‘ve been in our club since a couple of months after its informal creation, nearly forty years ago. And in that time, I’ve noticed a number of things about clubs and model railroaders.

• Watch out for storytellers. They will saw your ears off. I will saw your ears off.
• There are always engines better than yours, and always engines worse than yours. Be happy with what you’ve got.
• When you dinner with these guys, there is always someone who is generous, possibly picking up your check to reciprocate for something you’ve done. And there is someone who always “forgets their wallet” and then “forgets their debt”. 
• Do not talk politics. I can’t stress this enough. It used to be casual until 2004 and that’s when the club had a verbal bloodbath. Now we do not, in any way, talk politics.

But if there is one rule I really know, it’s the far-side-of-the-moon rule. If you have a young modeler who loves running trains and working on layouts, when he turns eighteen or so, he’ll discover girls, get a drivers license or go off to college. He’ll vanish. Maybe he might poke in and see you from time to time but probably not.

It’s like the early Apollo moon missions. They’d enter moon orbit and when they went around the horizon to the far side, there would be LOS (loss of signal). Everyone back in mission control would sit on their hands and eventually, hopefully, the space craft would re-emerge from behind the moon, the signal would be back on line and everything would be hunky-dory. Or, of course, you’d never hear from them again. Only two outcomes.

So yes, I’ve seen my share of young guys crater into the far side and never return to us. And I’ve had guys (who look surprisingly mature, often unrecognizably so), who come in and tell us that their marriages have settled down and their wife allows them one night to come to train club. I smile at this. After thirty-five years of marriage, my wife is all for me being at the club a couple of nights a week. I’m surprised she hasn’t bought me a cot for Christmas.

So if you have a valuable young member who suddenly goes missing, don’t dog them to come back. Just shrug and wait. Either they’ll come around the moon’s far horizon or there will be a new crater on the far side. Nothing you can do about it but wait it out in mission control.

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