I’d suggest you join. If it wasn’t for the NMRA, regionals and the national convention would not exist. When I first started in the hobby, I went to a regional convention, and I got so much out of it. A couple years later I went to the national convention and had the time of my life! There isn’t anything like the train show at the national convention! I’m a lone wolf too, but you can meet a lot of great people at these conventions.
I bought my railpass yesterday. I looked for local activities and found the next meeting of the Arizona division is in Flagstaff in June, about a 2.5 hour drive from our house. I may try to make it. If nothing else, it will allow us to escape the summer heat of Phoenix. The flyer for the meeting says there is a $7.00 registration fee. Is this normal? Is this how the local division is funded? I did find it slightly humorous that the morning clinic is “How Do We Get Younger Folks Involved?” given the rather emotional thread on the same topic a while back. Heck, I may even bring the mountain bikes.
Don’t know why there is a fee, the Regions and Divisions are supposed to be funded out of the National Fee, it did not used to be that way years ago when you paid the National, Region and Division dues each year.
Rick J
Conventions often have a fee attached. There are expenses to holding a convention on any significant scale: room rental; printing; refreshments; expenses for invited clinicians in some cases.
If you get a good convention for $7, it’ll leave you feeling satisfied for a lot longer than a fast food meal you could have bought with the same cash. And there are zero calories if you stay away from the donut table…[;)]
Yes, regions and some divisions have separate, nominal dues. But these aren’t really intended to cover convention and other special event costs in many cases. Most look at it being a case of charging the convention user upfront for its costs, rather than rolling the convention costs into everyone’s dues. Given many older members can no longer travel, that would be unfair to them.
Joining the NMRA is like joining a gym. You get out of it what you put into it. Otherwise, don’t be disappointed by the results.
As to a fee to attend a division meet, that is just a nominal amount to cover the cost of the meeting hall, and any refreshments (if provided).
Half the fun of a division meet is the socializing. Just talking about things, or going out as a group for lunch before the layout tours. It is a good way to meet people, learn things, and see new techniques and ideas. Plus be challenged by some excellent modellers.
It was said that the biggest mistake the NMRA ever made was to make the magazine (NMRA Magazine) an option. It is the communications medium of the organization and that allowed people to opt out of recieving those communications.
Nope! National only gives back to the Regions $3 (I believe) per member and that is for mandated mailings. Some Regions divide that money with the divisions, some don’t (Mine Doesn’t). Therefore all activities within the Region and the Divisions have to be self supporting. My division either charges members $3 per event, or pays our costs with a raffle or other fund raiser. So far that has worked well for us.
73
you’re referring to the extending the protocol ?
The NMRA eventually licensed the protocol from Lenz and extended it**.**
i take most of what i read with several grains of salt. just trying to get my facts straight
The DCC protocols were developed by the NMRA independently of Lenz. There are no Lenz technologies present, as the NMRA will not endorse a commercial product as a standard. They don’t want patents or licensing interfering with adoption.
The NMRA does not claim to fund the operations of regions and divisions. As to my own division, each year’s Trainfest basically provides what we need here in Milwaukee. Other divisions have modest dues, or a fee per meet, or have auctions, swap meets, and the like.
I am an avid model railroader and thus figure I should belong to the one national organization that is connected to that interest, without any real regard as to whether I am getting my money’s worth (whatever that means these days!). The railroad that is most interesting to me is the Chicago & North Western and for the very same reasons I belong to the C&NW Historical Society. I know plenty of modelers who do not belong to the NMRA and some CNW fans who do not belong to the society. To each his own.
Dave Nelson
Actually, Lenz donated their DCC protocols to the NMRA, who then adopted them as standards, and yes, over the years has extended them.
The important thing is that the NMRA did adopt a standard. Think back to the pre-DCC-as-a-standard days, when there were a number of competing command control protocols. You literally couldn’t run your locos on your neighbor’s layout unless you both used the same manufacturer’s control system.
The adoption and acceptance throughout the hobby of the NMRA’s DCC standards, no matter where they originated, has pretty much put an end to those incompatibilities.
I think the NMRA is the single most important organization in our hobby and should be supported for a variety of reasons, most if not all already mentioned.
I personally have learned a lot from and through events sponsored by the organization as well as meeting other modelers, etc.
Richard
He also gets some key points wrong.
For example, he says, “…since in many other industries (such as the Windows-compatible PC industry), issues of compatibility and interoperability have worked themselves out without a standards-setting body.”
Has he never heard of the IEEE, the PCI-SIG, USB.org, etc… ?
It would seem the author has a bone to pick, and is simply slinging accusations without any facts to back them up.
Not to mention his opinion of anyone who goes to swap meets or train shows.
If it weren’t for the DCC standards, I would still be using DC. Not only is interoperability important, but committing to a proprietary standard means that you are at the mercy of their pricing and continued existance.
Enjoy
Paul
The NMRA committee working on a standard for command control had already settled on digital as the signalling method before they saw any actual examples. They liked the Marklin submission which used a
Betamax;
I love your avatar (Julian). Where is Ricky and Bubbles? [;)]
Brian
[quote user=“betamax”]
The NMRA committee working on a standard for command control had already settled on digital as the signalling method before they saw any actual examples. They li
Regarding a discussion that wants to revolve around the notion that the NMRA simply adopted what Lenz previously created, the implication that whatever the NMRA was of little consequence miscasts the situation fundamentally. Why?
Think of your computer. How does it work? There’s hardware, true enough. But try running it without software. Anyone who’s ever had a virus or buggy software knows you won’t get far if you’re counting on just the hardware to make it run.
That is essentially the dividing line in this conversation people are stumbling over. And this is a great simplification in the way I’m framing it also, so don’t nitpick the presentation for the facts. Lenz provided what was essentially the hardware implementation. How do you make the signal and forward it to the locomotive to tell it what to do?
The language that’s done in is what the NMRA did. Essentially the “software” that commands the hardware what to do, although it’s technically firmware, as the decoders are not user-writeable. So I don’t want to take the analogy too far. Another way to look at it would be our telecommunication infrastructure, or plain old telephone service. There are hardwired phones, cell phones, VOIP, etc. All kinds of different hardware, but it all works together, even when mixed on the same call to provide a way to talk between two points, because of a common standard. Imagine if it didn’t? Fortunately there is a common standard everyone agrees to follow to make that work. Thus folks can argue about who, when and why DCC was created, but that’s really not the point as it’s a far more complex question than simply one or the other, Lenz or NMRA.
Unless the NMRA did what it did, the flexibility, potential for expansion, and interoperability of DCC as we know it would not have come into being. Sure, there would be a range of choices in hardware available to buy for more sophisticated control beyond simple DC, but only some of it, if we were l
I had an interesting conversation about standards with my department head at AT&T Bell Labs, the entity that developed Bell System standards that allowed the United States to have reliable voice and data communications.
There are several reasons why standards come about:
- one group becomes dominant and the rest of the industry attempts to develop a standard around the dominant groups approach which allows them to quickly catch up (e.g. Unix). If the dominant group agreed to the standard, it would have to reveal details of how its approach works (e.g. patentable ideas).
- a standard is adopted with a minor change that prevents existing equipment built to the existing standard from being used in a new region. Television in North America uses a 60 HZ refresh rate while in Europe it uses a 50 Hz rate. This prevented existing American manufactures from selling existing products in Europe.
- A new standard is agreed to that gives no one group an advantage. Europe agreed to ISDN as a standard for voice and data (very similar to Bell Lab’s DCP), requiring each country to upgrade their infrastructure (no one country or manufacturer had an advantage).
I’m sure each company with comp
Bell Labs is always an interesting place. My advisor has done work there in the history of science and technology. That’s one of my minor fields, although my focus in the area is more tied directly to the Cold War.
Once again, there’s an assumption in your statement that the NMRA just took something Lenz made and slapped a NMRA label on it. That’s simply not true.
But I’ll agree that DCC standardization is good for everyone – and not just for Lenz among the manufacturers. Lenz had no particular advantage over the other manufacturers once DCC was standardized by the NMRA beyond having familiarity with their existing hardware implementation.
Probably doing the Community Service tour…