All -- Roy Hoffman's extolling S Gaugian as the proper representative of all that is S is the primary reason that I volunteered to take over as his S Curves column successor in Model Railroad News. You see, I thoroughly disagree with him. I believe his scatter-shot philosophy is a severe impediment to S promotion.
The Gaugian and the Dispatch do a fine job of catering to the fans of just running colorful trains. But they do nothing for promoting S to non-S people. They preach only to the choir. As AF fans gradually go to the Great Trainyard in the Sky, where are their replacements going to come from? AF means nothing to the potential convert from some other scale. My whole point is that potential converts need to feel comfortable that anything they would purchase in S will be compatible with anything else they buy. One of my goals in my MRN column is to promote NMRA/NASG standards for wheels and track so as to ensure interoperabiity. Only those who specifically wish to run their cherished AF equipment need to compromise these standards -- there is no other rationale for going the non-standard route. Granted, there are some missing items, notably flex-track-compatible motorized turnouts. At the direction of the NASG Board of Trustees some years ago, I put toether a draft Request for Proposal for just such a product, to be stimulated with NASG seed funds, but President Sam McCoy chose not to go forward with this. To me, the unvailability of such a product hanging on a hobby shop sales rack, so to speak, is the single most glaring need in S. Dick Karnes ____________________________________________________________________________________ Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
