I would like to see one of those letters. As each chapter is incorporated in it's home state, the National organization has no authority over a local chapter except in the regards of its qualifications to promote and present itself as "XYZ Chapter, National Railway Historical Society", and pay the dues of it's members thereof. National can only terminate a chapter's affiliation for not meeting the requirements, and make them cease and desist from using the NRHS name. National taking an individual chapter's assets is a carload of BS (of course, that is a very common commodity in the "railfan" community.............:) ) However, in my opinion, if you're in an NRHS Chapter that is down to less than 10 members, you should have done something a long time ago.

Mr. SO: what are you claiming these letters say? That if membership drops below 5, or the group does not remit dues, etc. that the NRHS can take away their Chapter in the society?

Or are you saying that the NRHS has threatened to take the assets of Chapters away?

Please post one of these letters so we can all see it.

Chris .

Looking around the various groups where I am a member, as well as those I occasionally visit, I see the same problems that p51 mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, an aging membership, and relatively few attempts to gain visibility with the general public. It isn't just the NRHS either, the same problems are evident in other railroad historical societies and enthusiast groups.

I can only point out that there are relatively inexpensive and simple ways to get publicity for your events and to get your group more noticed by the general public, but they require some effort to write up the details of planned events and circulate them to newspapers and into public accessible locations. I have mentioned before that we had a very large audience show up for a railroad industry related presentation at the library in a relatively small town just by running notices in the local newspaper, and circulating flyers through a popular hobby shop and an equally popular restaurant.

But it takes somebody willing to put in a little time and effort to do the publicity work.

This really should be a topic of concern for the NRHS, R&LHS, ARM, and TRAIN, and it should be the subject of discussions and seminars at their conventions. But unfortunately this hobby and related industry often tend to be preoccupied with the "photo taking competition" concept, both in monthy gatherings and national conventions. Your ability to compose a photo and push the shutter button is often held in significantly higher regard than your other contributions to and participation in the documentation and preservation of history.

PC

Well, for what it's worth, here it is:

I got it today and just stared at it for a while, wonder when - if ever - I'd have a reason to wear it.

Nice steam locomotive!

PC

As an update:

The NRHS Telegraph, their internal newsletter for officers, reached my inbox a few minutes ago, and in it is a section written by National President Greg Molloy addressing specifically the issue of inactive chapters and how their issues would be addressed. I'm not going to repost "internal" information here, but this does show that the NRHS national leadership IS aware of the problem and proactively addressing it.

But for the record....

As of April 1, 17 chapters (almost 10% of the total) were placed on "inactive" status due to having fewer than five members. In about half those cases, problems had been identified and were being addressed--mostly late renewals or payment, it appears.

Although several issues are addressed in the item, no mention is made of any conferral of Chapter properties to the National NRHS in circumstances of dissolution of a Chapter.

Inactivity is not just a problem of inactive chapters, some active chapters have achieved "inactivity" too. This week I got into the general neighborhood of a chapter that usually has excellent meetings. I turned on the computer to check the meeting schedule. I found it had not been updated since last year, no information available, so I did not make the detour to attend.

You see, there is another situation going on right now. A lot of people who used to present programs dropped out with the high cost of travel last year and haven't developed any further presentations. Several local groups in my area are publishing requests for programs regularly in their newsletters. So this year if you just drop in on a chapter meeting your chances of seeing a program you already saw somewhere else are a lot higher than they used to be. So with out of date websites and no way to check the activities it may not be worth the special effort to make a detour to attend.

The issue of the many out of date chapter websites was brought to the attention of Greg Molloy during his discussion session at Tri-State Chapter last year.

PC

Another reason is dues. NRHS keeps hiking there prices up (just announced increase today) and theres really not much of a benefit to the chapters to stick with National.

"As of April 1, 17 chapters (almost 10% of the total) were placed on "inactive" status due to having fewer than five members. In about half those cases, problems had been identified and were being addressed--mostly late renewals or payment, it appears."

All this means is there are some chapters for whom dues were not been processed by the deadline for renewal by the National organization. Last fall, the National sent dues notices to all of it's members and the dues for those members who belong to chapters were supposed to be submitted to theire chapters and then forwarded by the chapter to the National, but in these cases, for what ever reason, the deadline hasn't been met.

What happens next is up to the chapters and their members....

If dues for 5 or more members are submitted and processed by the National, the chapter gets reactivated.

If that doesn't happen, the members of these chapters will have an opportunity to renew as National only (aka at Large Members) at a higher rate.

The chapter can decide whether to become an independent organization or dissolve.

If it becomes and independent organization, it no longer has the right to say that it's part of a National organization and no longer can nominate a representative to the National's Board of Directors.

If it dissolves, any remaining assets, as would happen with any other 501c3 tax exempt organization, have to be distributed and the provision for distributing these assets is determined by the chapter's bylaws articles of incorporation and state law.

Only if the chapter designated the National organization to receive the assets would they go to the National. Note that there is no clause in the National's bylaws that requires this designation as a prerequisite for forming a chapter.

Bob H

I was traveling last week and got in the neighborhood of another NRHS chapter. I looked up their website to try to get information on their monthly meeting, since I recalled they met that week of the month. It was a very nice website, with no program details. Despite all the discussion on RYPN and elsewhere some chapters are still operating a stealth organization.

PC