many advantages which is why I've now wired up three dcc layouts but the saving on wiring is not one of them.

 

 

Regards

[St. Simon]

Hi,

 

Interesting question, and I thought I'd share my experiences of model railway clubs.

 

I've fairly recently (around Christmas) left the club that I have been a member of for a number of years, and have become involved, although not a member merely the son of a member, with another (I won't name them, as I know members of both are on here as well as being good friends). Whilst I don't want be too critical of either, they are very different clubs

 

The club that I was a member of is a large club with many (around a dozen), and varied, club layouts as well as a large membership, centered on a large, so far permanent club room . The club had a both an 'overall' committee and an 'exhibition committee'. Most club nights would consist of both modelling and socializing, but there was more socializing generally. 

 

On the flip side, the other club is a smaller club with a slightly smaller membership, with only 3 or 4 club layouts and a club room consisting of a rented room in a community center. There is no formal committee, but there is chairman, secretary etc.  Again, there is modelling and socialising of a club night, but there is a far greater emphasis on modelling and I would say finescale modelling (the club does have a 'OO' gauge layout).

 

Frankly, I no longer like either of them, the large club generated model railway politics that seemed thrust upon us as the meaning of life by some members causing fractions in the club, it seeming a little like 'us and them'. Whilst the smaller club is sterile, everybody modelling in their own little world, woe bi-tide you if you talk, this creates experts who critic your work. Both the clubs have put me off, frankly, wasting my money on that part of the hobby.

 

However, without either clubs, we would not be in the position we are, both as modellers, but also in life. We met have some really nice people, many who have since began part of our exhibition layout operating crews (and us theirs), the clubs kicked off both mine and my dad's exhibition 'career', but we have since continued our enjoyment of the hobby without being in a club. Instead, there are a group of us, who met at the large club, who now go out socialising and go around each others and model and enjoy it, that is the essence of a club.

 

Why am I telling you this? I think that too many clubs have lost their way, 99% focus on getting people to their exhibition, making money, getting members and to out do other clubs, no longer do many clubs focus on keeping the fun within the hobby (and I actually think that is partially true of RMWeb on occasion). There is no doubt that some clubs do do that, but they are often the clubs made up of 'friends' who don't do anything formal, they just live in the same area and go to the same pub, which I think is great.

 

Obviously these are my own personal opinions, I can understand all the points of view being put forward.

 

Simon

Edited July 26, 2017 by St. Simon

[pharrc20]

I have been a member of my local club for nearly 21 years initially joining in late 1996 after coming home from university and I had already rekindled my own modelling and saw the club as a way of meeting new friends and learning new skills.

 

I have been part of the club exhibition committee helping to arrange the annual exhibition and all of the things that go with that role. In addition I am also a layout manager for a layout that I helped to setup and develop with a modern 2000s rolling stock theme. This helped to get two younger lads interested enough to become members of the club and they helped redevelop the layout from its former life as a Swiss outline to somewhere in north east Manchester suburbs. Of the two lads one is still an active member. I also help out when exhibiting the main OO club layout when it goes out to shows. I enjoy operating the layout and quite happy to take or loan stock to run for the weekend.

 

Although my own modelling interests have wained a lot in the past few years it is the social aspect and encouragement from the gang that has kept me going and doing little jobs for them like renumbering etc. hence why I have a Hornby 'Patriot' and Bachmann Stanier 'Mogul' in front of me now for change of numbers/crests! Oh and a pile of Lima PCAs I really must finish off well overdue.

 

Personal circumstances have certainly played a part in my own interest waining but I am trying not to let that become an excuse for jacking it all in and letting whatever it is win. Something will change and I will get my stock and Speedlow finished.

 

Paul

[BG John]

Tut tut. DC is not Luddite. As I understand it DCC is for those who aren't capable of wiring up their layout.

 

No, that's radio control, something that will turn users of DCC users into Luddites at some point in the not too distant future . In my case, it's not that I'm not capable of wiring layouts though, it's because I can't be bothered to wire my layouts, when I can sit in comfort at my workbench playing with electronics instead .

[Chris M]

No, that's radio control, something that will turn users of DCC users into Luddites at some point in the not too distant future . In my case, it's not that I'm not capable of wiring layouts though, it's because I can't be bothered to wire my layouts, when I can sit in comfort at my workbench playing with electronics instead .

I use BPRC and DC so I double qualify as a Luddite! I'm getting better though, I can now do a smiley - those 25 years working in IT weren't entirely wasted. Edited July 26, 2017 by Chris M

[The Johnster]

RC with on board power sources on the locos, rechargeable from the track, and track powered (DC) servos controlling the motors; definitely the right way to go!

 

Cwmdimbath is a very simple and small blt designed not to need a lot of wiring but still provide for all the train movements possible, with DC.  Points are Peco insulfrog, there is one strategically placed feed, and the current goes where the points tell it to, with wires to the outer rails of the two kickback sidings.  There is no control panel, and all points and signals are hand operated; I find this imposes a very railway like 'ensure the road is put back properly/set the road/clear the signals/drive the train/put the signals back/put the road back' sequence which I find soothing and relaxing.  It is also, so far touch wood, 100% reliable, something I have never achieved on a layout before.  Despite what everyone tells you about dead frogs, running is very close to perfect as well, and with 0-6-0s and attention paid to level and smoothness when the track was laid, so it should be in my view.

Edited July 26, 2017 by The Johnster

[cal.n]

Frankly, I no longer like either of them, the large club generated model railway politics that seemed thrust upon us as the meaning of life by some members causing fractions in the club, it seeming a little like 'us and them'. 

 

I don't think your alone in that experience...

 

[Suzie]

DC? Luddite?  Go to your room young lady and think about what you've just said, and don't come back until you are very, very, sorry.

 

Actually, you've got a point, it's just that I'm too old and feeble to understand DCC, and too poor to afford it!

 

All good reasons from a personal point of view, but I like my club to be up with the times and stretching me a bit. I was just speaking from an electrical point of view, but I have the same view on track amongst other things - a new club layout should not be using code 100 just so you can run 1950s Triang if you happen to have it. Lots of new things have come along that clubs can embrace and the club environment is a great place to move forward.

 

What I do at the club does not necessarily match my personal modelling - I can quite happily work on an overseas outline club layout with no suitable stock to run, even scale does not worry me. It just has to be interesting and challenging.

 

Sorry! ;-)

[Horsetan]

I don't think your alone in that experience...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rymdTiqYSw&t=5s

As I listened to this, I suddenly realised that I hadn't come across "L"-gauge before. I wonder what the standards are for that.....?

[cal.n]

As I listened to this, I suddenly realised that I hadn't come across "L"-gauge before. I wonder what the standards are for that.....?

More concerned with the fact that they think OO will run on O track

[Gunnbrikt]

As I listened to this, I suddenly realised that I hadn't come across "L"-gauge before. I wonder what the standards are for that.....?

L gauge is the unofficial name given to the Lego train scale. No official standard but is amazing what people can built using Lego, especially the trains. Has quite an active community to and even it's own online magazine called RailBricks.

[grahame]

 

I would not join a club that was either luddite (clockwork/pushalong/DC etc.) or one that was primarily a social gathering.

Clockwork, eh? That sounds like fun.

 

I left a club when they went all DCC. It no longer seemed about modeling railways and making rolling stock, track and buildings, but just about electronics, wiring and computer control systems.

 

G.

[The Johnster]

In the club I was once in we discussed forming a computer club so that we'd have somewhere to go and talk about model railways...

[chris p bacon]

In the club I was once in we discussed forming a computer club so that we'd have somewhere to go and talk about model railways...

 

It was a bit too PC for you the.............

[Torper]

I wouldn't want to join a model railway club if only because they seem so lacking in ambition.  Up here in Scotland there isn't a single club, so far as I am aware (please correct me if i'm wrong), that is modelling in any of the "finescales", eg P4, EM, Scale7, 2mm FS, and it seems that by and large they are reluctant to move outside the comfort zones of their members (which means, of course, that people who would like to model outside these zones don't join and the situation is prepetuated).  Instead I'm lucky enough to have a small group of like-minded friends and we get together from time to time to socialise and do some modelling.

 

DT

[grahame]

I wouldn't want to join a model railway club if only because they seem so lacking in ambition.  Up here in Scotland there isn't a single club, so far as I am aware (please correct me if i'm wrong), that is modelling in any of the "finescales", eg P4, EM, Scale7, 2mm FS, 

 

I've seen some very fine and ambitious modelling in O, OO and N, and some from clubs. I've also seen some pretty dire so called finescale layouts. I don't think labels and claimed standards is the issue but the approach and application.

 

G.

[Torper]

I've seen some very fine and ambitious modelling in O, OO and N, and some from clubs. I've also seen some pretty dire so called finescale layouts. I don't think labels and claimed standards is the issue but the approach and application.

 

I entirely agree.  I just wish sometimes that Scotland's model railway clubs would perhaps try to move out of their safety zones and try something a bit different, perhaps a bit more testing (which is of course included in the concept of "approach").  That in turn might just lead to a bit more variety in the vast majority of Scotland's model railway shows.

 

DT

Edited July 29, 2017 by Torper

[The Johnster]

It was a bit too PC for you the.............

 

If there was anything that club wasn't, it was PC!

[GreenGiraffe22]

I've been debating joining Brighton Model Railway club, and I'd love to show off some of my Southern stock on a display layout, *edit: and 'play trains' on a much bigger layout than my small roundy that can barely accommodate a 4-carriage trains, but the £60 fee is putting me off a bit... We'll see.

 

*edit 2: I'd love to be part of a group that displayed a grouping Southern layout, the last few model railway exhibitions I went to, I barley saw any layouts in the Southern BR period, let alone grouping.

Edited July 29, 2017 by GreenGiraffe22

[The Johnster]

Time was when the exhibition treadmill which was one of the reasons for my leaving the world of clubs was full of half finished layouts that had failed to meet the deadline, with bare boards in places and running compromised by incomplete wiring.  'It'll be good to show the construction process, people ask about that sometimes'.  Indeed my own club for some years showed a to scale layout of a prototype busy suburban terminus with complex handbuilt copperclad pointwork which was never wired up properly because nobody knew how to do it with the electric pencil route setting system though at least two people said they did before proceeding to argue about it instead of doing something, and through which half the routes could not be set.  The committee's approach to operating was that, if you could run a train in, run around, and run back out on the correct road, that was all that was needed at a show to keep the punters happy (policy; something must be moving at all times while the public are present).  In fact, the real location featured numerous moves into two separate sets of carriage sidings and a loco spur, plus some trip freight work, a place of constant activity which could not be replacated without the shunting and empty stock moves, which could not be accomplished because a) the pointwork was not wired up for most of them, and b) most of the members did not know how to operate this complex layout anyway.  Borchester it wasn't, but sort of should have been.  

 

The club was so focussed on meeting the demand for a finished exhibition layout that they only ever superficially finished a layout, and never learned to operate it properly.  My attempts to learn to operate it properly and get others to  do the same were met with the attitude that 'all you want to do is play trains while we do the building work', which to me fundamentally failed to address the need to re-create the prototypical operation of the prototype based model. This is the cause of the frustration that eventually led to me leaving. 

 

Things are better these days, but one still sees layouts, including some of the best detailed and presented finescale ones, whose operators have clearly never operated them and who often do not seem to be fully competent in doing so, nor to understand the most basic methods by which railways operate.  Presenting layouts at shows is more than building models, displaying them in nicely finished proscenium arches and proper lighting, and everybody wearing matching t shirts.  It is about those things, and should be, but all of them are meaningless if the trains can't be run properly.  Operating, as the Borchester people and the likes of Tony Wright will tell you, is important, and I will never again submit to the tyranny of a club whose attitude is that it is 'playing trains'.  it needs to be practiced, run to a sequence, so that everybody knows what is happening next and it runs like the well oiled machine that it should run like.  Operators need to be able to have enough experience before they make idiots of themselves and the rest of the club in public to know how each loco will react to the controller in each situation and on each piece of track; in other words they need route and traction knowledge like real drivers, and to 'know the frame' like a real signalman so that they can set up routes and put them back properly.  The methodology of how and extent to which this is done prototypically or otherwise behind the scenes is down to your club's interpretation of Rule 1, but from the viewing side it has to look as if it is running properly whatever smoke and mirrors you deploy to convince the punters.  It should look like a real railway, but small.

 

The problem in my experience is that operators at shows do not want to operate the layouts, and are unwilling to be stuck behind the controls for hours on end while the best trade stand bargains are being snapped up around them. They want to go to the show, fair enough, but in too many cases there are not enough of them with enough experience to adequately man the layouts, and when a quick one in the bar turns into several slow ones because you've got into a conversation with a bloke you haven't seen since this show last year, funnily enough also in the bar, that's just unprofessional and unfair on the poor sod behind the layout who's supposed to be picking his missus up from the station in 10 minutes.  You are beginning to see why I found exhibiting stressful and hard work.  If you are part of the show, you don't get to see the show.  I am banging on about this not to vent my frustrations from a quarter of a century ago; a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then and it doesn't matter any more to me (it fairly obviously never mattered to anyone else, o yeah, I can do passive aggression as well as the next man), but, and more seriously, because I think it is a point that is relevant to why people join and then sometimes leave model railway clubs, which is the original reason for the thread.

 

'What do you do at this model railway club of yours, then?'

 

'We design, build, and exhibit layouts at exhibitions, which we have to do in order to finance the next layout.  Afterwards, we have a few beers in the local pub and talk railways.  It's fun, you should join'.

 

Is there something missing from this scenario?  That you operate them at shows for instance?

 

A few suggestions for operating policy at shows for clubs:-

 

. Operating policy is operating policy, to be taken seriously (in good humour of course) and regarded as such and not as something we'd like to do if we ever get around to it one day.  

. Minimum number of operators required to run the railway adequately to be agreed before the show.  Often one is enough, and two can manage quite busy layouts with a well designed operating system

. Operators to be trained in the methods of operating the layout before the show.

. All stock to be used at the show to be test run on all parts of the layout before the show (club's policy on matters such as coupling compatibility, back to backs, etc being implemented).  No other stock than this to be used under any circumstances, even if it ran perfectly last time out or is the chairman's new IEP/Dean Goods/Bubble Car.  Give it a test run before you open the following morning if the chairman's bothered to turn up.

. All operators to be familiar with the running and control response characteristics of all locos and stock to be used at the show, before the show

. Agreed roster specifying time of operator session (I'd suggest 2 hour max followed by at least 2 off), with a 5 minute changeover so that the relieving operator can get his bearings and pick up the place he is entering the sequence.

. No alchohol or drugs to be consumed during, or for an agreed time before, operating layout, and no using alcohol consumption as an excuse for 'getting out' of your agreed roster.  Prescribed medication to be discussed on individual basis before the show.  Once you're off duty, go for it!

. Spare trained operator cover to be provided for in roster to deal with emergencies/illness etc.  Keep spare man away from bar.

. Agreed number of people in view 'behind the layout' not to be exceeded; leads to socialising which looks unprofessional and distracts the operators.  Bodies sleeping off last night's excesses are fine out of sight beneath it, but watch out for snorers.

. No food or drink in any form allowed behind the layout at a show, ever.  Looks unprofessional and is too easily used by the rostered guy in the bar who hasn't showed up to keep his cover behind the layout

. Very important this one in public; no unsupervised children allowed behind the layout, even the club chairman's.  Supervised children who are trained operators are fine.

. For busy layouts; spare man available to field questions from punters; operators to be regarded as at work and not to be disturbed.  Obviously rigid implementation of this is dependent on circumstances, but it should be a general principle that operators need to concentrate on what they are doing

. Anyone who claims that their grandfather drove the Mallard is entitled to operate the layout for the rest of the show, unrelieved.  This rule to be relaxed for the last 2 hours and replaced by an entitlement to help take the layout down.  Unless they can prove the claim or are called Duddington.  I may not be being completely serious with this particular point.

 

I would very strongly recommend the practice of setting up the layout with a full complement of the agreed stock and the full team of agreed operators for a full sequence dry run at the club premises shortly before each show, certainly if the layout has not been out in a while, to test run the layout, the stock, and as a refresher course for the operators.

 

Big ask for small clubs, but only suggestions and what I think is good practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Edited July 29, 2017 by The Johnster