linkey Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Greeting fellow Model Train lovers across the world,Just to let you all know that recently the Australian Japanese Model Railway Group (AJMRG) in now officially Incorporated as we were all notified at our recent members meeting (7th Feb)So now we have the Inc. after name and the exciting year of 2015 is ahead of us with our first exhibition happening soon in March (7th - 9th) and our members meeting on the 28th March (great they placed a meeting on my birthday, great one guys lol)Cheers from us all from Melbourne, Victoria Australia as well as our Interstate and Overseas members (Australian Japanese Model Railway Group Inc)FromSarah Link to comment
katoftw Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 What will being incorporated do for the club? Link to comment
linkey Posted February 12, 2015 Author Share Posted February 12, 2015 For us being Incorporated means we can have public liability insurance (PLI), we are able to fully gain a club room which is on our list of things to happen in long term. As well having other benefits that we never had before like being able to be at certain exhibitions cause of not able to have a PLI. Link to comment
ozman2009 Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 What does membership involve? What are the benefits? I'm in Sydney. Link to comment
Ochanomizu Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Hello Mr linkey, Congratulations for promoting Japanese trains in Australia. I see the forum is marked for members only. I could not see where one joins to become a member. Link to comment
katoftw Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 For us being Incorporated means we can have public liability insurance (PLI), we are able to fully gain a club room which is on our list of things to happen in long term. As well having other benefits that we never had before like being able to be at certain exhibitions cause of not able to have a PLI.Great news on the ability to do alot more things. Sounds like it is all upward for the club. How many members do you have? Link to comment
westfalen Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 (edited) For us being Incorporated means we can have public liability insurance (PLI), we are able to fully gain a club room which is on our list of things to happen in long term. As well having other benefits that we never had before like being able to be at certain exhibitions cause of not able to have a PLI. There is no need to incorporate to get PLI. The Ipswich Model Railway Club is a 100% NMRA club, ie; all members are members of the NMRA for $25 each/year, which covers us with NMRA's public liability insurance at any meeting or event we attend as a club. We are about as un-incorporated as you can get. Our previous incarnation of the club which met at the Ipswich Workshops Rail Museum got our PLI through being and affiliate club of the Queensland Railways Institute whose by-laws required us to be incorporated and have a certain percentage of QRI members on our board. The main activity of the club was becoming holding meetings rather than running trains or building layouts. Edited February 13, 2015 by westfalen Link to comment
beakaboy Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 My local club became incorporated a number of years ago and it was a pain. We had to keep tabs on the rules for an incorporated society and comply. Meant more red tape bulls..t with more meetings and lots of talking with very little work on layouts and construction for shows. Mind you quite a few of the members were more interested in meetings, etc and social chitchat. I came along to build or repair stuff and felt the cuppa time around 9-9.30pm was the time for idle chat and discussion, etc. Most of the clubs better or more experienced modellers have now left(Myself included) and the club is planning for a new clubrooms extended onto a community trusts building. I noticed at their local show in January that the plans on display show an area of 150-200sq m with over half comprising kitchen,library,meeting room and workshop. If(its a big if!) they build anything it will have to be stored under the building along with some of their other layouts. They have not built any new layouts for shows or clubrooms for around 3-4 years and the existing layouts are looking very tired. Sorry for the rant! I feel when we got incorporated, it was downhill from then on. Modellers enjoyed the less structured environment before. Westfalen- I was not aware of the NMRA public liability insurance. Thanks Link to comment
cteno4 Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 The big issue is the liability insurance,mothers the 800 lb gorilla in the room usually... Jeff Link to comment
kvp Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 A common trick is to operate like the whole layout is owned by a single person. In this case anyone else in the club is just a non paid worker for the owner. Since most exhibitions allow single persons to bring their own home layout to a show, this works for most clubs if they are not the organisers of the show. Btw. my personal experience is the more incorporated or offical a club is, the more chance for fights over rules and money and more chance for a club split up. I've been member in quite a few clubs over the years and while i'm still going to exhibitions with the same people as before, the club names keep changing and while the old ones still remain, not with any active modellers or participating in any exhibtions. I keep seeing some older equipment (like table legs and similar stuff) that has quite a few club names written on it, with all the older ones striked out. The problem seems to be that running an offical club is work and needs time, while most real modellers already have a job and would like to spend their spare time doing what they like. The result is that club leaderships tend to be composed of non modellers, who prefer to lead a club as a hobby and normal members tend to leave if they are not left alone to do what they like or any rules are imposed upon them. Surprisingly i've seen the same repeating pattern at various other non railroad modelling clubs, like robotics or lego. Link to comment
cteno4 Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 (edited) That trick does not work here with liability. Big problem wih that is then one person must take on all the legal responsibility for the group and even with insurance you can really be nailed to the wall then if something happens (We looked into this with owning a club auto trailer for the layout). The horror is everyone involved is usually sued and those with the deepest pockets are gone after the most. It's not a fun issue. You also need to make sure you are working within the scope and nature of the policy or if something does happen the insurance company will just void the policy and step aside. With public shows there are all sorts of things that can go wrong and trigger a lawsuit, some of which is out of your hands. We have been accident free for over 10+ years of public shows and doing all we can to stay that way, but it takes diligence as with the general public there are an infinite numbers of ways folks could do something screwy! Even the NMRA insurance takes diligence as every member attending an event to be covered must be a NMRA member at that time. Takes keeping on folks to make sure and an extra $25 in fees per member (not bad for a small group for liability insurance though). Agreed the more formal things get the more time spent on doing business meetings... But when things reach a certain point in size, money, number of members, property, clubhouse, etc, formalities usually are needed or things can derail quickly! We have tried to stay as loose as possible and not incorporated, but for various legal reasons it was wise for us to set up bylaws and such. We keep the business stuff to once or twice a year for an hour or so, with a dozen or so folks and always one coming and going that's enough to keep on track and everyone pretty much on the same page. All the minor business and show stuff is doen thru yahoo email group. Keeping thing simple but a bit formalized seems to be working for us so far. Jeff Edited February 15, 2015 by cteno4 Link to comment
linkey Posted February 18, 2015 Author Share Posted February 18, 2015 There is no need to incorporate to get PLI. The Ipswich Model Railway Club is a 100% NMRA club, ie; all members are members of the NMRA for $25 each/year, which covers us with NMRA's public liability insurance at any meeting or event we attend as a club. We are about as un-incorporated as you can get. Our previous incarnation of the club which met at the Ipswich Workshops Rail Museum got our PLI through being and affiliate club of the Queensland Railways Institute whose by-laws required us to be incorporated and have a certain percentage of QRI members on our board. The main activity of the club was becoming holding meetings rather than running trains or building layouts. Sadly not all Victorian club exhibitions allow groups without PLI to be able to display, something about covering their own behind than wanting to promote the hobby. Even if we did the N scale Convention we would need to have a PLI for our layout display. Link to comment
linkey Posted February 18, 2015 Author Share Posted February 18, 2015 Hello Mr linkey, Congratulations for promoting Japanese trains in Australia. I see the forum is marked for members only. I could not see where one joins to become a member. Can you send a message on your contact list with the title membership enquiry via our website (below my signature) and we can get Brian to send you the details of the membership. Great news on the ability to do alot more things. Sounds like it is all upward for the club. How many members do you have? Thank you, at the moment our club membership has grown from 8 to 13, but we are getting a lot of interest from people thinking of joining up as we speak and usually when they come and see up at the exhibitions/display days. What does membership involve? What are the benefits? I'm in Sydney. We have members from Japan and as well in Western Australia, more details about benefits will be posted up soon. Link to comment
westfalen Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Sadly not all Victorian club exhibitions allow groups without PLI to be able to display, something about covering their own behind than wanting to promote the hobby. Even if we did the N scale Convention we would need to have a PLI for our layout display. The situation is the same in Queensland but being a 100% NMRA club covers you with their insurance, there are several clubs up here doing it. We include the NMRA membership fee in our's and our secretary collects it with each member's annual dues and remits it in bulk to the NMRA so we know all our members are paid up NMRA members. 1 Link to comment
linkey Posted March 5, 2015 Author Share Posted March 5, 2015 I've been been asked to post this for our friends in Australia who wants to be part of the AJMRG Inc.Even though we are a Melbourne based group we do have members in other States of Australia so if you would like to Join us here in Melbourne or start your own group in another State please send us a message. From Brian We are happy to have the (Vic Div.) added to our group if we have other state groups forming up. As we want to spread the word of Japanese Model Trains throughout Australia :)-Sarah- Link to comment
linkey Posted March 16, 2015 Author Share Posted March 16, 2015 Exciting times ahead for the Australian Japanese Model Railway Group Inc. after being at the Sandown Train and Hobby Show, even though the attendance to the event was down. The target audience is for the children but we had increased in Adult attendees. But we were able to enjoy and show so much of interesting and variant trains in the three day event that we might have picked up a few interested people to become members of AJMRG Inc.https://www.facebook.com/trainandhobbyPlus we were also lucky to win a prize, one of our members won a family trip on the Victorian Narrow gauge Steam Train "Puffing Billy" just by liking and sharing the event page if the Train and Hobby Show. 1 Link to comment
Tetsudo Mokei Fan Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 (edited) .. Edited April 22, 2015 by Tetsudo Mokei Fan Link to comment
linkey Posted April 23, 2015 Author Share Posted April 23, 2015 .. Information has been sent to you privately, hope to see you at the next meeting. Link to comment
cteno4 Posted April 23, 2015 Share Posted April 23, 2015 Amazing communication skills Linkey, reading all that from ".."! I am impressed! We're they micro Dots? Should have enlarged them! ;-p Jeff 1 Link to comment
linkey Posted April 24, 2015 Author Share Posted April 24, 2015 Amazing communication skills Linkey, reading all that from ".."! I am impressed! We're they micro Dots? Should have enlarged them! ;-p Jeff Jim had sent the message to me twice. first one here the second via Private message, so I thought I would let him know where I replied back to. lol Anyway looking forward to the month of May as the Australian Japanese Model Railway Group Inc have got two displays for two different Japanese Festivals. May 3rd - Frankston (Sister City festival) May 17th - Box Hill (Japan Festival - Whitehorse City Council Sister city festival, Cultural Event) Link to comment
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