Model RR club folding (update )

[ta152h0]

BEMRRC here in Seattle is reduced to storage at local facility costing a bunch of money. Unlike a model airplane club where you just take your airplane somewhere else, a rr club requires a permanent facility with assurance of longevity. Sad an accurate rendition of Pacific NOrthwest railroading has been scrapped and only images remain of the glory days.

[Jim Banner]

Unless a club owns the building, they can never be assured of a permanent home for their layout.  The alternatives are to build a portable layout or a movable one.

A portable layout, one that can be packed up and moved out in a few hours, and later moved in and set up in a few more hours is great if you have only temporary locations to set up.  A layout set up in an unoccupied store in a mall would fall into this category.  Such a layout can be up and running a larger percentage of the time, just not in the same store space.

A movable layout, one that is built in several sections that can be moved but not necessarily quickly, can be used in semi permanent locations.  Even if only major sections are movable, it is still better than having to scrap the whole thing.

Our group at our local museum has both.  Our semi permanent H0-scale layout has been at its present location for almost 20 years.  But it was originally built so that it could be moved if the museum decided to reallocate the space.  Moving to another location within the building would probably take a week.  Moving to a different building would not take much longer.

Our portable G-scale layout was originally designed to be taken to shows in other cities.  Weight, size and quick assembly were all considered in the original design.  We can set up or take down in as little as 3 hours, including stowing it in its custom packing crates.  This allows us to set up where and when space is available, which is not every day for a 14 x 42 foot layout.

Hopefully, anyone building a club type layout will keep these possibilities in mind.  It takes very little extra work in the design and construction stages but can prevent a great deal of grief in the long run.  Just think how much poorer we would be today if the great artists of history had painted on their walls instead of on canvas.  Fortunately, they solved their portability problems before they started laying on the paint, and it was very little extra work to do so.

Jim