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Willett, who I’ve mentioned in earlier columns — to another kind of “club” that he referred to as a “benevo- lent dictator- ship.” (I used this term in an earlier column, too.) In this sce- nario, you were a regular guest at a private home layout, helping to build said layout and, toward the end of the evening, maybe operat- ing it a bit, too. In our case, this


that came out of this, actually, was the lifelong friends I met there, in- cluding the first railfan I ever met: Dale Jacobson. Above all, it was at the FCMRRC that I met my life- long best friend, the now-late Jim Boyd, former editor of Railfan & Railroad Magazine. In directing me down the path of photography and publishing in the railroad/ model railroad field — which I en- tered in 1971 and remain in 44 years later — Jim was a turning- point figure in my life. All these years later, I can’t help but think the days of the classic model railroad club are num- bered. In 1966, my beloved FC- MRRC met the same fate that so many clubs seem to meet: being evicted from their building. The FCMRRC never recovered from that. Besides — my rose-colored glasses having lost their tint by this time — I could see the club had been suffering from a lack of leadership and vision. Further, the concept of prototype opera- tion was almost unknown. There are only so many times you can run a train around the dogbone before your eyes glaze over. By this time, Jim Boyd had introduced several of us — in- cluding Mike McBride and Craig


was the HO-scale C&NW layout of the now-late Don Goshert of Ster- ling, Illinois. You followed Don’s rules and instructions on how you could help with the layout. Over the ensuing years, my en- counters with various tradition- al model railroad clubs yielded mixed reviews. For a time, I at- tended a club in Zion, Illinois, who were a friendly bunch but lacked motivation, even after I lit some fires under them. Besides, the “livestock” (cockroaches) roaming the layout were a bit un- nerving. One big thing that has al- ways bothered me about clubs is the inevitable mix of equipment and time periods. One train might have a 19th Century 4-4-0 pulling a wooden-coach passenger train, and the next might have SD40– 2s pulling 1980s-era freight cars. I need more consistency and believability.


In a big twist of irony in the late 1970s, when I worked for Kalmbach Publishing Company, I wound up being president of the then-new Kalmbach Model Railroad Club, home of the Mil- waukee, Racine & Troy (MR&T). Ostensibly, this was an employee layout, but we did take in outsid- ers. Building the first MR&T was


great fun — I got to design the overall track plan of the original layout. However, one of the old bugaboos of clubdom still reared its ugly head: decision-making as to what the ultimate direction and goals of the layout were to be. This is simply difficult to do with a group no matter what, and ev- eryone had their own idea of what the layout should entail. Don’t get me wrong. The fact that a new ver- sion of the MR&T thrives today, though, is testimony that some clubs do work. And there are other examples, too, such as the North American Prototype Mod- elers’ generic-though-stunning layout in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the West Island Model Rail- road Club and its Allegheny & Western layout at Hicksville, New York. Perhaps the ultimate is the La Mesa Model Railroad Club in San Diego, California. But that’s another story. With the more-or-less recent boom in private home layouts geared to prototype operation, I see these as replacing the small- er, traditional, local model rail- road clubs. And with this shift, I’m seeing that tried-and-true be- nevolent dictatorship approach — which I use on my HO-scale Illinois & St. Louis (see previous Look Both Ways) — gaining pop- ularity, especially for those of us with larger-than-average layouts. Democratic? No, but you have the fellowship of a club, the goals are usually clearly defined, and learn- ing curves are shortened. Further, there are no dues, fiefdoms, or squabbling.


Mike’s world In this newspaper clip- ping from the Febru- ary 3, 1965 [Rockford, Illinois], East Sider, we see, in the upper photo, Parry Donze (left in photo) and Mike Schafer at the Forest City Model Railroad Club posing for the newspaper photog- rapher. Mike is running his Chicago & North Western “400” stream- liner (American Beauty Lines cars pulled by cast-metal Hobbytown E-units). In the lower photo, FCMRRC member Stan Guyer poses with a locomotive he assembled from a kit. Mike and Stan are still active in the model railroad field. For Mike, the FCMRRC pre- sented a critical turning point in his life’s career directions. — Mike Scha- fer collection


Bill sez… M


odel railroad clubs have been around almost as long as there have been model railroaders. Many reasons for be- longing to model railroad clubs still hold true today, maybe more so. Numerous model railroaders


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