Page 5 - NMRA Roundhouse November-December 2019

The Aberdeen Convention, to which I travelled by rail, enjoying the Forth and Tay rail bridges en route, brought plenty to enjoy and discuss, including the first remote clinic on car weathering; a fascinating insight into the use of artistic techniques to enhance the design of our layouts, railroads of the Panama Canal, and a very welcome update from the organising group for the 2022 National Convention in Birmingham. I want to express thanks on behalf of all of us especially to Mike Arnold and Gordy Robinson for attending the National Convention in Salt Lake City this sum- mer, flying the flag for British Region and spreading the word about 2022.
This is going to be a huge event for us, and I’m very much hoping that it will bring a great deal of renewed interest in American outline modelling in the UK, and gather a healthy number of new members to our ranks. We certainly have room for them! In recent years we’ve seen rather too many members for comfort fall by the wayside.The reasons for this are varied, and in some cases cause for concern.Your directors are doing everything we can to address this, along with the difficult financial situation we now find ourselves in.As you will see in the accounts, costs have
risen dramatically in recent years at the same time that income has fallen.We have taken unsustainable hits to Region reserves in the past two years. I’ll ad- dress other issues in future, but for now I need to appeal to you all to come with us on the matter of membership fees. These are not decisions your directors have taken lightly, and we recognise that some of our valued members will be unhappy at the increases. Roundhouse is the lifeblood of the NMRA British Region. It’s what holds the 500 or so
of us together, spread around the UK from Northern Ireland and Orkney to
Cornwall and Kent. Six issues a year of this beautifully produced magazine give us the ability to keep ourselves informed and in touch with each other. I hope that this is a no-brainer, as they say.The cost of printing and distributing Roundhouse has risen steeply, and although offset by a good deal of advertising income, it is the biggest single cost in delivering NMRA- BR services to members. Details of the plan your directors put to the members present at the AGM appear in these pages, and we commend them to you
all. Those members at the AGM, who heard our presentation and had their questions answered, voted unanimously to accept our proposal. I ask you now to give support to your Region, stay with us and help us, everyone in their own way, please, to make sure that we put our Region on the road to health and vigour, financially and in our activities.
The best way to do this is to renew your membership on time in the new year, and the new website will make this extremely easy. I am still keen to enter into dialogue with you about the Region and what you value from it.
Jonathan Small
Vice President NMRA British Region
vicepresident@nmrabr.org.uk
December 2019 - ROUNDHOUSE 5
FROM THE HEAD END