Sunday, November 2, 2025

[Zephyrus52246]

Morning all,

At the freezing point here this morning with a high later of 52.  No workmen today.  The framer was here for a few hours yesterday replacing fascia and some other rotted wood.  

Patriots play at noon, will watch other games as well today.  

So far the only derailments at the fixed track area are the da*!^ed Walthers streamliners.  They used to be my most reliable runners, now they derail at the drop of a hat.  I checked and cleaned the amazingly dirty wheels/trucks, but still issues with them.  

I found this drawer with the switch electronics in it interesting.  I should have asked the owner if during operations people accidently bang into it.  

Jeff

[Jerry]

Morning Jeff

Grandkids coming today so no time at the bench for me.

Everyone have a wonderful day!! 

Jerry

[ReadingBob]

Morning all,

I gotta adapt to the time change. Wait. No, I don't.  

Football and workbench time are on the agenda for today. I'm making some progress on the current build.

Have a great one!

[deemery]

I still have clocks to change, particularly in the train room. But the clock on the stove is now -correct- (I never bothered to change it back in March...)

I think today will be another pick-up/put-away day.  I write that more often than I do it, I'm afraid.  

Over on MRH Forums, there's a lot of discussion on the new NMRA logo and plan.  Most of it is negative (which is to be expected, happy people usually don't post.)  But I'm having an increasingly hard time with NMRA.  How much will a logo change cost the organization?  And what resources will be needed to implement each of those lofty goals in their plan?  (It's an old Army saying, "A plan without resources is just an hallucination.")  At least I recognized most of the names on the new plan's justification study, so NMRA probably didn't spend $$$ on that part of the effort.  

dave

[jbvb]

Good morning, Jeff, Jerry, Bob, Dave and later arrivals. My teenager has been put on his school's Pep Squad so I'm listening to him practice all the "pep" cliches on a trumpet they loaned to him.  Next, lunch, then baby shower, then layout work on either side of dinner.

Dave, I think I see where Gordy's coming from: I can't find historic NMRA membership, but I think it recall being around 25,000 30 or 40 years ago.  Now it seems to be under 20,000.  NMRA National has historically only talked to Regions, leaving Regions to manage their Divisions. And we all know about the Divisions with a handful of members who meet a few times a year at someone's house, without publishing the address. The new Division Standard Annual Checklist is an improvement on their earlier "we can get you insured if you meet standards" approach.  The new logo is better than the last "we found the Internet" attempt, and it doesn't rely on having seen a North American steam loco from a passenger platform like the one before that.

Success or failure depends on how many volunteers show up, and how the active Divisions map to potential new members.  NMRA has to make a plan first, then see if it motivates volunteers to carry it out.  I hope they did some testing before finalizing this, but as a former Division and Region officer I sympathize.

[GPdemayo]

Afternoon all.....

[deemery]

Good morning, Jeff, Jerry, Bob, Dave and later arrivals. My teenager has been put on his school's Pep Squad so I'm listening to him practice all the "pep" cliches on a trumpet they loaned to him.  Next, lunch, then baby shower, then layout work on either side of dinner.

Dave, I think I see where Gordy's coming from: I can't find historic NMRA membership, but I think it recall being around 25,000 30 or 40 years ago.  Now it seems to be under 20,000.  NMRA National has historically only talked to Regions, leaving Regions to manage their Divisions. And we all know about the Divisions with a handful of members who meet a few times a year at someone's house, without publishing the address. The new Division Standard Annual Checklist is an improvement on their earlier "we can get you insured if you meet standards" approach.  The new logo is better than the last "we found the Internet" attempt, and it doesn't rely on having seen a North American steam loco from a passenger platform like the one before that.

Success or failure depends on how many volunteers show up, and how the active Divisions map to potential new members.  NMRA has to make a plan first, then see if it motivates volunteers to carry it out.  I hope they did some testing before finalizing this, but as a former Division and Region officer I sympathize.

Oh, they have a plan, a 300 page analysis and all kinds of business school products:  https://www.nmra.org/promotional-materials-2026  None of the stuff I've seen, but I have not read it all, puts a cost, money and labor, to these actions.  There's no expression of sunk costs on how much to get to this point, and then forward costs on how much to implement it. 

Everyone who's an NMRA member should read through this to see how they plan to spend your money.

I will be very happy to be proven wrong, but I'm extremely pessimistic about this.  Here's what I wrote on the MRH website:

So from my seat in the caboose, I see a significant effort to change things, but I'm not convinced the effort is focused correctly to execute -within the resources available-.  And what I've seen when an organization tries to do stuff it can't properly 'resource' (I dislike using 'resource' as a verb, but I can't think of a better word right now), is that it "thrashes."  It starts down a path, whether it's changing its IT, changing personnel, changing focus, etc, and can't get to the destination because it runs out of money, time, people, energy.  So you're left with a deficit from what you've spent, and you're in an inconsistent state of some new stuff and some old stuff, that just doesn't work together.  So then you try to solve the immediate shortfall (resources, policies, etc) and go back-and-forth from emergency action to emergency action, never actually -fixing anything- but putting band-aids all over the place. 

One more point:  I'm still not convinced NMRA corporate leadership has been effective in reaching out to the membership.  ONCE AGAIN, this feels like a top-down dictate by the insiders.  "We've contemplated our navels, and here's what we think." 

After the NER convention (I only attended the first 2 days, had a conflict for the rest of it), I was warming to NMRA, seeing the value in the stuff run by volunteers that focused on value for the attendees.  Same thing holds for the subsequent division fall meeting.  But that warm-and-fuzzy feeling has been totally erased, once again, by actions at the National level. 

(p.s.  In my career, I did a lot of work evaluating contractor proposals and then program/contractor get-well plans.  I've also contributed to many of those efforts. Working  on a $22 billion failed program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Systems gives me a lot of perspective on process and project failure.  So I'm coming at this from some relevant experience, and not just bitching to hear myself bitch.)

dave

[KentuckySouthern]

I've never felt much kinship with the NMRA but I'm sort of a one man band, who can't carry a tune. Not one for group politics on any scale. Let's go play trains.

[ReadingBob]

I've never felt much kinship with the NMRA but I'm sort of a one man band, who can't carry a tune. Not one for group politics on any scale. Let's go play trains.

Right there with ya on that one. 

[KentuckySouthern]

Just survived the saddest day of the year, the end daylight time....

Plus the Lions lost.  As did the SPARTANS, no one was surprised.  Only question here is how long until the axe drops?

.
Passenger train on Bruce Chubbs RR

KS

[Dave Buchholz]

Go Buffalo Bills

28 - 21 over the KC Chiefs!