Just curious about the outcome of the meetings mentioned in this older discussion. I tried to look up the contact information for the Seven Railroads Chapter NRHS recently and their webpage link led only to Facebook.

PC

Well, allow me to bring you up to speed:
I did join the group at the beginning of January. The facebook page is our primary source of information, and since I took up maintaining it in March, I took a page out of the Baltimore Chapter's playbook and I'll link to stories relevant to railroad topic or share articles that may be of interest. So far, my efforts to bolster membership haven't turned up much, but I'm working on something. Our immediate goal is bringing membership up, understandably, but at the moment my time is being taken up by either graduation prep, school, or my internship with P.A.L (mental health advocacy).

I would suggest that one thing that would enhance your chances of attracting new members is to get meeting information on the web page rather than requiring people to join Facebook in order to find out where the group meets and what day of the month. There are a number of links and news items on the Facebook page (and a telephone number on the info page), but I don't see anything there that tells when or where the group meets. Many people prefer to attend a meeting or two and see how a group is run and what it does before they commit to being a member.

If Facebook won't let you post that permanently, then put up a news posting each time you have a meeting. Include a statement like "This group meets at (location) each month on the (day, such as 3rd Thursday, etc.)".

There are some NRHS chapters that require you to join Google Groups, and others that require you to join Facebook, just to find out the location and date of the monthly meetings. Sorry but I don't see the need to require joining, and providing personal information to, additional organizations (like Facebook) just to find the most basic contact information on a non-profit historical group.

PC

I'll see what I can do Preston. At the moment, we meet rather infrequently and most of our progress is traded about using email. Ammending the facebook page to refer to our meeting location should be easy. We're working to schedule out a meeting some time within the next few weeks, so I hope we'll have a date soon. Once we have a date, it'll be posted to the facebook page; I'll see to that. I can't post the information at the moment though, as the filters for the school computers are a major impediment...

In that case, could I suggest that when you do schedule a meeting, be sure to get it posted on your Facebook page a reasonable time in advance, and include a statement like "The group presently does not hold regularly scheduled meetings each month, watch this page for announcements of future meeting times and locations". Let people know what the situation is.

Is the Seven Railroads Chapter formerly stated goal to catalog and organize the NRHS library stored nearby in Three Rivers Mass. still an active project, or have they given up on that?

PC