The NASG Story: A History (part 4)
by Bob Jackson
ERRATA:
Bill Fraley wrote to correct an error in the last installment (Vol. X no. 2, June 1987). He reminded us that Tommy Riddle and Chuck Porter started the NASG copy service sometime in 1972. On request, they provided members copies of S Gauge Heraldis layout. Ed asked Bill if he would be interested in providing some relief for Chuck by accepting the responsibility for the copy service. Bill agreed, whereupon Chuck sent him the copy service material. Bill recoded the six pages of information and produced a new copy service catalog. The last edition was dated 2/75. Bill notes that the service saw reasonable activity for the next five or six years and then tapered off until it was essentially unused by 1983.
INCORPORATION
As we saw earlier, by the end of 1973 the NASG had undergone a resurrection. A mere three years earlier it seemed mortally wounded. Many had bailed out. Many had thought that the NASG was largely irrelevant and did not count for much. But by the end of 1973 much of that mood had dissipated and membership had risen to its highest point ever.
Curiously, the resurrected organization was very like the one that had earlier teetered on the brink of demise. Very few fundamental changes had occurred. Although many additional services had been tried (or retried), few succeeded. All consumed precious resources and almost none paid for themselves. The circuits remained the principal offering of the NASG to its members. The voice of the organization was still a column in the back pages of the bi-monthly S Gauge Herald . Moreover, the concept of the NASG as the sanctioning body for official meets, established at the 1970 NESGA meeting in Hershey and consolidated by the first national convention at Kansas City in 1972, was blurred by a series of NESGA events sanctioned as dual purpose meets. The second "pure" NASG convention did not occur until 1975, hosted by the Chicagoland S Gauge Association in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.
Most important, the NASG was still saddled with a dues structure which could not provide the funds for either basic services or major initiatives. There was no hope of major advertisement of the NASG, let alone S gauge. There could be no brass import project. There could not be a newsletter. Indeed, there was not even sufficient funding for a mass mailing to the entire membership. Thus, the NASG was totally dependent on the Herald it to communicate to the membership. Ironically, without the means for mass mailing, the NASG could not even update its membership files and thus did not really know who its members were.
What had been clear to Schumacher, his lieutenants, and a few others for some time became increasingly clear to the general membership. Fundamental change had to occur. The final four years of Schumacher's tenure were devoted to this change.
Social change, even on so small a scale as within an organization like the NASG, never comes easily a price is always paid. Neither does it come straightforwardly in neat logical little steps. What follows is an account of the major changes in the perspective of the time but with no attempt to link them in a logical sequence. An account of the price will come later.
The Seeds of Change
Actually the seeds of change had been planted back in 1969 when, as we saw earlier, Mobley asked Schumacher to come up with a new set of contest rules. Schumacher had turned to Dick Cataldi who, with Jon Watson, devised a well-received contest with new events for the PVSGA-hosted NESGA meet in Alexandria. Cataldi codified those rules, which were printed in the Spring 1971 Herald . They were the first set of printed S gauge contest rules, and they were used at the 1971 NESGA convention in Syr-acuse.
We have previously noted that the development of the contest rules together with the sanctioning of official meetings were a benchmark clearly indicating the determination of the NASG to become the authoritative voice for S gauge. The process, of course, took some time. The contest rules themselves were fur-ther revised by Cataldi in October 1972 and published in the March-April 1973 S Gauge Herald . A further revision was made in March 1974.
Interestingly, one of the principal concerns that lead to the development of NASG contest rules was that the NMRA rules did not provide for a situation in which tinplate and hi-rail played so big a part. The newly added events were developed to acknowledge this and were intended to promote model-building by all types of S gaugers, unlike the NMRA where the contest is principally aimed at the top craftsmen. Thus the 1969/1971 NASG rules were farthest from the NMRA rules. However, revisions became necessary to avoid misinterpretation of the intent of the rules. As these occurred the rules (but not the events) procedurally came to resemble the NMRA rules more closely and permitted the use of NMRA qualified judges.
Establishment of a uniform set of rules was important in its own right. Such rules avoided the previous problems of each hosting group modifying the NMRA rules to local conditions. But the greater importance of these rules lay in the emergence of the NASG as the authoritative body for S gauge. Each revision of the contest rules reinforced this authority.
The importance of the contest rules as rules per se was obvious. Their importance to the maturation of the NASG was also understood even at the time. Less obvious and requiring the perspective of time was the significance of these events for the future leadership of the NASG. The efforts showcased Dick Cataldi's special talents and were a harbinger of the dominance that the Potomac Valley S Gauge Association was to assume. For more than 15 years the PVSGA provided the top NASG leaders.
Standards
Of all that took place during the mid-'70s, nothing validated the NASG as the undisputed representative of S gauge as completely as the establishing of S scale standards. Like everything else in the NASG, achievement of this status was difficult and somewhat costly.
To understand the significance of the achievement, it is helpful to review the history of standards used in S gauge.
As usual, reference to American Flyer must be made. Obviously A. C. Gilbert Co. made Flyer wheelsets and trackage to its own proprietary standards which were appropriate for toy-train operation. These standards had no bearing on the development of S scale standards and they probably had no bearing on the NMRA T-13 hi-rail standards. Indeed, it seems most unlikely that any S gauger ever modeled to T-13 standards. However, A. C. Gilbert's proprietary standards did have an impact on the development of S Hi-rail standards. Many hi-railers simply altered AF wheels to reduce their massive flanges. Some also reduced the tread thickness. Such wheels were then re-gauged to some personal standard which worked. However, an important objective of standardization is the interchange of equipment from pike to pike. Personal standards rarely permit such interchange to occur. While interest in this goal was highest among the scalers, it was also present in the hi-railers. Although hi-rail wheelsets had been produced since the immediate post-war era by several companies (Rex, Miller, Nixon, as well as others) these were not made to any generally accepted standard. The development of a specific set of hi-rail standards was essentially a solo effort by Ed Schumacher. They were adopted by ACE Model Railroad Equipment Company and were the basis for the many hi-rail wheelsets and trucks produced by that company.
Although it was generally thought that the NMRA S3 and S4 standards which existed in the 1960s were the result of scaling up HO standards, Barney Daehler pointed out that Ed Packard was using standards very similar to those NMRA standards in his production of C-D gauge engines. Thus it appears possible that the NMRA S3 and S4 actually go back to the late 1930s. HO gauge did not become dominant until well after World War II. Before that, O gauge was king. Thus, it may be that S3 and S4 were influenced by O scale, although O was in some turmoil itself over whether to use 17/64" or 1/4" scale.
The need to develop better standards for S scale had several roots. Code 125 rail, which was regarded as standard for S scale, was expensive and becoming difficult to obtain in the 1960s. It had not yet become widely accepted for use in O scale, and since there were only a few hundred S scalers at best, many of whom used code 148 rail, the demand for code 125 was low. Consequently, its production fell off. Moreover, S scalers were beginning to experiment with code 100 rail, reducing demand even further. Another factor was that S4 wheelsets were no longer being made1.
Ironically though, the most compelling development was the increasing use of an HO scale item, namely the Kadee coupler, in S scale operation. The Kadee, a bit large for HO and a bit small for S, provided a vast visual improvement over the gigantic American Flyer coupler. Moreover, it was leagues ahead of other couplers in terms of operational reliability. The use of the HO Kadee in S scale probably began in the late fifties or very early sixties. Its acceptance was accelerated when John Bortz adapted the Kadee by replacing the gladhand with a longer version better suited to automatic uncoupling in S scale. Bortz produced the modified Kadee as a commercial venture, and it rather rapidly became the accepted standard in S scale railroading. By the early 1970s few S scalers used anything else.
However, unless track and equipment were maintained to very close tolerances, the Kadees could slip by each other when coupling was attempted. Track gauge, back-to-back wheel gauge, and bolster pin clearance contributed to the problem, but the slop between the truck sideframes and the axle ends was generally regarded that the chief culprit. This permitted the car ends to be far out of alignment with each other.
There was a lively debate over what to do to cure those ills. Some argued that simply shimming the axles to diminish the play was all that was required. This seemed to work for some. Others argued that S scalers should just model to higher standards which would eliminate the problems. It became clear, however, that for most S scalers the NMRA standards simply were too crude at too many points for simple adjustments to solve all problems. For example, maintaining wheel spacing at the maximum allowable very often increased problems at turnouts. Thus the sentiment for changes grew.
Nevertheless, by the early 1970s there was no clear consensus on the matter. Some long-time S scalers like Jesse Bennett were strongly opposed to any change, arguing that changes would put existing S scalers out of business. Jesse himself modeled to higher standards than the average S scaler. Despite that, he lobbied hard through the Finescale Circuit and though correspondence with other S scalers and the NMRA engineering committee against changing the S3 and S4 standards. At the other end of the spectrum was Ron Whaley who modeled in 1/64 AAR standards -- an exact scale reproduction of the prototype. (Ron may well be the only Proto-64 modeler in existence.) Whaley did not propose that 1/64 AAR become the official standard for all S scalers. He did, however, call for a graded sequence of standards with each successive standard coming closer to the perfect 1/64 reduction. He also argued vigorously against "paper engineering" where individuals proposed a set of standards from completely untested calculations. He called for rigorous testing before the adoption of standards. This thinking undoubtedly had its effect in the testing that later ensued. In between these poles were people like Barney Daehler who proposed the use of Code 110 standards for S scale. Daehler had begun his S scale modeling in 1/64 AAR but concluded that it required that all construction be to such exacting standards that it was not generally practical. (As an example, Ron Whaley silver-solders all of his rail joints and meticulously adjusts all of his trucks and locus to effect perfect equalization.) Daehler shifted to code 110, arguing that since it had become the accepted standard in HO it should function even better in S. Daehler presented his views in both the NMRA Bulletin in the 1970s two sets of .
During the 1970s two sets of events involved the development of S scale standards, those within the NMRA and those within the NASG. Some of the same people were involved in both sets of activities but, in general, the action within the NMRA was cautious and conservative and happened far too slowly to satisfy the need as seen within the NASG.
Schumacher, responding to the building pressure within the NASG, appointed Bob Campbell as the first NASG Standards Director. Campbell had been Circuits director earlier and was also an NMRA member. Ed charged him with sur-veying the scene and making a summary report and proposal for further examination by the NASG. He made such a report which was presented in the Summer 1972 Herald . However, Campbell had difficulty with the NMRA in establishing his qualifications to comment on such technical matters as standards. Bob had built and operated a modest interurban layout which in the eyes of many, including some S gaugers, did not give him the background and experience to assess the general standards. Such standards are usually regarded as reflective of heavy mainline operation. Campbell resigned as Standards Director, and Schumacher appointed Jim Peters as his replacement in mid-1972.
Peters was not only a model railroader, but also a real railroad man and had a better time of it than did Campbell. In early 1974, Barney Daehler was appointed Engineering Committee Chairman in the NMRA, and very shortly thereafter he appointed Peters as the S scale Standards Committee chairman. In fact, Daehler had considered several S gaugers for the position. These included Ron Whaley, Dick Cataldi, and Del Amerine in addition to Peters. Barney had particularly explored Whaley's interest, but Ron rejected the idea and eventually Daehler settled on Peters. Thus Peters occupied the same position in both organizations, and it was widely anticipated that he would be able to effect peace and cooperation. It did not work out that way.
Peters, working with the proposal originally made by Campbell, felt the sense of urgency that existed in the NASG. Moreover, the environment within the NASG was heavily influenced by the fact that there had been no NMRA S Standards chairman for some three years before Peters had been appointed. The NASG simply did not trust the motives of the NMRA. Thus, when Daehler's cautious approach became evident, many S gaugers tended to take a dim view of it some felt betrayed by one of their own. Daehler believed that what the NASG wanted was too radical a change from S3 and S4. He proposed that S3 and S4 be left as is and that the changes proposed by the NASG be made "Recommended Practices" (RPs). If after a few years of use they proved out, they could replace S3 and S4. This was not an acceptable approach to the NASG.
Given what was interpreted as non-responsiveness by the NMRA, Schumacher gave Peters the green board to proceed with a testing program to validate the proposed NASG standards.
Peters set about making scores of wheel sets to the proposed standards and installing these in trucks made by the various manufacturers of the period. In some instances he also re-worked the trucks to reduce side play and in others he narrowed the truck frames to a more prototypical thickness. In the end he produced multiple sets of trucks that provided a controlled comparison of the proposed standards with the older standards. The trucks also permitted the controlled examination of the effect of reworking the trucks.
These trucks were then distributed to S gaugers around the continent who were requested to use them in a variety of ways under many different conditions, and then to report the results back to Peters. This testing program took place over approximately a two-year period. Though there were a few dissenters, a clear majority of the testers strongly favored the new standards.
Near the end of this testing period a further test took place. An S scale steam loco was built to the proposed NASG standards. This loco was a B& O T-36 class 4-8-2 built by Tom Beresford2 with N. Dick Cataldi donated some Nord parts, Jim Peters donated some others, and the remaining parts were purchased with NASG funds from S Scale Locomotive and Supply. Upon completion, the T-36 was numbered NASG 5567 and was sent to and operated on a number of S scale pikes around the continent. The locomotive was considered a rousing success. It had, for example, successfully backed through a double slip switch on Dick Arthur's layout at 100 scale miles per hour.
Given NASG 5567's stunning success and the general success of the truck testing, approval of the proposed standards was assured. Thus, in December 1976, the NASG Board of Trustees approved the new standards. More chapters to the S scale standards story were to be written in the following decade, but by the end of 1976 it was no longer debatable who authoritatively spoke for S gauge.
Meanwhile, during the same period under Barney Daehler's guidance, the NMRA had moved in its own groove. Standards had been developed for Sn3. Changes had been made to RP12.2, 24.1 and 24.3 in regard to S scale and S finescale. The NMRA paid scant attention to the NASG activities, and S3 and S4 remained unchanged. The two organizations had never been farther apart.
Breaking Away
Without question the single most important event of the mid-70s was the legal formalization of the National Association of S Gaugers.
On March 4, 1976, NASG Inc., a non-profit cor-poration was legally established in the state of New York. Incorporation was the end result of a long struggle for self-realization which the organization had gone through since the early `60s. Claude Wade first responded to the need for further organization by creating the Director's Circuit. Russ Mobley completed the more formal organization scheme which Bernie Thomas had only partially implemented at the time of his death. However, Russ' effort was crippled by too few real contributors to the management of the NASG. Had help been forthcoming, it is possible that there might have been no need for an NASG Inc.
Ed Schumacher pushed formal organization still further. However, his scheme differed from Mobley's in one important way. He introduced the concept of an Advisory Council, separate from the Board of Trustees. This provided both a means of spreading the management burden and access to others' energy and insight. Ed had the good fortune of acquiring several first-rate lieutenants to share the management burden.
Given Schumacher's success in the first half of his stewardship, why was there interest in creating a new NASG? Was success not enough? Actually, what had begun in the early `70s and became manifest in the mid-'70s was a struggle for the very soul of the NASG. While the arguments took various forms, they all came down to whether the NASG would continue to be the "shoebox" operation, as Schumacher called it, or whether it would become a shaping force for S gauge.
Nearly everyone could be placed in either of two camps: conservatives saw little reason to consider changes those who were more visionary strongly felt the need for a more activist role for the NASG. But action requires resources, principally money and human effort. While there were increasing amounts of the latter, money, as always, was in short supply.
For those who wanted the NASG to take a more active role, the situation was increasingly intolerable. They insisted that the lifetime membership needed to be scuttled and replaced by annual dues. However, they met strong resistance from those who reminded them that a lifetime membership meant exactly what it said. The latter group argued that life members could not be required to pay annual dues. Since at that time all members had lifetime memberships, only new members could be charged annual dues. The result would obviously have been unacceptable. The NASG once again moved into a period of intense internal debate.
However, unlike in Mobley's days, there was not merely a single soul to act as the lightning rod for discontent. Additionally, no conservatives had important positions in the NASG under Schumacher. Thus, they were hampered in their efforts at lobbying for their views. Moreover, activism had begun to carry the day. Mare and more members became convinced that redirection of the NASG was essential. Hence, the debate, although often fierce, never became debilitating to the organization.
The logic of lifetime membership could not be avoided. It meant what it said, and was therefore a box from which there was no escape. There was no satisfactory solution to the problem from inside the NASG. The only solution available was to walk away from the NASG and found a new organization. Thus, incorporation was not the inevitable consequence of years of development, as some argued. Instead, it was nothing less than a putting to death of the old NASG in order to be free of the confinement of the lifetime membership.
The decision to incorporate was reached slowly and evolved throughout most of 1974. By the beginning of 1975, Ed Schumacher could confidently announce in the Jan.-Feb. Herald the that in the near future the lifetime dues would be replaced by a modest annual dues. Ironically, even as he made the announcement he found it necessary to plead for an increase in the number of participating members in order to raise more revenue.
With the decision having been reached, Ed convened a meeting at Dick Cataldi's home in Vienna, Virginia on January 4, 1975 to organize the effort to develop a constitution for the proposed new organization. Jack McGarry and Bill Oertly were also present. Schumacher appointed McGarry chairman of the Constitution Committee and directed him to draft a constitution and by-laws using the NMRA constitution as a model, but to make it simpler and shorter. The specific charges to this committee were published in the March-April 1975 Herald oration of the new organization and for effecting the transiThe Committee was also charged with overseeing the incorporation of the new organization and for effecting the transition from the old organization. The first target of the transition effort was the lifetime membership, the provision of which was eliminated effective July 1, 1975. For the following year all new members were accepted as Participating Members. Annual dues were accepted effective January 1, 1976 and were five dollars for individual members and ten dollars for contrib-uting members (usually clubs and manufacturers). Incorporation and ratification of the new constitution was scheduled to be completed by July 1, 1976.
Jack McGarry was the constitution's principal author. He suggested most of its provisions and literally wrote the constitution and its by-laws. Cataldi and Oertly served as the critical sounding board, suggesting changes and clarifications. As the Committee considered the matter of how the new organization was to be politically organized, Cataldi pressed for the formation of mid-western and western regions. His views prevailed and the new organization was given the three regions known to us today, each with a vice president. Schumacher had also wanted a Canadian region with its vice president, but there were simply too few Canadians in the organization at that time to justify it. Initially the boundaries of the regions followed the time zones with the Mountain and Pacific zones lumped together in the Pacific Region, but this proved cumbersome to administer. Later the boundaries were changed to include only whole states or provinces.
Selection of a name for the proposed new organization was a real challenge. Many different ones were considered, some with humor from the resulting acronyms. However, after lengthy discussion, the Committee concluded that it could not really do any better than adding "Inc." to the old name4.
While McGarry and company were preparing a constitution, Wally Collins, strictly gratis, did the legal footwork to incorporate the new NASG in the State of New York. The new NASG was legally established as a non-profit corporation on March 4, 1976.
What remained was to gather up the members in order to approve what had taken place and ratify the constitution. Originally there had been some hope that this could be accomplished at the Chicago convention in 1975. However, the pace of progress made that impossible. Moreover, the symbolism of ratifying the NASG constitution during our nation's bicentennial year entered the thinking of the planners. Thus, the "Constitutional Convention" took place on Memorial Day weekend, 1976.
The convention, held at the Talisman motel in Ottawa, Canada in order to take advantage of cheaper rates, ratified the constitution and the NASG Inc. became a reality.
Simultaneous with incorporation came the announcement in the May-June 1976 Heraldl t that the Circuits had been "cut adrift" from the NASG effective January 1, 1976. Symbolically the break-away was complete. A new bird took flight from the scattered bones of the old.
Next: Going It Alone
1 During the Sixties, S gauge sometimes seemed beset by difficulties on all sides. For a number of years the availability of trucks was seriously curtailed, principally due to diminishing supplies of wheelsets. The cost of manufacturing wheelsets had risen dramatically, and some truck manufacturers were very hesitant to try to sell trucks at the prices necessary to cover the costs of new wheelsets. Just when this problem seemed to signal the final blow to S gauge, a white knight in the person of Walter Graeff rode into the scene. Walter, who liked to refer to himself as a street-walking lawyer, had operated a hobby shop in Lebanon, PA as a sideline for a number of years. In 1968, he announced his intention of bringing out a full line of S scale trucks and formed the Ace Model Railroad Equipment Company to do this. Although production did not get under way until 1969 with the production of 54 wheelsets, he did in fact during the next several years bring out a very complete line of freight trucks with both scale and hi-rail wheelsets. Thus, Walter Graeff single-handedly ended S gauge's wheelset crisis.
2Tom Beresford lost all of his possessions including his model railroad in one of California's canyon fires in 1976. Therefore, the NASG BOT, following Schumacher's suggestion, presented 5567 to Tom in appreciation for his having built it. Dick Cataldi delivered the engine to Beresford while on a business trip. Sometime later Tom sold the loco to Ed Filer who had been on the NASG Standards Committee under Jim Peters. The present whereabouts of 5567 is unknown as of this writing.
3 The specific goals which the Advisory Coun-cil set for the Constitutional Committee were:
- Establish the NASG as a non-profit organization incorporated in one of the states.
- Provide a constitution and by-laws for the organization.
- Firmly define the goals and the limits of the NASG.
- Establish annual dues to provide funds for meaningful projects.
- Provide all members a chance to vote on the leadership and policies.
4It is a curious fact that the old NASG was never formally disbanded. Neither were the lifetime memberships formally abrogated. Hence, in theory, all of the former lifetime members could band together and resurrect the former NASG
[ End of Part 4 ]