Summer meet up

[harukablue]

Hi, I know we are a worldwide club, its amazing to see just where we all are living in the world, but i propose and i am willing to organise a summer meet up day here in the UK, I would propose a small meeting room not to far from an airport that is served by the likes of Ryan air/Easy jet as this could give the chance for some other European members to attend at reasonable cost maybe on a day trip or two days. A Saturday would be the obvious choice as meeting rooms in small hotels are very reasonable at weekends, im not talking Hilton or Hyatt here just a small place say 20 miles away from the airport.

 

I have plenty of Japanese DVDs we could take a look at, we could have for sale/swaps and be good to meet and talk about our hobby for the day.Im sure one of us could muster up a small layout an if its ready i will bring my HO depot layout.

 

I think the minimum number to make it affordable an viable would be 50 members, so if your interested let it be known.

 

Lew

[Bernard]

Lew - What a wonderful idea! There are a lot of members here from the UK and other parts of Europe.

[harukablue]

Perhaps I am a littl biased towards the UK but i live in rural wales and the places i have in mind Luton/Stansted/Nottingham are all about 300km by road from me,,,it will be good if it happens, Lew

[Bernard]

Lew - I'm sending you a PM. I have to leave now but will respond when I get back.

[harukablue]

OK 

[domino]

im in, i live in Denmark, and only live 30 min from the airport.

If we are going to do this, maybe you should check if there is a trainshow/railroad museum or something we can go to, i know for a fact that a Museum i England(not sure where) has a Shinkansen on display , yes it is true.

 

Let me konw what you think

 

Domino

Brian

[harukablue]

The Shinkansen cab car is in the National Museum in York , I will see if there is anything else we could look at/visit.

 

Lew

[domino]

The Shinkansen cab car is in the National Museum in York , I will see if there is anything else we could look at/visit.

 

Lew

 

York , is that far from where you live/where we shall meet ??

Great, we could plan the meeting for the same weekend as a train show/exhibition , but only if everybody thinks it is a good idea ??

 

domino

brian

[Darren Jeffries]

Great idea Lew. i'm in if we can get things organised. I am in central cotswolds so anywhere is ok for me.

[harukablue]

I will take a look  at some weekends, i have no objection to the york area, i think there are cheap flights to leeds/bradford for our visitors, your is about 500km from me, im in West Wales, nothing of interest here for Japanese Railways, I will try and look for a decent exhibtion too and perhaps  try and arrange around that weekend, perhaps summer might be best left until the National show late in the year, plenty of planning  then. Also Japan Model Railways and Sharps attend the show for buying items, and there is also a Japanese N layout there.

 

Lew

[disturbman]

Thoughts on the subject.

 

It's indeed interesting but I'm not sure JNS even has 50 active members. What I think could be more cut out for us would be a IGNippon's style meeting. Some members go to met by someone's place and run trains together, tell sotires, drink beer, eat japanese... You could then count on a smaller amount of person.

[Darren Jeffries]

It's indeed interesting but I'm not sure JNS even has 50 active members.

 

3 months ago i would have agreed. We easily have more than 50 active members now. 48 have logged in today and i am sure we have nearer 85 active members and many more lurkers.

 

However.... 50 in north europe and uk, thats unlikely.

[harukablue]

50 is the number to make a meet at  rented venue financially viable but if was disturbman suggests we dont have the number then a meeting at a bar at the NEC Warley show sounds good, as I said there are two retailers there with plenty of Japanese stock and also a Japanese N layout, its  agood way off for planning and plenty of other layouts, demos to look at.

 

Lew

[Bernard]

50 is a number we are averaging but that number represents people all over the world. Members in Europe and/or the UK might not have problems especially with travel expenses for a meeting in England but AUS, USA & CAN might. You might have a much smaller number for a meeting.

[Claude_Dreyfus]

I live near the south coast, however with enough notice I'd be interested.

 

In terms of location, yes York does have the 0 series driving trailer, and we also have MG Sharpe down the road in Sheffield. A little farther afield is Railworld at Peterborough. They have a permanent stand, with small layout (at least a layout with Bullets running), for the Japanese Railway Society. I'm not sure how comprehensive this is however.

 

Ideally a meet would be at a show, although there aren't too many Japanese layouts on the circuit in the UK, indeed I don't know the whereabouts of most of the Japanese layouts here - Temple Falls, Katami Mittsu and Odawarako being the best known - for 2010. Yamanouchi Oshika is due at two for 2010, however both are next month.

 

Certainly food for thought, and perhaps worth publishing a list of possible shows for this year that may be of interest.

[harukablue]

I think the Warley show in November sounds good to me,,,,there are ample bars at the show we could meet at, for more information on the show look at :-

 

http://www.thewarleyshow.co.uk/

 

 

We have the following traders there :-

 

http://www.tgauge.co.uk/

 

http://www.japanmodelrailways.com/

 

http://www.kato-unitrack.co.uk/kato-japanese-n-scale-755-0.html

 

Lew

[Claude_Dreyfus]

Ron Upton's Temple Falls and Temple Valley are also being shown at Warley 2010, so we'll have some Japanese N gauge as well 

[cteno4]

this would be fun to attend even from the other side of the pond! I really hope a few of us from DC can attend a IgNippon event one of these times in germany! JRM has also talked with groups in australia about meeting up at JAM one year, but that one is a bit harder to pull off!

 

for just an idea of what this involves, I am just finishing up organizing a 2 day event for a graduate school reunion/nobel party here in baltimore that is drawing about 50 folks (about 85 total with other family members attending) from all over the US to one place. its a big undertaking to organize and if you have an event location you end up with some heavy costs there usually that need to get paid in front of the event. Not horrible but something that may require some bank rolling or folks paying up way in advance.

 

we got lucky and found a small conference center that has like 50 hotel rooms at it and pretty cheap event spaces. its pretty unused on the weekends so we should have the place to ourselves to hang out friday afternoon thru sunday afternoon. a lot nice than going to the usual hotel venues to do something like this. the hotel rooms are nice and pretty cheap ($99). the cost for the event rooms, recreation room all day friday-sunday, nice reception with horsdoubers (no host bar), 4 course banquet (they have exceptional event food), and a post dinner event, worked out to $100/head. about 70%s of the cost is the reception/banquet. most folks are flying in friday and out sunday.

 

where you get killed is on is the organized meals. as soon as you talk to any establishment about bringing in a group of folks the price just goes up. seems like that should not be the case if you are bringing them a bunch of business, but they need extra help and such and just never seems you can get a great price. best is to break the group up for meals and have some sort of rotation between the groups. this actually sounds odd, but works well as at larger functions its hard to really see many more folks than at your table anyway. so if you can keep the meals casual you can keep your costs way down.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[IST]

Members in Europe and/or the UK might not have problems especially with travel expenses for a meeting in England...

 

Khm, I might have problems, you know, Hungarian salaries... Pfff. :-)

But if the meeting would hold at Warley, it would be bigger chance to go there. I am planning year-by-year to see once the Warley show and this would be another push to realize it.

[Darren Jeffries]

this would be fun to attend even from the other side of the pond!

 

Would be great to meet you Jeff, and anyone else that could attend.

 

However, all is not lost if you cant make it, thats what webcam conference is for!!!!

[Claude_Dreyfus]

I think the Warley show in November sounds good to me,,,,there are ample bars at the show we could meet at, for more information on the show look at :-

 

http://www.thewarleyshow.co.uk/

 

 

We have the following traders there :-

 

http://www.tgauge.co.uk/

 

http://www.japanmodelrailways.com/

 

http://www.kato-unitrack.co.uk/kato-japanese-n-scale-755-0.html

 

Lew

 

Likewise Gaugemaster...

 

http://www.gaugemaster.com/kato.html

[harukablue]

So I will start on a fresh posting for a meet up either Saturday or Sunday at the Warley show, i'm sure there will be  a bar we can have for the afternoon, Lew

[cteno4]

this would be fun to attend even from the other side of the pond!

 

Would be great to meet you Jeff, and anyone else that could attend.

 

However, all is not lost if you cant make it, thats what webcam conference is for!!!!

 

this would be fun! could have a web cam that could also be moved around the meeting layout for the rest of the world to watch! suspect that a moving train would freak the web compressors though! i have attended a lot of meetings as a head on a powerbook ichat at the table! i use video conferencing a lot in my biz and its wonderful. one client kaiser permanente started using it like 15 years ago and we had these totally tricked out video conference suites i could use, hook in the computer, video, copy camera, was amazing! ichat works really well and with the video sharing you can do i can sit there and go over videos with my video producer like we are sitting there together! save sooo much time, money and carbon!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[domino]

So I will start on a fresh posting for a meet up either Saturday or Sunday at the Warley show, i'm sure there will be  a bar we can have for the afternoon, Lew

 

Im in, so lets get this thing going and try to meet in the UK later this year.

 

domino

Brian