Page 8 - NMRA Roundhouse March-April 2020

Western Union
Brian Moore
A typical operating layout of members modules setup and running photos by Brian Moore
DIVISION NEWS
W estern Union in Plym- outh, Devon offers a
decent-sized collec-
tion of HO modules to play on each moth, and prototype
based operations that are controlled by a Dispatcher using two-way radios and simple paperwork. It’s a very big train set when it’s up and running! There’s usually at least four or five modules attending and we have a collection of club-owned “spacer” boards, straight and curved, to link everything up, along with a junction and two storage yards.
Because we live in a relatively isolated part of the country, we’re too far from other groups to meet up with them reg- ularly the one exception being the ex- cellent annual HO-Modular event held outside Exeter in Christow, Devon.This has created a strong sense of self-suffi- ciency, underpinned by the need to have a clear understanding in the group as
to what our objectives are and how we achieve them. After some extended, tiresome and negative issues with one (happily former) member, we’ve found too, that it is essential for “things to be written down”, and we have an agreed set of simple rules that all members are required to sign up to.
The distance from other groups also kept us out of some of the depressing “personal agenda” narratives undertaken by several malign individuals that gave the NMRA(BR) a less than fabulous image within the wider UK hobby some years ago.
Very happily, the hard work of sever- al recent successive Presidents,VPs and board members has brought the NMRA(BR) back to the positive fore- front of American railway modelling in the UK.
Lots of things have changed over the years, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons we’re still going – we’ve adapted and “gone with the times”.
For some years we had various smaller portable layouts in several scales attend- ing, before we concentrated on one big- ger HO layout called Anson Yard. Also, at about the same time as the nearby RS Tower group in Exeter, we “went DCC” about seventeen years ago.We also gradually learned lots from the pioneer- ing HO modular developments they undertook with a few notable others and how it could be adapted to a small club with less than ten regularly-attend- ing members. Our meet is now wholly HO modular.
Since the average age of the membership is not getting any younger either, it’s important for us all to be aware that,
for example, a sixty-five-year-old cannot lift and carry what they did when they were forty. For us at Western Union to assemble a decent layout in about 150 minutes, we need the help of non-mod- ule owners, who can carry and erect the various stored club boards and storage yards, whilst module owners sort out their own kit.
The fact that we sometimes have only six members at monthly meets has also taught us that we have to cut our
monthly cloth accordingly; thus, about ten days before each meet, Mike Ruby will send out an email, asking which module owners are attending and using this information, will then send out the meet’s build plan, some days before
the meet. Paul Burton will then arrange an operating procedure, creating various jobs – EB/WB local freight, reefer extras, passenger trains, etc.
A major principle we’ve introduced is that, if you want to operate, you have to commit yourself to the whole day, and arrive by 8.30am to help erect the mod- ules (or otherwise contribute “within your individual capability”, eg making coffee, plugging in leads etc.), and remain to the end to help take them down.
If I’ve noticed a common thread amongst NMRA(BR) members who attend monthly meets across our region, it’s
the frustrations of those who spend many hours transporting, lifting, carrying and assembling a complex layout every month, so that a few others can swan in at 11am with a “Morning, gents!”, plop
a train or two on the assembled layout, play constantly for three hours and then box it all up with a happy, “See you next month, Gents!”, while the same suckers remain to put it all away again.
At Western Union, we voted that, if you want to run trains, you have to help with
ROUNDHOUSE - March/April 2020
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