Train Club Reopenings

Interesting question. I'm thinking NO club remotes due to difficulty sanitizing them after every use.

If someone tests positive would you actually have to sanitize the entire layout? 

Jeff,

Scottsdale is still not open, the city has not published a plan for reopening, we are in the situation that the city owns the building, so until they sanitize and allow reopening, we are closed. The summer is our slow time, the heat is a factor and the public visits slow down during the summer with reduced hours, and we would only gather for weekly functions on Thursday. Business meetings are not held July and August.

Our club, which is one of 4 in the building, before the shutdown was using hand sanitizer, wipes and soap and water on surfaces. The remotes are definitely a concern, as are the Z-4000 handles and trains themselves. 

We will most likely have mask requirements, along with using hand sanitizer, wipes before and after each use. Once the building opens, we will need to watch the interaction with the public, which normally has access to the building during open hours 7 days a week. The glass wall surrounding each layout is an often touched surface which will need cleaned much more often than before the shutdown. We also use individual hand touch activators for our public activated animations and trains, which may have to be stopped until we figure out a safe way to keep them part of our public program.

If there is a procedure that a club uses or knows of to keep remotes, and the surfaces we all touch while enjoying the clubs, I would appreciate a sharing of those procedures, for all of us to benefit.

I am very much looking forward to reopening our club.

Ron

President Paradise & Pacific RR Club

Here on Long Island (TMB Model Train Club) we shut down the club early March and before closing down we did a very thorough wipe down and disinfect. The week before we had an open house event and had 875 visitors so no telling what could have been brought in. Been closed since.  We had one member that had a pretty bad COVID-19 case but have since fully recovered. Local politicians and NY Governor are about to re-open and when they do we plan to implement the following for at least the first two months:

Have several operating and or work sessions per week, while limiting the crowds to 8 members per session

Wipe down the remotes, transformers and control panels after each session.

With remotes most members that use command control have their own remotes dedicated to the club

Require masks (gloves optional)

We hope to be back in operation sometime early June

HOPE EVERYONE IS OK ! ! ! !

Great topic.....Virginia begins to open tomorrow. We’re going to have to face this and plan.

Peter

Our local HO club is having our monthly business meeting next Tuesday.  We will be practicing social distancing.  Masks are encouraged but not required.  We usually have about 10 members at our business meeting.  We'll be discussing having operating sessions and how to handle them going forward.  Usually for an operating session we have two man crews, the engineer and the conductor. 

Neal Jeter  

I haven't heard a peep from anyone in my club.. Southwest Michigan Modular Railroad Club

Great topic, Jeff!  I'm not a member, but I can see clubs here in Western and Central Pennsylvania could be getting closer as the Pennsylvania governor has moved us from the red to yellow phase.   Of course I think we would have to be green before clubs could open.  Alas, our friends in Eastern Pennsylvania have been hit much harder than us and are still in the red phase.

We have been told that the virus dies between 20 minutes and 3 days. If no one has been in your club for a month or more, all virus should be dead.

If your main concern was the health of your members you'd remain closed, wouldn't you?  

LA is still under stay at home orders which, based on current news reports, look to be close to being extended another 3 weeks.

Stay closed until the orders are lifted. 

Our club is closed pending lifting or relaxing of stay at home orders.

-Greg

I don't know why this topic makes me imagine a gate with hundreds of people behind it. Once that gate is opened you know what happens next, lol. 

Dave

This is a wonderful time for the ability of members to use their personal cellphones and tablets to run trains!

Ben

The San Leandro club (SF Bay Area) is going to remain closed through the remainder of this month and perhaps longer.  The club is following the guidance of Alameda County.  NH Joe

Ben, what a great idea using phones.

Opening the club, is not an easy decision. Especially when we closed the club in March, we still had some knucklehead members going down and running trains. This forced me to change the lock combination.

I am not setting any target dates. My ultimate decision will line up with those that are outlined by the city and state.

Jeff

@BobbyD posted:

Interesting question. I'm thinking NO club remotes due to difficulty sanitizing them after every use.

If someone tests positive would you actually have to sanitize the entire layout? 

Why not provide disposable gloves and require that users of club remotes wear them?

https://www.amazon.com/AMMEX-V...27-8cd5-43dec3fd4cf4

Clubs which do not have Lexan/Plexiglass protecting layouts may want to have them.  Easier I think to disenfect than the actual layout.

And consider how many people at a time in the layout area.  Social distancing is going to be a real issue.

Thank you for starting this thread. River City 3 Railers has initiated discussion of our next public display. We are considering a date after the state Stay at Home order is lifted.

Safety is paramount, but people are scared too. For example, we have members afraid to enter or touch items in a trailer that was last opened in January. We are grateful to have three doctors within our group. Our club will rely heavily upon them for establishing governance for our future displays. When established, we will be happy to share our criteria here for discussion. 

I wish the best to everyone. These are difficult times but with the grace of God we will make it.

@gftiv posted:

We have been told that the virus dies between 20 minutes and 3 days. If no one has been in your club for a month or more, all virus should be dead.

While that may be true, every person who enters the club has the possibility of bringing in the virus and spreading it to everyone else who is there. I love my trains, but I don’t think they are worth taking that risk.

We all go to numerous places wearing masks (food, auto parts, home depot, mass transit, liquor stores, banks, gas stations, service stations etc etc) and the employees are also wearing them, so what difference does it make where you go? There is no scare just wear your mask! The scare tactics are being done for political reasons.

As a modular club member and show organizer, and also the Chairman of my local museum, I am not comfortable operating a modular show or opening the museum to the general public anytime soon.  Today, I attended the funeral of a friend who died of COVID-19 in a local nursing home so the risk of infection is forefront in my mind.  Limiting crowd size and thorough cleaning of layout surfaces (and museum exhibits) is difficult and perhaps unrealistic.  Social distancing is impossible given the behavior of our younger visitors.  My December train show hosted and average of 1,000 visitors a day and the facility was packed - an ideal environment for viral transmission.

Most of my museum's board and docent cadre are of vulnerable age.  Our region is not yet allowing museums to open, but once that is allowed, we may remain closed for some time.  We are reticent about hosting guests by appointment in very small groups and we are very wary about a general opening for the public.   I feel the same way about hosting train shows.  I have not asked our insurer regarding liability and will let that dog sleep until we feel we must open.

Many of my modular club members are of the same mind.  The show venues are likely to remain closed until large crowds are permitted so we don't have any anticipated shows until September at the earliest.  Even then, I may not be comfortable participating in an event where I must mingle with the public.  We'll see, but I fear the rest of the year is lost for train shows.

@Dennis LaGrua posted:

We all go to numerous places wearing masks (food, auto parts, home depot, mass transit, liquor stores, banks, gas stations, service stations etc etc) and the employees are also wearing them, so what difference does it make where you go? There is no scare just wear your mask! The scare tactics are being done for political reasons.

If that were true then we wouldn't have doctors, nurses, and first responders catching it even while wearing protective gear.  Ignorance such as this is part of the reason we're in this mess.

Wait until you get the letters MD or PHD after your name and then maybe your statements may actually carry some weight.

-Greg

I started this thread to get input on how other clubs will handle re openings. Leave the darn politics out of it! 

The two clubs I’m a member of, here in U.K. have no plans to resume activities. Both have concluded that the combination of social distancing requirements, surface cleaning and overall age of members are not manageable in a realistic fashion. 

Our local club is having to find a new location.  3 story consignment shop is closing.  We have to vacate by June 15.  Must find new location.  12x24 layout.  Any one in Louisville Ky know of an open space???  

Respiratory viruses are primarily spread, as far as is known, through the air.  Close and prolonged breathing of the exhaled virus from infected (sometimes totally asymptomatic) individuals.  Surface cleaning is probably important, but much less so than masks/face shields protecting your mouth, nose and eyes.  Most healthcare workers that became infected were not wearing full protective gear, in all likelihood early on in the pandemic. 

Bottom line is certainly wash and sanitize your hands and surfaces, but what is really important is that EVERYONE be masked in closed spaces and during close contact.  And this means the mask covers your nose and mouth, not just your nose, as some people seem to think.  And if everyone isn't masked, wearing a mask yourself is much less protective than it could be, which is why we've had infections in controlled environments.  One wears a mask as much to protect others as one's self.  100% masking is essential for indoors.  Otherwise, you are allowing those without masks to put everyone at risk.

Basing actions on a disease even the experts know little about is risky at best. It is believed that distancing, masks and gloves can keep us safe, Hope so.

OK....the politics, etc. is being to creep into this discussion.  Topic closed....