2022 March Meet & OGR Forum Meet & Greet

Great photos, Joe, and plenty of them! Looks like it was a very fine meet for the O scale/gauge crowd.

Just for the record: OGR magazine ALWAYS welcomes submissions from the 2-rail O scale community. I publish them when I get them, assuming that they meet the general criteria for inclusion in the magazine.

Not sure what other moderators of the OGR Online Forum do, but I would never delete an appropriate 2-rail topic. It is a very simple matter to move a thread to the appropriate forum, and that most certainly is how I would handle it. I assume our other moderators do it that way as well.

Thank you, Joe.  I went to York for the first time last year.  Next year, I need to go to the March Meet.  It’s much closer for me.

@Allan Miller posted:

Great photos, Joe, and plenty of them! Looks like it was a very fine meet for the O scale/gauge crowd.

Allan,

Yes, it was a very fine meet.  I forgot to mention that I attended the O Scale Kings meeting.  I forgot to take photos at the meeting.  

The big news is that OSK is being rebranded as O Scale Central.  O Scale Central is going to be the public face of OSK.  I suppose OSK will be similar to a holding company with OSC as its public name.  OSC will have links and an online presence for all things O scale 2-rail.  This is going to be a real effort to stimulate more interest and participation in O scale 2-rail.  I am hopeful that the OGR forum will be a central player in this effort.

My impression was that sales were brisk.  Most of the people buying trains that I spoke with seemed to be collectors rather than operators.  There were a lot of jokes about needing a bigger basement to store the boxes of trains.  I suspect that the reason that there aren't more layouts is that most people, including me, just don't have space for a 2-rail layout.

I think that most model railroaders are train collectors.  I am.  I have more trains that I will ever need or that I can operate.  So do most of my model railroad friends.  

NH Joe

Joe, thank you for all the photos. Well done.

Dan Weinhold

One of the layout tours at the March Meet was to the Prairie Scale Model Railroad Club in Lombard, IL.  The club is HO and is one of the largest model railroads that I have seen.  It occupies 7,000 sq. ft.

This club is interesting because it started as an OS2R club.  The 2-rail O scale guys couldn't recruit  enough people to build such a large layout.  It is too bad, because I am sure that they would have had built a fantastic layout.

The HO guys are building an outstanding layout.  It is well worth looking at the photos that I posted on the HONZ forum and visiting this layout if you attend the next March Meet.  Here is a link to my post on the HONZ forum:

https://ogrforum.com/...odel-rr-club-tour-ho

NH Joe

New Haven Joe:

Thank you for posting your photos from the March Meet.

I am the Disciple of Zephyrus seated in the front row At the right end.  

I am wearing the CB&Q E5 Silver Pilot Cap & sweat shirt, both from Illinois Railway Museum.  

OGR’s Tom Q Fan is sitting to my right.  I have followed him on OGR Forum for several years and finally met him at the March Meet.

Thanks for organizing this meeting.  I enjoyed visiting with all of you.  

I will post my March Meet experiences in more detail within a few days.

Hi Joe,

I was about to look you up and ask how it went.  I'm sorry I was not able to pop in a and at least say Hi to everybody.

If you would like to host another next year, we'll put it on the schedule. 

Good selection of photographs.  I think you covered the meet quite well!

Brad Kowal

March O Scale Meet Committeee

Let me add a different perspective on the Prairie Scale Model Railroad Club.  That club started as a 2-rail O scale club, and when I picked up info about it at the Wheaton train show, I signed up immediately just for the prospect of having some place to run my O scale trains.  We rented the basement of a large building that was formerly a small bowling alley and started numerous renovations (gutting, cleaning out garbage, adding a bathroom, etc.).  After a year or two of that kind of "work," we decided to invite HO scalers to join (before that, membership was kind of small) with the concept of both scales building an intertwined layout so that costs could be spread over a larger pool of people.

Well, just like at all multi-scale train shows, the HO people came to dominate the organization.  They decided to "cancel" the building of the O scale part of the plan (claiming it was moving way too slowly for them), thus forcing the O scalers to leave.  Heck, they didn't even offer to refund our membership buy-in.

Chuck

@Brad Kowal posted:

Hi Joe,

I was about to look you up and ask how it went.  I'm sorry I was not able to pop in a and at least say Hi to everybody.

If you would like to host another next year, we'll put it on the schedule.

Good selection of photographs.  I think you covered the meet quite well!

Brad Kowal

March O Scale Meet Committeee

Brad,

The meeting did go well.  I am not sure if I will be able to attend next year.  These are uncertain times.    I hope that the OGR Forum Meet & Greet will continue whether or not I am there. It added a lot to my enjoyment of the meet and I hope that the others enjoyed it also.  Until next year .....  NH Joe

@PRR1950 posted:

Let me add a different perspective on the Prairie Scale Model Railroad Club.  That club started as a 2-rail O scale club, and when I picked up info about it at the Wheaton train show, I signed up immediately just for the prospect of having some place to run my O scale trains.  We rented the basement of a large building that was formerly a small bowling alley and started numerous renovations (gutting, cleaning out garbage, adding a bathroom, etc.).  After a year or two of that kind of "work," we decided to invite HO scalers to join (before that, membership was kind of small) with the concept of both scales building an intertwined layout so that costs could be spread over a larger pool of people.

Well, just like at all multi-scale train shows, the HO people came to dominate the organization.  They decided to "cancel" the building of the O scale part of the plan (claiming it was moving way too slowly for them), thus forcing the O scalers to leave.  Heck, they didn't even offer to refund our membership buy-in.

Chuck

Hi Chuck,

Thank you for your perspective.  It is a shame that OS2R display wasn't built.  The space clearly has enough area for two outstanding model railroads plus the public areas.

Most SF Bay Area clubs have two displays - HO and N.  There are two OS2R clubs in the SF Bay Area.  The Richmond club has OS2R, HO and N scale displays inside a 10,000 sq. ft. building.  The Pleasanton Club has an OS2R and HO display inside a 5,000 sq. ft. building.  

My club in San Leandro was originally built with a large HO display.  The G&O garden railroad was begun about 20 years later.  Some of the HO crew were not happy about building a garden railroad.  They felt that it would take resources from the HO display.  They were right.  It did.  

The club solved this issue with the "one club, two displays" concept.  All club members pay the same dues and all members can operate on either display.  In reality, many of the garden railroad people, such as me, run on the HO display but the HO people hardly ever run in the garden.  I enjoy operations on the HO display and I have a decent collection of HO trains.  

The garden display attracts more public guests, donations, and new members to the club than the HO display.  The general public just isn't into scale model railroading.  However, the public loves Thomas and the Polar Express that the garden railroad has in abundance.  We just had our popular Dinosaurs at the Depot train show.

As a result, the club has grown from around 20 members when the garden railroad was started to about 60 members today.  About 1/3 of the members are primarily garden railroaders and the other 2/3 of the membership are primarily HO railroaders.  We have found that people come to see the garden display, join the club, and then gravitate to running on the HO display.  I think that many members prefer to be indoors rather than outside.  

I am sorry that building two displays in a shared space didn't work out for the Prairie Club.  

Here is a link to the G&O Story on the forum if you would like to know more about our club and the garden railroad:

https://ogrforum.com/.../the-gandamp-o-story

NH Joe

New Haven Joe, this is a beautiful thread, your pictures are amazing, the Quality of O Scale (the articulate detailing) is leap years ahead of our three rail scale model train, even my favorite Lionel’s VisionLine models. I would have loved to have built a 2 rail O scale model railroad however the space required for the large diameter curves, and the price of the rolling stock, locomotives were just cost prohibited. I can admire those that model in this scale. Thank you for introducing us to this fun March Meet. Just for the record, one of my good friends, who has past away several years ago, Louis Ertz, had one of the most feature rich O Scale model railroads I ever saw, many times. (Memphis, Tennessee) Matter of fact OGR THE VIDEO #5 has this layout on DVD. I recommend any one that loves the 2 rail O Scale model railroading  get a copy of this particular DVD and take a close look at Louis’s attention to detail that can be achieved with a little effort. This is what Dreams are made of. Happy Railroading Everyone

@PRR1950 posted:

Let me add a different perspective on the Prairie Scale Model Railroad Club.  That club started as a 2-rail O scale club, and when I picked up info about it at the Wheaton train show, I signed up immediately just for the prospect of having some place to run my O scale trains.  We rented the basement of a large building that was formerly a small bowling alley and started numerous renovations (gutting, cleaning out garbage, adding a bathroom, etc.).  After a year or two of that kind of "work," we decided to invite HO scalers to join (before that, membership was kind of small) with the concept of both scales building an intertwined layout so that costs could be spread over a larger pool of people.

Well, just like at all multi-scale train shows, the HO people came to dominate the organization.  They decided to "cancel" the building of the O scale part of the plan (claiming it was moving way too slowly for them), thus forcing the O scalers to leave.  Heck, they didn't even offer to refund our membership buy-in.

Chuck

The same thing almost happened at the Neenah, WI club in the 1970's, but was defeated.  In the 1990's a tiny 3-rail layout was added upstairs in the Depot and 3-railers were recruited to help boost the membership. By 2005 all the Officers and Board Members were 3-railers.  There was a lot of construction taking place on the 2-Rail layout, nothing on the 3-Rail layout.  The 3-railers kept voting no to everything and started to push the 2-railers around.  A bunch of us walked away.  15 years later, a couple of us returned after the 3-railers were gone.  We're starting to work on the layout again, however 18 years later it pretty much looks the same.  We lost the momentum.

Mixing scales is not a good idea.  Once you loose focus, it's very difficult to get it back.

Brad

I have identified some of the folks at the OGR Forum Meet & Greet.  I have listed their names with their forum name beneath.  Does anyone know the other people?  NH Joe

@Brad Kowal posted:

Mixing scales is not a good idea.  Once you loose focus, it's very difficult to get it back.

Brad

It is almost impossible to not to have multiple scales in a modern club because of the expense of renting and maintaining a large space.  Nearly every SF Bay Area club has multiple scales in order to spread the cost and the work among a broad group of people.  Single scale clubs in the Bay Area are the exception.  The key is to figure out a way to do it so that members in all scales are treated equally.  As Brad mentions above, sometimes this is not easy.  NH Joe

I am in the upper right  side if the photo, next to john Sethian.  Hat on and almost white beard!    It was a fun little meet and greet!   Looking forward to next year already!