I guess I gotta vent today! This is 3 posts in an hour. Did anyone say decaf ? Here goes: Ever time I visit a club, no one is railroading . It's always the same trick. A long freighter is looping the main, but does no pickups or set outs. It just runs and goes back to staging. Yes I appreciate the guys loving to see their prized possessions out on the road. But I rarely if ever see a couple of fellas working a siding or such with a set out or pick up. I love watching this action as I do the 'realroaders' on Los Angeles trackage. Or, where are the passenger trains anymore, making schedualed station stops on the layout ? Not flaming at all.. Just that I wish I could go to a club and see this kind of activity, what so many of us fell in love with to begin with...
Come to the club in Murfreesboro Tennessee on Saturdays and Sundays and you can see a ton of switching.Thats all we do as I am like you.The roundy round running is boring and why I left N scale.
most members don't like there stuff to get "mingled" with the other stuff. usually when we do switching here, some member will have a fit because there car wasn't where they left it.
Hi Mark and Geep, that is exactly why I left clubbibg. I lost a car or two, but how can you prove who got it? We tried to come up with a way to identify our cars from the other guy's, but unless we make it removable it destroies the effect of all our weathering and detailing. I also got tired of some guy running loops but talking with another member about something else while the rest of us had to wait to run our new engine or car. The neatest thing was when a " someone" slipped behind this blowhard, flipped a switch, ran his train off onto a siding clear across the layout, turned off the power to that siding, re-set both switches, then quietly walked away. Several members had been blissfully switching cars for some time before he noticed his train had not come around lately. We all packed up, went home and left him talking. I don't know how long it took him to get his train back. hee hee.
I refuse to belong to clubs because of the politics that crop up in so many of them. I do belong to a social club that meets round-robin style. We have no officers or dues and the only politics that we discuss are the one's that affect us all. Thankfully I have a layout at home and the last thing I will stand for is someone telling me how it should be run. Last (but not least) is dues. The local club near me wants $45 a month. I don't have that kind of budget to buy the things I need for my own layout. For those that don't have a layout at home and depend on a club to run their equipment, I feel for you. Now I know there are some successful clubs in this country that maintain a good membership but I have not found that here. Just my 2 cents.
The Clud that is here is 25.00 a Year yes for a full year.I am going to check it out and see what happens.
Our dues are $20.00 a month but once you are voted in as a member (after 90 days) you get a key and can come run whenever you want.We also have one day a week devoted for run sessions only for those who want to attend.As far as keeping track of ones rolling stock, we have a color system where everyone who joins picks two colors and paints those two colors on the bottom of their rolling stock(small dots) and it seems to work well.
we started a number system here awhile back. all my cars have "13" written in paint, ink, or engraved on the bottom of my cars/engines. I already lost 2 cars prior to that at the club (I know the guy who stole them, but he won't admit it, oh well). I know I let other members who don't have there fleet up and running yet use my stuff, and I have no problem. However I used to switch over on the DCC side. A member named Dan parked his train in a certain order in the back. I never touched it. However another member who left his cars scattered through the yard came in one day and kept asking me "where did car X go?" "Oh, its down by the intermodel yard. a few minutes later he'd ask where car "y" was. he didn't know where his stuff went.
