does anyone belong to a club?

thought it would be interesting to see how many of us belong to model railway, or other railway related, clubs?

ive been a member of the wanganui model railway and engineering society for 3 years, and a committee member for 2.
im the youngest by a good few years and the only one who runs plarail/thomas. there was another member who did, but he got his knickers in a knot over who knows what and quit. he suggested we combine our collections for a public show. i didnt trust him not to "accidentally" take some of my stuff, so flat refused.
we are a small club, but a good one. the rooms are my second home at times. during one storm i contemplated staying over night, but it eased enough to get home.

you can see more of us here: http://wanganuimodelrailway.weebly.com/

looking forward to hearing about other members clubs etc, feel free to share links if youve got them. always good to see how other people do things.

[Ucwepn]

I'm not a member of any real life clubs but on a few on facebook lol. I'm in agreement about sharing to display lol I have some rare gems I would never want to share especially with someone I didn't know well but I would share with you Sunhuntin any day of the year

likewise, chris. it would be an honor to have some of my stuff running on your layout, but then i dont think i have anything you dont. lol.
actually, thinking about, i think i would happily share with most everyone on here, if only the miles between werent so big, lol.

I say we all move into some kind of compound with living quarters and and a huge space to just build tracks, i do not live by anyone into Plarail but we Americans are quite spread out!

ooo, that sounds good geri. imagine the noise with that many trains running all at once. crikey. lol

[Super]

The only Train Clubs that I know in my area are located in smaller towns and are associated with their own buildings with large layouts and larger scale trains. They don't seem to have the different layouts like Sunhuntins club but more build one super sized layout in their building. The last one we visited tout themselves as "Home To the World's Largest O Scale Model Railroad and Longest Model train."

I thought we all were going to move Ucwepn's car out of the shed, install several bunk beds, bring all our stuff and live out the rest of our lives in train heaven. I can hear Ucwepn's lovely wife now hollering out "who wants Bacon and Eggs"

We have a local club but don't belong as our electric trains are O scale, but we do support their shows. Our local electric model train store closed last year but he still sells on ebay. Nice guy but decided he just wanted to scale back. Many activities in our area includes a state train museum. Thomas rides runs there once a year. We also have a western railroad theme park.

club
http://www.carolinamodelrr.org/



train store that closed, layout now disassembled and gone forever.



museum
http://www.nctrans.org/



theme park
http://tweetsie.com/

ghost train



There are a couple more places if ya'll are interested.

edited to add youtube videos

[Super]

Fantastic Nickel, thank for sharing these with us.

That is an excellent train club behind the Train Museum and their layout (still under construction) is beautiful. It always amazes me how artistic these builders are and their ability to create their vision onto these layout.

Love the Wild West Theme Park and Tweetsie Railroad. The two steam locomotives are beautiful especially the 105 ton Yukon Queen 2-8-2. A 1943 US Army Transportation Corps. What a fun place that park must be.