Notable National Convention Layout Tours
 We're less than 90 days from the National Convention in Cleveland. The convention committee has been busy making sure everything is ready for a great week. All tours are filling up fast and you do not want to miss out. If you have been waiting to register, now is the time. Here are some of the great layout tours we have available. Don't miss out on these tours to our area's best layouts. Many have been featured over the last year in Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman, N Scale and NMRA Magazine Akron HO Tour L313 This half-day tour stops at three HO layouts. Come see Frank Smith's 30x45 layout, the Bacher North Railroad. His Lenz controllers keep his freelanced railroad of 1950-1970 running smoothly. David Hazlett oversees the D H Rail, a shortline built for operation. This 25x30 freelanced shortline, while having minimal scenery, is high on operating activity featuring a car card forwarding system. Operating sessions use a crew of 10+ to keep the traffic in the yards moving and to service layout's many industries. Tom Schlueter created the South Ohio Beltline, which depicts Ohio in the 1930's on this beautifully scenicked layout. Southwest Tour L211 Ron Morgan's Union Pacific features a huge ethanol plant, two decks, and a 4-track helix. The Cuyahoga Valley Club's four layouts are in an 1876 NYC station right beside the Norfolk Southern Chicago mainline and was featured in the Nov. 2013 NMRA Magazine. Paul Novak's Gold Creek is built for operations with block controls and homemade throttles. Steve Riddlebaugh's new layout, Sandy River, in On30 has all handlaid track and turnouts. Medina Tour L411 This all-day tour stops first at Dave Bitte's extraordinary Allegany & Northern HO layout then we will visit the steel-themed HO layout of Aaron Dupont. You'll ride the rails at the Northeastern Ohio Live Steamers and have a box lunch on their 15 acres. On the way back to Cleveland, we'll visit Jeff Mitchell's HO CSX Toledo Sub-Division, featured in the March NMRA Magazine and John Puch's charming HO Union Valley Central RR.Web site for Live Steamers: www.neols.net Southeast Tour L412 Frank Feko's Southern Ohio & Michigan is a large double-deck HO pike set in the 50s, and features an incredible swing bridge and great industrial modeling. Art Bumpus' B&O Spruce Creek Division featured in the April NMRA Magazine is set in West Virginia.in the 1940s. If you like the color green and lots of craftsman kits and dioramas, you'll enjoy your visit. Brian Harko has created familiar scenes from this area on his freelanced two-rail O-scale main and On30 branch. DonStettin's Danbury, Elton, and Litton is a mountain coal hauling road featuring 19 bridges! Youngstown Tour L413 The YMRA Tour showcases five well-scenicked layouts, featuring coal hauling and related industries. Greg Oyster's 22'x24' N-scale, a modern day coal hauling division of CSX, has long mainline runs of 75-plus cars set in the West Virginia Mountains. Greg's layout was featured in the Mar/Apr issue of N-scale Magazine. Larry Poage's 13'x22' N-scale NS-Mahoning Division services the B&E iron works with various furnaces. Larry's layout was featured in the Jan/Feb issue of N-scale Magazine . George Sankey's HO Ohio Midland and Western is 75% scenicked and depicts the scenery in Western Pennsylvania and Virginia. The tour culminates as guests of the Youngstown Model Railroad Association.This club features two large layouts in their own building. Upstairs is a large two-rail O-scale layout. Fully scenicked, it features large locomotives and passenger trains with operating signals and a control panel on a balcony overlooking the entire layout. Downstairs you'll find the another huge layout. The Club's HO layout depicting coal-hauling and steel manufacturing at it was in the Mahoning Valley in the past. Hungry? The Club's concession stand will be open for lunch. Remember to get the latest information and updates get our Guidebook APP for iPhone, iPad or Android and download our convention http://guidebook.com/g/NMRA2014 |
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| | | A few words from the President
The Millenials
We hear a lot about the demise of model railroading and/or the end of the NMRA in the chat rooms. Pundits have been predicting the end of our world for many years. Heck, in the 1950s, the rise of plastic kits was seen as dooming craftsman kits and the entire hobby. Editorials were written on the subject. Somehow, we survived and indeed, our golden age in terms of numbers, was not achieved until the 1970-80's.
Today, we face a more serious challenge - the aging of the hobby. I believe the average age of an NMRA member is 63. For Life Members, 67. This is touted as proof of our demise. I even used to joke about that, plotting the age progression on a chart (it is not linear, meaning it does not increase 1 year for 1 year) to establish the End of Model Railroading on January 15, 2037. A fictitious date. Well, some hobbies have disappeared. In the 1940's, tethered gasoline powered miniature race cars were so popular, pre-RMC "Model Craftsman" magazine dedicated a section to them. Gone. But not really. Morphed into RC cars and boats. Studies show all hobbies are aging. It is more a function of changing times and technologies. The Millennials have been studied as the first true digital generation and supposedly, our future. Well, guess what? We have a stiff climb ahead. Millennials as a group do not embrace delayed gratification activities. Golf is aging. Too many rules, too hard to master. The PGA is worried. Other studies show that Millennials do not join groups so Rotary, Elks and Chambers of Commerce are also aging. The image we have of the self-absorbed, non-social, always texting Millennial is overly-broad but has a grain of truth. For this generation never knew analog or the very technology we take for granted. Raised in a digital age, they embrace an era of rapid change, instant gratification and independent sources of information. To them, "cloud" has a whole different meaning and the Internet holds all truths. I am not belittling this generation; far from it. They are our grandkids and help me master my new iPad Air and Kindle. Nicer folks you will never meet. But into building analog kits or scratchbuilding? The delayed gratification of a layout? Joining the NMRA to attend meetings? A tough challenge. My answer is not to give up but also not to work fruitlessly against the tide. Each generation rebels against the excesses of the previous. I am hopeful the post-Millenials will actually reach out to do what their parents abhorred. Until then, I see a more friutful albeit temporary hope in reaching out to Boomers with the time and money to adopt a hobby. While they will not extend our ultimate age limit, they may buy us time for that post-Millennial generation to find our hobby and maybe find us as well. Pollyanna? No. I see that generation's eyes light up with Thomas and Brio and Lego. Come to Cleveland and the NMRA National Convention. Come to the National Train Show and watch the reaction to the Lego exhibit or Thomas. Let's go after that generation while they are formative and not compete with Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter. My thoughts, what are yours?
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Notice of 2015 Elections  The following NMRA Officers and Board of Directors positions are open for election in 2015:
1. President
2. Vice President, Administration
3. Vice President, Special Projects
4. Eastern District Director
5. Pacific District Director, and
6. At-Large North America Director
All incumbents are eligible to be candidates for this election
. Please check Article III, paragraph 12, of the NMRA Executive Handbook (EHB) located at http://www.nmra.org/national/organization/nmra_organization.html for the extent of the districts affected. Qualifications for candidates are listed in the EHB. All submissions of candidate's names for consideration by the Nominations Committee for all offices except Pacific District Director shall be submitted to Tony Koester, Chairman of the Nominations Committee, nkpfan@ptd.net, no later than June 15, 2014. All submissions of candidate's names for consideration by the Pacific District Director Nominations Committee shall be submitted to Sam Mangion, Chairman of the Pacific District Director Nominations Committee, mangion2@bigpond.com, no later than June 15, 2014.
Candidates may wish to run for these positions by petition and not be subjected to the decisions of the appropriate nominations committees. Requirements for submitting by petition are contained in the EHB. All submissions by petition shall be received by the Secretary NMRA no later than July 31, 2014.
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Koester appointed National Nominating Committee Chairman
 NMRA President Charlie Getz has appointed longtime NMRA member and former At-Large World Wide Director Tony Koester as the National Nominating Committee Chairman, replacing Temporary Nominating Committee Chairman Stephen Priest. Priest had taken on the temporary position after Clark Kooning stepped down at the February Board meeting. |
Education Department Update By Bruce De Young, Department Manager  I devoted my last two columns in the NMRA eBulletin to the Department's EduTRAIN® Program. In this column I would like to put the spotlight on another Education Department Program - the NMRA's Boy Scout Merit Badge Program. The Coordinator for our BSA Merit Badge Program is NMRA's Secretary, John Stevens. As you probably know, the Merit Badge program is an educational initiative of the Boy Scouts of America, and education is also a prime mission of the NMRA. So, if our two worlds have an overlap, it makes sense that we would get involved. That overlap occurs with the Railroading Merit Badge.
A look at the table of contents of the Railroading Merit Badge Booklet shows such topics as the history of railroading, modern railroads, signals, railroad safety, railfanning, careers in railroading, and model railroading. I would think most NMRA members have more than a passing knowledge of those topics and could easily serve as a Merit Badge Counselor for this badge. (They even include a 'Timesaver" layout - what fun it would be to see some Scouts spend some time at the controls of that!)
The NMRA's initiative in this area is to encourage Regions and Divisions to get a number of members qualified to serve as Merit Badge Counselors (since minors are involved, the BSA has a number of steps a person must take to become a Counselor); and then to encourage Scouts to earn this Merit Badge by reaching out to local BSA Troops, offering our help. Who knows, this might be the first step in getting more young people to join the hobby at some point in their lives.
Many NMRA Regions and Divisions have already appointed BSA Merit Badge Coordinators, so if you are interested in getting involved, that is a good place to start. If your Division or Region is not currently involved, I would encourage you to roll up your sleeves and get a program up and running.
Additionally, the Southeastern Region's website has quite a bit of valuable information on the NMRA's Boy Scout Merit Badge Program which can be accessed at this address: http://www.ser-nmra.org/programs. As an aside, a number of members of the Garden State Division, including me, are in the process of initiating the program in our Division. I will let you know how it turns out.
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Region and National Conventions |
530: Lou Adler, MCoR 531: Dennis Clark, AR 532: Peter MacDonald, AR 533: Andrew Merriam, PCR 534: Robert Reid, MER 535: Sowerby Smith, AR |
In Upcoming Issues of NMRA Magazine |
 Scratchbuilding SD39u and Slug Sets Scrap Box Structures Scratchbuilding a Wigwam Sawdust Burner Remembering the Buck Pass Railroad |
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