Report of the Vancouver Burnaby New Westminster Richmond Sub Division 2017.

Prepared for the 7th Division PNR NMRA Annual General Meeting of 11 November 2017

This year the very successful Vancouver Train Expo has been reorganized into two events with separate organizing committees. The Vancouver Train Expo committee will be focused exclusively on organizing the public show, while a newly formed Railway Modeller’s Meet of British Columbia committee will be organizing the traditional fall meet activities including, Registrants will have the opportunity to participate in a display of fine modeling, Operating Sessions, two streams of clinics, the annual banquet and on Sunday day time – self guided layout tours. Next Year’s RMMBC meet is being planned for the weekend of May 5-7 2017.

This year as part of the Second Annual Railway Modellers Meet of British Columbia in early May 2016 operating sessions were arranged both on Friday Afternoon and Saturday evening. As there is no public show component in these RMMBC events - these Operating sessions are intended to provide operating session opportunities for guests who are often involved in show set up, and therefore not able to participate in Model railroad operations. Planning is proceeding for RMMBC 2018, (May 4-6) and will again include operating sessions and a self guided layout tour.

On December 2, 2016, the long awaited eleven kilometer Evergreen extension of the Millennium Line of the Skytrain system opened for Operations. This has proved to be a fast, frequent, popular, and convenient SkyTrain service, connecting Coquitlam City Centre through Port Moody to Lougheed Town Centre in approximately 15 minutes. With the opening of the Evergreen Extension, Metro Vancouver now has the longest, fully-automated, driverless, rapid-transit system in the world. It currently sees about 30,000 boardings each weekday. The six new Millennium Line stations include Lafarge Lake–Douglas, Lincoln, Coquitlam Central, Inlet Centre, Moody Centre, and Burquitlam. I make frequent use of this new service when visiting model railway friends in the Tri Cities Area. I find it to be much more relaxing than driving and I can legally text and eMail while I travel.

Local Activities are happening within several Local Unknown Groups whose members are helping each other in constructing, maintaining, and operating on each others layouts throughout the year. In addition there are social occasions to meet, to share conversation, fellowship, and stories.

While there have been no organized sub divisional activity or meeting in late 2016 or 2017. I would solicit ideas and reasons for arranging such a meeting in the future. While I do believe that there is benefit in such a gathering, however unless I hear from some sub division members, nothing will happen. Unfortunately the response to my last request for ideas as submitted in last year’s reports has been TOTAL SILENCE…

In closing I would remind everybody that the organizing committees both for the Vancouver Train Expo [VTEX] and for the Railway Modellers Meet of BC [RMMBC] would welcome new people to help arrange and participate in these annual events. Keeping in mind the old adage “Many hands make light work”, I would encourage members to step forward and help to organize and support these events.

Respectfully Submitted by John Green.Ferroequinologist

Modelling the Canadian Pacific Railway

Kettle Valley Division

Coquihalla and Merritt Subdivisions

in HO Scale circa 1955

“The Coquihalla Valley Railway”

2017-11-04 11:39 PM Page 1 of 1 Report of the VAC-BBY-NW-Richmond Sub 2017 FINAL.docx