Is there a club in the southwest that’s not a Labour camp

WWSME has a very broad range of interests, steam is just one part of it.

Don't judge every club by the experiences here please people, we are very friendly!

I think my own Society - Weymouth & District - is among many in hosting few or no public running days on its own track.

Our ground-level 5" and 7-1/4" g. track, "table-top" 16mm-scale outdoor circuit and any amount of room for miniature traction-engines, are available to members and bona-fide guests on most Saturdays and Tuesday evenings.

Public running is limited to very rare side-shows to events in the school itself; very few and far between even "BC".

Even our portable railway for external, fund-raising events is used fewer than 10 times a year; but does rely on the goodwill of volunteers to transport and operate it.

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Much of the non-running activities on site is maintenance - including gardening that seeded our internal joke about adding that to the society's name. A few members do both: attending on a Saturday to use either railway, and to engage in permanent-way or horticultural care.

A member who once complained that these days are not "model-engineering", was soon reminded that we don't have a fully-equipped club workshop, so do our model-engineering at home. The club site is for operating the models and testing boilers, but importantly, also the social forum, based around a small club-room with basic kitchen facilities.

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As for the all-important tea-&-biccies, we don't give them away, but invite donations of either comestibles or the heady sum of.... 20p!

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So you are welcome here to use the track as often or little as you wish, and whilst hoping you would also lend a hand with looking after the facilities, you need not fear spending every weekend driving public trains round and round!

(On club days. The secure school grounds and minimum-two attendees rule, are their own restrictions; and the site's management also decrees at least one first-aider among attendees, of any organisation, using the grounds.)

My humble view is: if you visit a club and they don’t have your specific branch of interest in ME then that’s a great opportunity to start a group within the club.

We have public running days on all our members or open days; that’s how we stay afloat. There’s enough room on the track for everyone and all members are encouraged to bring their loco’s (or anything of interest for that matter) for the public to have a look at and discuss with everyone present. The ‘odd’ little loco’s (that don’t necessary pull public) bring the foot-traffic that puts the bums on the paying rides. We also have an open table for members to show their builds which often ends up in discussions and appreciation from the public.

Personally I don’t like hauling public, but I’m there most days with my little loco’s…

It really does boil down to how you look at things!

Ten years ago, Peterborough lost our track, but we have always meet twice monthly (Except when shut down by Covid ).

One way and another, it cost us members but we still have our "Bits and Pieces" meeting followed, two weeks later, by a Speaker meeting.

We usually have a stand at a local Show about three times a year, where the display is tailored to the theme of the show, but tries to show a variety of interests within the Society.

Picture into my album of our stand at one of the Spalding Hobbies and Model Engineering Shows

And, where possible, we also run the portable track at events.

Hopefully, we try to accommodate everyone..

Howard

Why doesn't predictive spelling correct my typos?

Edited By Howard Lewis on 28/07/2022 13:10:14

Not yet joined a club but hope to when I can get them to answer the contact on their website(Why bother having one is my thought, I am sure there is more than one member who has access to it). Other clubs I have belonged to as with many find that there is always a small group that do everything and the rest leave it to them.

I use to help on many occasions but it got to the stage that they expected it all of the time so stopped doing it. Another I was on the committee and did a fair stint it got to the stage that I just said no more and forced them to find someone else

Been there, etc....

Over the years I have been on the committees of two caving-clubs and of my model-engineering society, doing a lot for all three both as an officer and more tangibly (though being a club magazine editor couldn't be much more tangible!). So I do feel some justification in letting others take the strain - and the train - though I still pitch in and help here and there.

Yes, despite the sizes, much of the background work does seem to fall on a faithful few, and therein lies the danger of entrenchment. If not kept in check that can lead to individuals becoming so proprietorial that they become unwelcoming to both potential club members and to possible candidates for committee posts.

The latter is also troubled by members at AGM time thinking, "Fred does a marvellous job as 'xxxx' so I'll propose him again rather than stand as 'xxxx' myself" . Despite Fred having warned three AGMs past that he intends standing down.

Even without these, a single bad encounter with one unfriendly type among the membership can deter anyone wishing to join the club.

I think this lay behind a strange conversation I had recently with someone, regarding asking local model-engineering clubs help re-allocate inherited assets; or we doing so of our own before Nature re-allocates us. He told me the largest society in his area was not interested, that most of its many members buy ready-to-run models and won't touch live steam due its "risks". By sheer chance I have since read news from this club, suggesting a different story indeed - perhaps my acquaintance had had the misfortune to meet its own Mr. Disgruntled.

Similarly, a member of a major caving-club once admitted to me its long-past unfriendly reputation was due to just two or three long-standing members having put so much effort into building its headquarters that they regarded it as their fiefdom. I also once saw so many unwelcoming "NO" signs on the door of an English climbing-club's Snowdonia "hut" that I wondered if it ever found new members.

Until a few years ago I was one of a group of volunteers maintaining part of a small museum dedicated to the site's commercial past. One day we just collected our personal effects - leaving its workshop rather bare - and drove away, no longer putting up with two individuals throwing their weight about and treating us like fools. Apparently, we were not the first, nor the last.

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Such hazards can afflict any club of any size with any physical assets; and we need bear in mind that "bringing the club into disrepute" is not necessarily simply annoying the neighbours or slandering it.

I hope the OP does find a welcoming society that does not run almost entirely for the public (some are obligated so by land lease agreements). Mine is one, its public events are only a few a year and helping on them is voluntary not by decree.

There's a lot to be said for traction engines.

Any Club takes a lot of building up, it doesn't take much to knock it down. You will always find willing workers and you will always find those that will let them.

"... let them". Aye, and sometimes let them down.

Buffer - there is indeed, and my own (far too slow) project is a 4"-scale steam-wagon.

Even better in a club not dedicated to one specific branch of the hobby, is a mix of rail, road and Any Other.

This happens here in Weymouth, which over the last couple of decades has evolved from primarily rail (and has a ground-level, twin-gauge track) to a near-balance of locomotives and traction-engines; plus a few members building stationary engines.

I do also belong to a society devoted to road-steam so does not need a railway itself; but further and perhaps unusually among model-engineering clubs, it has no HQ of its own. It hires village-halls for its social evenings, and other venues for running events.

Pros and Cons? It avoids the big financial and physical overheads of large fixed assets demanding constant maintenance, common in large clubs in our and many other pursuits including my home ME society with its track and small club-room, and my two caving-clubs with their self-catering hostels.

Lacking a club HQ does reduce the opportunity for general, informal contact between members; but it also avoids the fear that potential members might have, of becoming lumbered with helping look after a building.

This problem is addressed by many societies organising definite working days / weekends; and those members involved usually find these as enjoyable and constructive as actually using the place for its hobby and attendant social purposes.

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The OP's original fear, of being lumbered with too many public events for comfort, is a different matter and I can sympathise with him on that.

I have enjoyed over many years, occasional portable-track events - give me a garden fete and I'll spot the tea and home-made cakes stall quicker than a Labrador smelling a beefburger - but I would certainly not want to be under pressure to spend one weekend after another driving round and round the club's line.

In fact, these days I am happy to take only a few, informal laps "light engine" round our circuit, which is of decent length; but I will also help look after it.

P S M E have been offered more than one site for the track, but the requirement to provide almost 7 day public running was considered, by the Committee,, to be asking too much of members.

Members run, and passenger haul, because they want to; not because they HAVE to.

We consider that the Society should be run for the benefit of members, and to cater for all tastes.

Howard

Quite right of PSME too.

Did those "offering" the sites really expect a voluntary club to be able to provide such a service, and who would benefit financially?

Did they explain why they wanted such conditions and how they imagined you could fulfil them?

It looks like a quasi-commercial deal favouring them; and even without such an onerous condition I would ask how the club would be covered by whose insurance under what terms, for running public trains on the orders of a commercial or local-authority landlord.

Other societies do have have similar but much less drastic obligations; but perhaps some landlords and their insurers and tame solicitors genuinely do not understand private-members' clubs devoted to specific hobbies; let alone the hobbies themselves.

Nigel, Graham 2

I think that we were expected be an additional draw line, every day, for their commercial enterprises, since we would have been the only dynamic "exhibit"..

The fact that members (IF they were willing ) would have been wearing out their rolling stock by continuous running seemed to escaped those setting the requirement. Whether through lack of knowledge, or greed, I know not.

We would have been paying rent for the privilege of attracting custom to their site!

(Our annual steam rally used to increase footfall to it's site by about 30% for the weekend ).

The Track Sub Committee have explored nearly a hundred sites, with several expensive false starts with preliminary planning proposals. You would be AMAZED by some of the fatuous objections put forward.

To some, "Model Railway" seems to imply running a full size 9F around the track, or a full scale theme park!.

I kid you not!

But I am merely a moaning Grumpy Old Man.

Howard

I briefly belonged to a model engineering club that’s main focus was steam railways, they had a permanent track area leased to them on which during summer they ran trains for members and the public. They also committed the club to portable track events at many local events during the weekends in summer. At meetings they were constantly asking for volunteers for portable track, public running and working parties to maintain their permanent track area, I always felt awkward at meetings because I didn’t put my hand up and volunteer for two reasons, one my interest lays in traction engines and internal combustion engines not steam locomotives, and secondly I have a physical disability which limits how much physical work that I can do. Club nights were filled with speakers and videos, the main emphasis was on steam locomotives, in which I only have a passing interest and obscure video subjects that included such subjects as trams in Romania, which was a pictorial inventory of all the country’s trams, so boring. I decided that my evenings could be better spent in my workshop so didn’t renew my membership, the only model engineering club that I belong to now is SMEE. Dave W

Lacking a track, sadly, a lot of our "railwaymen" have lapsed their membership.

But our speakers cover a wide variety of subjects, so that every one has something of interest to them

Our speaker secretary is the one who transports the portable track. He owns both a loco and a traction engine, so has a foot in both camps.

Not owning either a loco (Bigger than HO gauge ) or a road engine, I can claim to be impartial!

Howard

A long way from the West Country but the Grimsby & Cleethorpes MES has a fabulous site at Waltham, just outside of the two towns, which has been built and developed primarily by the larger locomotive enthusiasts in the society but which has a roadway for the traction engine people and a large garden railway layout. I believe, although I may be a little biased being a member (but not a locomotive man), that the site is valued and viewed as an asset by both the local community and local authority who lease the land. A great deal has been invested into this site with money raised through public running and donations from local business and industry. Work commitments prior to retirement and health issues afterwards dictate that I have not been a particularly active member in the past so I take my hat off to the people who have developed this site over the last 36 years and continue to do so and I am more than happy to pay the very modest membership subscription. Obviously there has to be regular revenue raising public running days but there are also members' days and guests are very welcome on open weekends.

If anyone is in the area on a Sunday or Bank Holiday weekend I can heartily recommend a visit to this site, not just because of the GCMES railway, but because outwith the club the track sits alongside a fully restored and functioning 19th century windmill, which is open to the public and there is a small rural museum that encompasses a war time tribute to RAF Grimsby. There is also a restaurant, cafe and ice cream parlour, operated as commercial businesses on the site, but altogether is it a very pleasant social milieu with ample free car parking. I think visiting enthusiasts would be made welcome if they made themselves known to the members on site.