The Houston S Gaugers have nearly doubled our membership since we've
been showing our modules. I'm sure where to put the credit--maybe some
of the past S magazines, the RTR things from AM/SHS/DPH, our modules
themselves or our enticing personalities !!
However, before that time our club consisted of 3-5 of us sitting in
Jack Troxell's garage/layout building kits. With a couple of master
builders lending an occasional helping hand we built some neat things.
So that was a great time in my railroading experience.
After the modules came along and we took our 'show' on the road and the
appearance of some RTR stuff, the theme somewhat changed. So now we get
to run stuff as a club and have a good time. Our modules are code 100
scale everything, but even our hi-rail members either own some scale
flanged items or run what's on the layout. We try to encourage everyone
to run the layout during a show. I have built seven additional modules,
another member has built two, another one and I've got two in the back
of my mind (but no place to put the final product). We don't have much
in the way of out of scale items or wildly compressed scenes (I always
love the airport scenes including runways in 2 square foot, whiich is
right next to the toy barn set).
Each member does or doesn't do any 'at home modeling' as they see fit.
Jack is scratch building a SP P-14 steam engine, I'm about ready to
finish up Banta's little gas station, weather some freight cars and then
I'll work on a operations friendly control panel, I think Peter is
starting to formulate plans for his new layout. I'm not sure about
progress with some of the other guys but I'm sure some things are
happening there also. To a large degree, most of us have stopped buying
everything in site that caught our fancy. The economy and our time in
life just won't support that any more. At the moment I don't buy
anything unless I sell something (I've got some items on ebay right now).
Bob Werre
BobWphoto.com
>
>
> In the end, it is not up to the manufacturers to promote our scale --
> it is up to us! The only effective way to promote the scale, as
> Pieter says, is to show up at general interest model railroad shows
> and meets, with S scale models and layouts. Our local club, the
> Potomac Valley S Gauge Association, built a modular layout in the
> 1990's that we took to many shows. However, once we had completed
> the basic benchwork and rudimentary scenery, most of the modular
> layout was populated by Ertl, MTH and other out-of-the-box structures
> that don't even meet the detail standards found in HO and N. There
> was little evidence of an active modeling community to encourage
> others to join us. The result? We did not create one new member to
> our club and to S.
>
> But, as I mentioned yesterday, this is NOT about helping the
> manufacturers, and it is NOT about getting new recruits for S. This
> is all about us enjoying our hobby to the fullest, while we still
> have time to do it!
>
> Let's get modeling! Isn't that why we are all here in this group in
> the first place?
>
> Dan Vandermause
> Ellicott City, Maryland
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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