It’s all word of mouth. I was talking with somebody the other
day and they were saying, ‘you don’t advertise’ and I said, ‘we
don’t have to’.
“We are the only large club in this region, that I know of, which
actually operates the layout. Other clubs are show railroads
and they’re beautiful in their own right, but they don’t operate
like we do.
“We have a full-time dispatcher, we’re running four to five
road crews at any given time during an operating session, two
local crews, two yards, and of course, people staging trains and
other support tasks.
“So there’s a lot going on – and we attract everyone. We’re
starting to have a waiting list of people who would like to join
the club. Membership is, generally speaking, of all ages. We
have people in their 20s, in their 30s, their 40s, in their 50s … a
lot of retired people as you can imagine. We have people who
work for the railroad, we have people don’t have anything to
do with railroads – they just like to enjoy model railroading. So
we have a nice cross-section.”
Rick:
“ ... and lot of talent. There are a lot of talented people in
this club.”
David:
“ … electricity, computers, scenery, track, modeling – It
seems like we just draw the right people at the right time. That’s
one reason why there haven’t been any building challenges.”
MRH:
“Has there been like a favorite thing, or a least favorite
thing in building the layout?”
David:
“Not really. If there were challenges that way, it would
have been operating, because a lot of people like to run trains.
“When we choose assignments on operating evenings people
go for the pool because they want to run the trains, and some
Columbia Cascade and Western - 10
of the positions, particularly staging the trains and dispatching
– which are challenges in their own right, certainly -- tend to be
the last to go. Obviously, we have to have both positions and
there are a lot of people qualified to do it. When you see the
trains running and how much enjoyment there is, you tend to
want to be out here running the railroad.”
MRH:
“Dispatcher. Is there a training program for that job,
or is it just somebody who thinks they’ve been around here
long enough?”
David:
“The dispatching, when we first started running trains,
was like, okay who wants to do this? We had one particular
12: The dispatcher’s office is in the club’s meeting room
and workshop, in a separate basement across a courtyard
from the layout space. The extension phone, originally used
on the Southern Pacific, was re-wired to work with FRS
radios and is controlled with a foot switch.
12
MRH-Feb 2013
