What are the requirements for membership in your club? Are you required to bring a skill set or resources? Or is qualification more of a heartbeat and cash in hand for the membership fee? Is there a requirement work performed before you can run trains? I am more interested in modular clubs but the requirements for permanent layouts/clubs apply as well.
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Well, if a skill set is required, mine would be as a "gopher". 
Truly, our modular group does not require a skill set.....that being said, the members bring many excellent ones to the group.
Our dues are $84 yearly. $60 directly to the River City 3 Railers and $24 to our parent club that holds the insurance and non-profit designation, the RF&P.
We ask that you attempt to be present at 50% of our functions.
Lastly, having fun is required.
All and all, we're pretty loose. Is that what you were looking for?
Peter
We impose no skill requirement, and some of the folks have come in as green as grass. The only requirement is you participate and enjoy yourself. Obviously, there are requirements for some participation in modular shows, setup, operation, and teardown are time consuming and labor intensive, so we need all the help we can.
Peter, I'd like to find out more about how you handle the parent club, we're currently dealing with those issues.
Our club, Stillmeadow Modular Train Group in York, like others has the "Participation" and "Have Fun" requirements. Module ownership is encouraged but not required. To keep things standardized, basic modules are built together as a group including lumber, track, ballasting and wiring. They a member purchases the module at materials cost and does their own scenery. Scenery skill level varies and help is available if a member requests it.
Early on, we "passed the hat" to fund things, but now we are funded by events and donations from event visitors. No membership fee yet.
As we have grown, we have added more organizational structure to the group. There is a loose requirement that if you want to run your trains, you should show up at some work sessions, setup, and/or breakdown. So far that has worked.
Like all groups, you have a core that does most of the work because they are passionate about it. But people are going to commit at different levels, and that is OK. We have not had any ECR (Extra Care Required) members yet (eg, offensive, unreliable, clueless, etc.). If we do, we will need to lovingly set some boundaries . . .
Bob
With ours:
1. You must buy 2 club shirts each year. The primary color changes from year-to-year. but the club logo is grey for Saturday's and white for Sunday.
2. Dues is $25 per month.
3. You take your turn cleaning track, floors, hallways, stairs, bathroom etc.
4. You MUST run scale engines and rolling stock. No Railking, no 027.
Pretty simple.
...I'd like to find out more about how you handle the parent club, we're currently dealing with those issues.
John,
Our Parent Club is Richmond Freelance and Prototype. Club incorporation, 501-C3, and insurance are all under RF&P. There are three "Special Interest Groups. An HO, N, and O (us).
I looked at that site Tom, but it's not all that illuminating. 
I'm obviously interested in seeing if something like this could work for us. Who set up the "parent club", is that something that your club was involved in establishing? What's the benefit of having a "parent" organization? Is that just to group the different scales?
There were several things that drove clubs I belonged to out of business, two big ones:
1. One person seemed to run the club where others thoughts were not taken into account. Where this could work on a personal lay-out it doesn't in a club.
2. For membership you had to be approved by 100% members. This was fine till we had to add to our membership and one member took the opposite view.
I say these are DON'TS.
My club isn't a modular club. We have a permanent layout in the basement of a town owned historic house. Members don't have to have a skill, just a willingness to help out. We have a small club so everyone is expected to contribute in projects etc. More skilled members are willing to teach and you can learn a lot by helping. All members are expected to help out at our twice yearly open houses. Members are expected to be model railroaders with 3-rail O-Gauge trains of their own. Members must be over 18 years of age. We have a reasonable dues requirement and a small initiation fee to make sure prospective members are serious. Most funds for the club are donations collected at the open houses. Interested people are invited to come down and hang out and run trains for a month before having to join.
I looked at that site Tom, but it's not all that illuminating.
I'm obviously interested in seeing if something like this could work for us. Who set up the "parent club", is that something that your club was involved in establishing? What's the benefit of having a "parent" organization? Is that just to group the different scales?
Equipment and money is an issue in most of these groups, how do you account for spending and ownership?
I looked at that site Tom, but it's not all that illuminating.
I'm obviously interested in seeing if something like this could work for us. Who set up the "parent club", is that something that your club was involved in establishing? What's the benefit of having a "parent" organization? Is that just to group the different scales?
FWIW, and with many thanks to our Webmaster Chris, RC3R has the best web presence among the RF&P SIGs. The parent club was setup before we joined. The benefits include:
Single article of incorporation, 501-C3, and insurance cover all three SIGs.
In return, since the overall club represents 3 scales, the overall membership is larger. Annual expenses are shared equally with our annual dues to the Parent club.
The key element that makes this work for us is the inner cooperation of O, HO, and N in what legally amounts to a single club.
There were several things that drove clubs I belonged to out of business, two big ones:
1. One person seemed to run the club where others thoughts were not taken into account. Where this could work on a personal lay-out it doesn't in a club.
2. For membership you had to be approved by 100% members. This was fine till we had to add to our membership and one member took the opposite view.
I say these are DON'TS.
We actually came up with reasonable bylaws to avoid this kind of thing, so far that's working out fine.
As far as the umbrella corp. we are a single O-gauge club, so I'm not sure it makes sense for us.
Equipment and money is an issue in most of these groups, how do you account for spending and ownership?
The individual scale Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are responsible for their own budgets and expenses.
The 501-C3 is easy to get.
Why does a modular group need insurance?
The 501-C3 is easy to get.
Why does a modular group need insurance?
Because you interact with the general public, and people do stupid stuff. A lot of venues also require you to carry liability insurance to be at their show, both to cover your members, as well as the public.
A couple years ago, someone crashed a power scooter into the layout. It snapped one of the legs on a corner and the layout was left sitting on top of the scooter. Nothing came of it, but its why you carry insurance.... let someone else deal with it.
Our modular club requires that each member builds (or buys) 2 straight modules within a year of joining. They were a bit lax with me though, as I was the first member to build new modules in forever, and it took them a while to find a copy of the standards for me.
Our dues are $25 a year to cover the cost of insurance and the postage needed to remind us of meetings and shows.
I don't know of any participation requirements. I try to make it to at least half the shows each year. Some guys are at all the shows, and some guys are hardly at any of them. If I go to a show that I don't have my modules set up at, I try to make it to at least the set up or the tear down to earn my run time so to speak.
Our club does have a rule that someone has to be running a train until the show ends. That rule almost makes running near the end of the show like the game hot potato. No one wants to run last because then you have to pack up your train after the show is over instead of while it is occurring. I generally volunteer to run last if I have a Marx tin train to run. It usually only takes 30 seconds to pack them back up in to the shoebox I brought them in, and it gives the other members with more elaborate packaging time to get their goodies ready to take home.
J White
just wondering how a model train club fits into a c-3. Educational perhaps.
just wondering how a model train club fits into a c-3. Educational perhaps.
Yes.
Our club requires nothing. we would like members to sign up and run their trains on a regular basis. We had a member join this past summer who had no trains but a desire to run trains. they started out running club trains and as they purchased their own that is what they run. we have "work parties" on selected Mondays to work on layout issues. we will teach any member anything they want to learn.
we have members all over the country, they come and run when they can.
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