I’m trying to start an interchange group in the NYC area. The NMRA used to have a SIG group for this, but on an international level. Members used to send cars to each other and have pictures of their freight cars taken on other people’s layouts. Inversely, they would take pictures of other peoples cars on their layouts.
What would the pitfalls of such an endeavor be?
The two that immediately come to mind are…
Tom
Mike, the pitfalls of such an endeavor are numerous, I’m afraid. However, I’ve participated in several car exchanges over the years that were very successful. If you go to the link below and enter Forums (in the upper left of the screen), then go to the one marked General Forums, followed by clicking on Interchange Track, it takes you to to their interchange group. Take a look at “Interchange '08”, one I was a part of. It ended up with over 30k hits over the course of about 9 months and was a lot of fun and entertaining for the entire forum’s membership.
Unfortunately, I’ve also seen far more go-rounds of this sort end in failure and great displeasure.
The biggest stumbling block is the makeup of the group. One often sees quite a few people initially come forward to join. However, unless made up of a very local group who are already known to one another, the reliability of members can be a really big question mark. Doing interchange with a group of complete strangers all too often results in a breakdown after just the first few exchanges as someone tires of the idea, looses a car, or just plain disappears!
The first thing that needs to be addressed in creating a car exchange is to prepare a firm set of ground rules concerning how the group and the exchange itself will operate. Who will run and oversee the interchange (it is real work!) and keep records? Will it be a monthly car
Thanks CNJ831,
I’ve actually been on Railroad Line Forums. It’s a great website. In fact I plan on adopting most of the guidelines set forth on the website. I’m definitely keeping it local (within the NYC area) and I plan on running notices through the local NMRA chapters (Sunrise and Garden State Divisions). I’ve also started a Yahoo group for it: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NYCMetropolitanAreaCarInterchange/. I think that it can be fun.
A few years ago, I was talking with another modeller, Bill Russell (he ran the Pennybridge website for NYC area waterfront railroads), who I worked with and we discussed doing a modular group who interchanged their freight cars via Walthers carfloats. This would also be cool because we could get a space somewhere like a church basement, a catering hall, or a school classroom (or in our case, a college classroom) and entry fee into the interchange would be minimal since everyone would split the cost of renting thspace.
The main objective of the group is to create a core model railroad group in New York City. I think that the possibilities for model railroad interacting in the greater NYC area are endless.
tstage, great layout.