| Volume 40 Issue 2 | October 2000 |
| Volume 40 Issue 2 | October 2000 |
Although I wasn’t able to make it, I’ve talked to several people who went on our sojourn to the Marion Model Railroad Club last month and they all had a great time! My thanks to Fred Schneider and Norm Courtney for putting this trip together for us, as well as to the Marion crew for hosting us!
I went to the National Narrow Gauge convention in St Louis last month, and was very impressed by the entire event. If you have even a fleeting interest in narrow gauge railroading or industries that were commonly served by narrow gauge railroads, such as logging, I strongly recommend that you attend the next one you can. You won’t be disappointed!
They provided clinics in the morning and evening on many of the same topics that you’ll see at an NMRA convention, including layout design, scenery, structures, locomotives and rolling stock. They also had a number of clinics on NG prototypes and NG-served industries. In the afternnoon, though, everything shut down to allow us to do self-guided layout tours.
We were given the afternoon to do the layout tours. No busses or vans, we just go into our cars and drove around to the 25 or so layouts that were open. None of the layouts got particularly crowded, even nationally known ones such as Gary Hoovers Missouri, Kansas and Quincy. It allowed us to have a nice chat with the layout owner, without the pain of having to keep to a bus schedule. It also didn’t require an extra fare for each tour, and I’m sure it was much easier for the convention committee to stage. It’s a format that might lend itself well to NMRA nationals.
The quality of the models in the contest room was superb - and there were a lot of them! I estimate that there were about 600 people (or more) at the convention, and about 108 models in the contest room, including about 30 steam locomotives! Of the models, the vast majority of them were worthy of an NMRA Merit Award. The models were judged by popular vote - I was usually able to narrow my selection down to three or four in a category but got stuck from there!
The quality of the models led me to the question of “why can’t we get this kind of participation in an NMRA convention contest?” The differences between the contests can be boiled down to consituency (who attended the convention) and format (how the contest was run.)
One could argue that the caliber of modeling amoung the narrow gauge crowd is generally higher than that in the NMRA at large. Narrow gaugers tend to be more advanced and more experienced modelers - it typically takes a while for somebody to be involved in model railroading before he or she migrates to slim gauge. However, if you look at raw numbers (NMRA nationals tend to draw about three times as many people), I think that you’d see the same number of ‘advanced’ modelers at a either convention.
My personal feeling is that the biggest reason for the difference in the number of entries between the two contests is the contest format. It took me five minutes to fill out the paperwork for each model, as opposed to the hour or more for doing the judges form for the NMRA. (No, I didn’t even place in the contest!) While I have my suspicions, the only way to be sure of how to increase participation in the NMRA contests would be to do a survey of NMRA members to see what (if anything) would draw them back into the contest room.
If my hypothesis is correct, and proven out by a survey, the NMRA needs to come to grips with the fact that it needs to change its methods. Like in any large group, that won’t happen easily - inertia is a powerful force. Also, the NMRA convention contest is often the only venue for members to have their models judged for the Achievement Program - simply changing the format to popular vote won’t work. If my theory is proven out, I suggest the following:
1) The NMRA institute a full, parallel, popular vote competition for it's model contests. The entrant need not fill out the judging forms, but just the entrant sheet. These entrants are only eligible for the popular vote competition and special awards as deemed appropriate by the individual or company presenting the award.
2) Those who wish to participate in the judged model contest are eligible for both the AP contest and the popular vote contest, as well as all special awards.
3) The contest committee provide somebody knowledgable in the judging criteria to assist people who would like to participate in the AP program but are unsure of how to approach the judging criteria form. This may help newcomers to the AP program get their feet wet in a positive environment.
The down side to this is that it will be more expensive, especially since many regionals and nationals are going to 3 plaques for each category (ballpark cost $1000). If there is a comparable popular vote contest, it would raise the convention fare by between $3 and $7 depending on the breakeven point. An alternative might be to present the popular vote winners with a framed certificate, which would be about a third the cost of presenting plaques.
It is far more important to encourage participation than it is to present expensive hardware to the winners - I would decrease the amount spent on each individual award (by going to a framed certificate, perhaps) to gain a popular vote contest. I think that by going to a parallel popular vote contest, the NMRA would attract perhaps as many as double the number of entries in the contest room. Most importantly, we all get the benefit of seeing more of what other people are doing, learning new techniques, and getting new ideas of what we can do ourselves - big, big reasons for going to an NMRA convention in the first place!
Happy Modeling!
Ray
© 2000 Division 3, MCR, NMRA